Details, details. . .

How you help your readers by being specific.

“IT WAS REALLY cold when we arrived in Alberta.”

If that were the first sentence of something I was editing, I’d figure the writer and I had some work to do. Sure, the sentence is simple and comprehensible, but it’s also bland and nondescript. I’d start by asking a few questions. For example:

Just how cold was it when you got to Alberta?

Wow, -32 Celsius! “Really cold” all right. Nosehair-icicles cold. Let’s add that detail.

It was -32 C when we arrived in Alberta.

Where did you arrive?

It was -32 C when we arrived in Calgary.

How did you get there? Car? Train? Air Canada?

It was -32 C when we landed in Calgary.

Presto. By adding a few details, we’ve gone from a vague, woolly sentence—“It was really cold when we arrived in Alberta”—to a crisp, evocative one: “It was -32C when we landed in Calgary.”

Because the sentence is more specific, it starts to draws a picture in the reader’s mind. You can imagine looking out the frosted window as the aircraft taxis toward the Calgary terminal, the bundled marshaller’s breath visible as he signals the plane into its slot.

Detail helps enrich and make visual spoken or written description. That’s why, in most cases, it’s better to be specific rather than general, concrete rather than abstract. Consider the ways detail enhances each of the following sentences:

“A roadside memorial marked the spot of the accident.”

A mound of photos, teddy bears, and balloons marked the spot of the fatal crash.

“The suspects jumped into a getaway car and sped off.”

Three male suspects jumped into a white Econoline van and sped off.

“The old woman lived in rustic quarters with a variety of animals.”

The widow lived in a tumbledown shack with four dogs, three cats, and a goat.

In each case, by shifting from vague and general language to specific and concrete description, we’re drawing a picture in the reader’s mind.

Why is that worth doing? Because visual imagery is filed in a different part of the brain than language is. Images are longer-lasting and easier to recall than words. The next time you referred to the roadside memorial, or the widow (in a story or article, for example), readers would bring those visual associations—the teddy bears and balloons, the tumbledown shack—to their recollection. Your writing’s more vivid and memorable.

SPECIFICITY is helpful for another reason as well. It supports the “Show, don’t tell” dictate impressed on students in writing programs. The governing principle is that it’s better to describe specific behaviour and let readers draw their own conclusions, rather than evaluate the behaviour for them. Deducing something yourself creates a more immediate and lasting impression in your mind than having someone else tell you what to think.

Suppose you asked a friend, “What’s Jenny’s new husband like?”

Your friend might say, “Well, I met him for the first time when the four of us had dinner on Saturday and, to be honest, the guy is rather selfish and inconsiderate.”

That’s one way to answer, but it’s more commentary and opinion that description. If you asked, “Why do you say that?” your friend might recount the husband’s actions and let you evaluate them yourself.

“We had dinner with them, and Jenny had picked up a lemon tart for dessert. When she went to serve it, she discovered that Trevor had eaten the whole bloody thing!”

Maybe you agree with your friend’s assessment. Now you may also feel her discomfort at the dinner table, and Jenny’s annoyance. Or maybe you actually find it amusing, since you’re a sugar fiend and have done similar things yourself (OK, fine—myself). The point is that you’re now registering the behavior on an emotional level, not just an intellectual one. The husband’s behavior, and by extension his character, is not just assessed for you, it’s brought to life.

For a writer, then, explicit generally beats vague, concrete beats abstract, and specific beats general. Detail is good. It helps you draw pictures in the reader’s mind. That makes your writing more engrossing and memorable.

Of course—as with open bars and drum solos—you can always have too much of a good thing.

How much detail is too much? Nicholson Baker, in his novel The Mezzanine, uses such clinically acute description that it takes him 142 pages to complete a single trip up an escalator. Interwoven with the stream of consciousness narration are detailed old memories, fanciful associations, and almost ludicrously extended tangents, some rendered in pages-long footnotes.

Sound excruciating? Actually, the exercise is so earnestly sustained that it becomes amusing, even touching. Baker is such a masterful writer that his wit, command, and powers of description keep you deeply engaged.

THE FLOW and rhythm of your own prose will usually tell you how much detail is good, and how much it too much. “A history professor with short hair” doesn’t draw much of a picture. “A hunched, pipe-smoking history professor with close-cropped white hair” draws a clearer, more memorable picture, but still respects the rhythm of a typical narrative.

Now this—“A hunched, Meerschaum-pipe-smoking medieval history professor with a cracked, high-pitched voice and a vaguely Midwestern accent, thin pursed lips, hollow cheeks, a slightly jutting chin, and receding white hair cropped square and close in the manner of a Marine drill sergeant”—that’s a ten-minute drum solo. Enough already.

Editing a book or a magazine piece, I’m often asking questions such as this: “When you say ‘a monster house,’ do we know the number of square feet, bedrooms, bathrooms, stuff like that?” Or: “You write that David Frum was ‘academically precocious.’ Can we show that, by recounting where he studied and what degrees he earned when?” Or: “‘the windstorm that killed or badly damaged half the trees in Stanley Park’—do we have any idea how many trees that represents?”

One of the Ross Rules is BE SPECIFIC. As you review what you’ve written, try devoting one pass through the entire text looking for spots where detail might enhance the reader’s understanding and experience. It’s a discipline that will help you become a better writer.

P.S. Know someone who wants to improve their writing? Share this post with them.

P.P. S. As I write this, I’m in the East, where it’s chilly but nice.

Actually, I’m in downtown Toronto, where it’s 2 degrees C and sunny.