How to Be a More Detailed Writer
Show, don't tell., Focus on key details., Avoid empty descriptive words., Get rid of most adverbs., Draw on all five senses., Make judicious use of similes and metaphors.
Step-by-Step Guide
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Step 1: don't tell.
Whether you're writing fiction, creative non-fiction, or a closing trial statement, this fundamental piece of writing advice holds true.
Don't tell us your character is angry, show us by the tightness in her jaw, or the edge in her voice, or the way her posture stiffens ever so slightly.
Don't tell us that the tenement building was run down; describe the broken windows, peeling paint, and pervasive smell of urine.
The key is details, details, details.
Take this example of a house from Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.
He is describing a traditional mud hut, but he gives us so much more than that: "It was a bare earth house in the traditional style; brown mud walls, a few glassless windows, with a knee-height wall around the yard.
A previous owner, a long time ago, had painted designs on the wall, but neglect and the years had scaled them off and only their ghosts remained." -
Step 2: Focus on key details.
Too many details can ruin the pacing of your story or clutter your argument.
The key is not to describe everything, but rather to pick out a few precise details and let the reader fill in the rest.Consider why you are including details.
Do they tell you something about a character or your story? Do they contribute in a specific way to the argument you are making? In this excerpt from The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy draws on one aspect of a church – the heat – which she uses to draw a contrast that reveals the emotional state of a character: "It was hot in the church, and the white edges of the arum lilies crisped and curled.
A bee died in a coffin flower.
Ammu's hands shook and her hymnbook with it.
Her skin was cold."
One way to make sure you are showing and not telling is to seek out empty descriptors in your writing.
These are words – usually adjectives – like "delicious," which describe without really telling you anything.
So the meal was delicious.
How so? Did lightly fried sardines accompanied with a sweet wine smelling of apricots give way to a tartrate of egg and pungent cheese, spiced with cardamom and a dozen other spices she could not identify? Was the bread dense and rich, with a hint of earthiness, as if it had grown directly from the dark soil outside the hut? Some empty descriptors to watch out for include:
Beautiful Amazing, incredible Size adjectives (tall, short, big, large, small) Good or bad Young, old Empty language also happens in non-fiction academic writing.
For example, a thesis statement that says "Shakespeare's Hamlet is a good play about the contrast between good and evil" is shallow and doesn't provide any detail about your claim.
In contrast, compare this detailed thesis statement: "Shakespeare's Hamlet examines the nuances of intention.
Hamlet's intent to avenge his father may be noble, but his willingness to annihilate everyone standing in his path to that revenge eventually outweighs any good in his purpose, making him as much a villain as King Claudius."
Stephen King believes "the road to hell is paved with adverbs," and he is not alone.Adverbs – words that modify adjectives, verbs, or other adverbs and usually end in
-ly – should be used cautiously.
Occasionally, they can be helpful, but for the most part, you should search for a more descriptive verb, or add context that makes the adverb unnecessary.
For example:
Avoid said-modifiers.
Instead of "said softly"
try "whispered." Instead of "said fearfully"
"whimpered." Avoid motion-modifiers.
Instead of "walked slowly," try "sauntered"
"meandered"
or "strolled." Instead of "walked quickly," "hurried" or "scampered".
Replace adverbs with detailed context:
Instead of writing "she walked softly," think about why she's walking that way and how it makes her feel. "She tip-toed past the guard, each creak of the floorboards sounding to her like thunder."
Smell, sound, taste, and touch can make your descriptions more vivid and tangible.
They can take you to a place in a way that visual description often cannot.
Think of the salty smell of sea air or the hiss of wind over new-fallen snow.
Smell – Patrick Suskind's Perfume:
The Story of a Murderer has, appropriately, some particularly vivid descriptions of smell. "People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onions, and from their bodies, if they were no longer very young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease." Taste – Particularly effective with food, taste language can be even more powerful elsewhere: "A wave engulfed him.
He came up and spit the briny water from his mouth." Sound – Listen to how Robert Frost describes the sound of a wood at night: "Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar / Of trees and crack of branches, common things, / But nothing so like beating on a box." (Robert Frost, "An Old Man's Winter Night") Touch – In "Once More to the Lake," E.B.
White vividly evokes the sensation of pulling on wet, cold swimming trunks: "He pulled his dripping trunks from the line… I watched him, his hard little body, skinny and bare, saw him wince slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small, soggy, icy garment."
A simile is a figure of speech that uses "like" or "as" to make a comparison between two things: "his eyes were as big as saucers as he gazed at the cake." A metaphor makes an implicit comparison without using "like" or "as": "his eyes were saucers as he gazed at the cake." A well chosen metaphor, like Shakespeare's famous "All the world's a stage," can illuminate, while a poor one will only confuse.
To get it right, follow these rules:
Make your metaphors and similes simple and clear.
The more elaborate they become, the more likely they are to confuse rather than to illuminate.
Don't mix them.
Pick a comparison and stick with that.
Otherwise, you risk writing nonsense like this: "The president will put the ship of state on its feet."Only use original ones.
Using timeworn comparisons like "slow as a snail" won't add anything to your writing.
If the comparison isn't vivid and interesting, simply stick with a straightforward description.
Use them to vividly evoke sensations.
The most powerful metaphors and similes typically paint a picture or evoke a particular sound, taste, smell, or feeling.
The more tangible the better, like "The water made a sound like kittens lapping" (The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings) -
Step 3: Avoid empty descriptive words.
-
Step 4: Get rid of most adverbs.
-
Step 5: Draw on all five senses.
-
Step 6: Make judicious use of similes and metaphors.
Detailed Guide
Whether you're writing fiction, creative non-fiction, or a closing trial statement, this fundamental piece of writing advice holds true.
Don't tell us your character is angry, show us by the tightness in her jaw, or the edge in her voice, or the way her posture stiffens ever so slightly.
Don't tell us that the tenement building was run down; describe the broken windows, peeling paint, and pervasive smell of urine.
The key is details, details, details.
Take this example of a house from Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.
He is describing a traditional mud hut, but he gives us so much more than that: "It was a bare earth house in the traditional style; brown mud walls, a few glassless windows, with a knee-height wall around the yard.
A previous owner, a long time ago, had painted designs on the wall, but neglect and the years had scaled them off and only their ghosts remained."
Too many details can ruin the pacing of your story or clutter your argument.
The key is not to describe everything, but rather to pick out a few precise details and let the reader fill in the rest.Consider why you are including details.
Do they tell you something about a character or your story? Do they contribute in a specific way to the argument you are making? In this excerpt from The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy draws on one aspect of a church – the heat – which she uses to draw a contrast that reveals the emotional state of a character: "It was hot in the church, and the white edges of the arum lilies crisped and curled.
A bee died in a coffin flower.
Ammu's hands shook and her hymnbook with it.
Her skin was cold."
One way to make sure you are showing and not telling is to seek out empty descriptors in your writing.
These are words – usually adjectives – like "delicious," which describe without really telling you anything.
So the meal was delicious.
How so? Did lightly fried sardines accompanied with a sweet wine smelling of apricots give way to a tartrate of egg and pungent cheese, spiced with cardamom and a dozen other spices she could not identify? Was the bread dense and rich, with a hint of earthiness, as if it had grown directly from the dark soil outside the hut? Some empty descriptors to watch out for include:
Beautiful Amazing, incredible Size adjectives (tall, short, big, large, small) Good or bad Young, old Empty language also happens in non-fiction academic writing.
For example, a thesis statement that says "Shakespeare's Hamlet is a good play about the contrast between good and evil" is shallow and doesn't provide any detail about your claim.
In contrast, compare this detailed thesis statement: "Shakespeare's Hamlet examines the nuances of intention.
Hamlet's intent to avenge his father may be noble, but his willingness to annihilate everyone standing in his path to that revenge eventually outweighs any good in his purpose, making him as much a villain as King Claudius."
Stephen King believes "the road to hell is paved with adverbs," and he is not alone.Adverbs – words that modify adjectives, verbs, or other adverbs and usually end in
-ly – should be used cautiously.
Occasionally, they can be helpful, but for the most part, you should search for a more descriptive verb, or add context that makes the adverb unnecessary.
For example:
Avoid said-modifiers.
Instead of "said softly"
try "whispered." Instead of "said fearfully"
"whimpered." Avoid motion-modifiers.
Instead of "walked slowly," try "sauntered"
"meandered"
or "strolled." Instead of "walked quickly," "hurried" or "scampered".
Replace adverbs with detailed context:
Instead of writing "she walked softly," think about why she's walking that way and how it makes her feel. "She tip-toed past the guard, each creak of the floorboards sounding to her like thunder."
Smell, sound, taste, and touch can make your descriptions more vivid and tangible.
They can take you to a place in a way that visual description often cannot.
Think of the salty smell of sea air or the hiss of wind over new-fallen snow.
Smell – Patrick Suskind's Perfume:
The Story of a Murderer has, appropriately, some particularly vivid descriptions of smell. "People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onions, and from their bodies, if they were no longer very young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease." Taste – Particularly effective with food, taste language can be even more powerful elsewhere: "A wave engulfed him.
He came up and spit the briny water from his mouth." Sound – Listen to how Robert Frost describes the sound of a wood at night: "Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar / Of trees and crack of branches, common things, / But nothing so like beating on a box." (Robert Frost, "An Old Man's Winter Night") Touch – In "Once More to the Lake," E.B.
White vividly evokes the sensation of pulling on wet, cold swimming trunks: "He pulled his dripping trunks from the line… I watched him, his hard little body, skinny and bare, saw him wince slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small, soggy, icy garment."
A simile is a figure of speech that uses "like" or "as" to make a comparison between two things: "his eyes were as big as saucers as he gazed at the cake." A metaphor makes an implicit comparison without using "like" or "as": "his eyes were saucers as he gazed at the cake." A well chosen metaphor, like Shakespeare's famous "All the world's a stage," can illuminate, while a poor one will only confuse.
To get it right, follow these rules:
Make your metaphors and similes simple and clear.
The more elaborate they become, the more likely they are to confuse rather than to illuminate.
Don't mix them.
Pick a comparison and stick with that.
Otherwise, you risk writing nonsense like this: "The president will put the ship of state on its feet."Only use original ones.
Using timeworn comparisons like "slow as a snail" won't add anything to your writing.
If the comparison isn't vivid and interesting, simply stick with a straightforward description.
Use them to vividly evoke sensations.
The most powerful metaphors and similes typically paint a picture or evoke a particular sound, taste, smell, or feeling.
The more tangible the better, like "The water made a sound like kittens lapping" (The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings)
About the Author
Karen Clark
Committed to making DIY projects accessible and understandable for everyone.
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