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The devil’s in the details, we’ve all heard that one, right? That general caution not to overlook the details in any undertaking applies to your writing as well. On the other hand, there are ways to go overboard and put readers off. How to find that balance? Emphasize the small details and downplay the big ones. Learning how to add specifics and avoid infodumps will make the story visceral and real for your readers, and is another good tool for showing vs telling.
Small details are crucial; they’re going to give the strongest sensory signals and paint the most evocative pictures. Readers don’t need every detail of a character’s hair, face, and clothes - they can fill that in for themselves. They almost certainly don’t need the entire political history of your secondary world going back to the beginning of time. But if the character has a slightly yellowed front tooth and a cigarette hanging out of their mouth (rather than telling the reader the yellow tooth is from being a long-time smoker because show vs tell, right?), that can evoke not only an image, but a sensation of “Oh, yeah” from having known someone like that. Remembering to include all five senses in little dabs frequently throughout your scenes is essential, but details are about more than just taste, touch, smell, hearing, and vision. Be specific when you have the opportunity. Don’t say:
“After the accident, Mary cleaned up John’s clutter in the garage. The mess he’d said for years he would sort.”
Instead, use specifics to show the reader things about both characters:
“Mary started nearest the door with dusty boxes of car racing trophies from his glory days. The next pile contained old photographs of races and of friends, many of whom were still racing. She wondered if they’d heard yet that he died as the driver-at-fault in a routine car accident. He could have framed and hung the photos, the same as he could have displayed his trophies, but she had learned the hard way not to suggest it. The crutches and rehab equipment went into a donation pile, though after ten years in a non-rat-proof garage, even Goodwill might throw them out. Something heavy clinked and shifted when she tried to move a cooler they used to take to the beach when the children were small. She opened the lid to find eight bottles of hard liquor, three of them half empty.”
So this was an off-the-cuff construction for illustration, but hopefully that one paragraph of specific detail gives an impression of the last ten years of the lives of both characters, accomplishing the backstory through showing. It avoids an infodump about his past, yet gives the reader a seasoning of his days as a successful race car driver, the accident that ended his career, the feelings that made him pack his history away rather than display it, and the implication that he had turned to alcohol to numb his depression.
For another example, consider one of my favorite opening lines of all times - the first line in the novel “A Prayer for Owen Meany” by John Irving. The author could have written a short and telling first line that said, “I’m a Christian because of Owen Meany.” Take a look at what he did instead:
"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany."
The examples above hopefully give a sense of how specific detail can help a story. So if detail is good, how can you have too much? Ever beta read for someone who opens their novel with a 14-page prologue of world-building detail? If you beta read the first draft of my first novel, then you have. Sprinkling sensory details in like seasoning makes everything more palatable. Taking the cap off the salt shaker and dumping it on will ruin the very thing you’re trying to create. Backstory and heavy-handed world-building aren’t the kind of detail you want to be giving your reader, they’re infodumps, and it’s best to avoid them.
Small details are crucial; they’re going to give the strongest sensory signals and paint the most evocative pictures. Readers don’t need every detail of a character’s hair, face, and clothes - they can fill that in for themselves. They almost certainly don’t need the entire political history of your secondary world going back to the beginning of time. But if the character has a slightly yellowed front tooth and a cigarette hanging out of their mouth (rather than telling the reader the yellow tooth is from being a long-time smoker because show vs tell, right?), that can evoke not only an image, but a sensation of “Oh, yeah” from having known someone like that. Remembering to include all five senses in little dabs frequently throughout your scenes is essential, but details are about more than just taste, touch, smell, hearing, and vision. Be specific when you have the opportunity. Don’t say:
“After the accident, Mary cleaned up John’s clutter in the garage. The mess he’d said for years he would sort.”
Instead, use specifics to show the reader things about both characters:
“Mary started nearest the door with dusty boxes of car racing trophies from his glory days. The next pile contained old photographs of races and of friends, many of whom were still racing. She wondered if they’d heard yet that he died as the driver-at-fault in a routine car accident. He could have framed and hung the photos, the same as he could have displayed his trophies, but she had learned the hard way not to suggest it. The crutches and rehab equipment went into a donation pile, though after ten years in a non-rat-proof garage, even Goodwill might throw them out. Something heavy clinked and shifted when she tried to move a cooler they used to take to the beach when the children were small. She opened the lid to find eight bottles of hard liquor, three of them half empty.”
So this was an off-the-cuff construction for illustration, but hopefully that one paragraph of specific detail gives an impression of the last ten years of the lives of both characters, accomplishing the backstory through showing. It avoids an infodump about his past, yet gives the reader a seasoning of his days as a successful race car driver, the accident that ended his career, the feelings that made him pack his history away rather than display it, and the implication that he had turned to alcohol to numb his depression.
For another example, consider one of my favorite opening lines of all times - the first line in the novel “A Prayer for Owen Meany” by John Irving. The author could have written a short and telling first line that said, “I’m a Christian because of Owen Meany.” Take a look at what he did instead:
"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany."
The examples above hopefully give a sense of how specific detail can help a story. So if detail is good, how can you have too much? Ever beta read for someone who opens their novel with a 14-page prologue of world-building detail? If you beta read the first draft of my first novel, then you have. Sprinkling sensory details in like seasoning makes everything more palatable. Taking the cap off the salt shaker and dumping it on will ruin the very thing you’re trying to create. Backstory and heavy-handed world-building aren’t the kind of detail you want to be giving your reader, they’re infodumps, and it’s best to avoid them.
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