JCB's Ruminations on the Craft of Fiction #12
August 6, 2020
The life of fiction is in its details. Vivid details in a scene have the potential to jump off the page and bring the fictional world to life. Learning how to find just the right details for your scenes and story is one of the best ways to improve your writing. But we don’t often talk about this. Although books on craft might mention how important it is to use details, figuring out which details are the most vivid is usually left to the struggling writer.
The best writers have vision: they see the world through a fictive eye. They know they can leave out quite a bit if they catch hold of some small detail, a synecdochal moment that can serve as a representation of the complete drama of the scene. A powerful detail can not only suggest the totality of the scene, but also a mood, a character, a life. The very best writers seem to make every detail significant and enlivening, and it can be difficult for aspiring authors to imagine learning how to do it. We might assume this talent is some kind of gift or curse, an effect of artistic madness.
Nonetheless, we can hone artistic vision as a skill. We have to read (a lot!) and pay attention to how writers create evocative scenes, to the details that bring what we read to life, and how they function within the scene. Poetry is a good model for thinking about fictive vision. And though it’s good to read broadly, when we do find a writer with a particularly keen eye, we might devour everything that they’ve written to find out how they do it. With so much to read in the world, it’s good to select the best examples to learn from. The purpose is not to copy them, but to learn to recognize how details connect with larger concerns and how writers envision their scenes. We can even practice "seeing" with our own fictive eyes in everyday life, focusing on small things that we might not have noticed were we not paying attention. We must be careful not to be derivative, not to look for the familiar, for the shortcuts of mass media, but instead to find those details that uniquely reveal a particular character and situation. Over time, you’ll notice that it becomes a reflex, and when you write, you’ll begin to go immediately for those evocative details.
Like any aspect of craft, writer’s vision takes practice. The good news is this means it can be learned. The bad news is you have to work at it. But it’s worth it.
Next: Heeding My Own Advice