"D" Is For Details

When we first moved to Nevada over 30 years ago, all I could see was dirt, rocks, cactus, and a raggedy city struggling for survival around the garish Strip. I saw hostile wasteland. When it rained, the only thing I smelled was dirt. Over time, my eye began distinguishing the differences between cactus and a flowering shrub well-adapted for the dry climate, a city growing out of the desert in harmony with its many colors and textures, and the rain released the fragrance of sage, rosemary, earth, and road oil. It took time for Nevada's details to emerge in my senses, and the more detail recognized, the more I felt at home, the more I fell in love.

Now in Arkansas for less than a year, I'm just beginning to see more than canyons of trees, water, water, water, and road kill along the highways. I see rivers, lakes, creeks, and bayous as I adapt to my surroundings and learn its details. I see a variety of trees with different shapes and seeds, and the thickets around them a staggering variety with details that are still a tangled mess and impossible to love.  I walk different now, keeping loose in I  the ankles, knees, and hips to keep my footing on this rugged terrain. I'm enjoying these changes my environment is bringing to my body and mind, and every chance I get I'm out hiking this varied landscape to experience more, change more, understand more and connect with this place where I now live. I want to fall in love with where I live, but I can't love what I don't yet know exists.

It's the same with writing. There are no plot twists if the reader isn't first drawn into the world of the writer's imagination and the circumstances of the character's lives. There are only senseless twists and loops that irritate the reader. They waste time--the most precious commodity we own because once spent it can never be regained--with characters they can't connect with emotionally or physically. The writing itself might be dazzling and the action smoking with speed, but if the reader doesn't inhabit the same world as the story, all those fancy tricks of the trade leave them saying, “What the..? and determined they'll never read anything you write again.

So am I suggesting the writer should overwhelm readers with endless detail? No. That's another quick and easy way to kill off readers. What I am suggesting is the author be so immersed in the details of the world and people they create that these elements tumble from their thoughts into the written word with clean, bold lines.

This may sound as if I've got a romanticized idea of the writing process. Nope. Been there, done that, won some major prizes, and had an agent. Just because I've known my stories and characters better than I know myself doesn't mean they've tumbled from my thoughts in clean, bold lines when I first sat down to write. Everything first splats on my computer screen and notepads, and my character take slapstick falls before they dance, and even more time before I know whether to direct them in a waltz or pop them into hip-hop. It's a brew without a recipe, but we know when we get it right, when we can serve it to others.

Writers need to know the details of our stories well enough to like it, love it, want to share it with others, but we can only introduce our readers to the people and worlds we love with a friendly handshake and a how-do-you-do.

It's up to us in determining whether the devil or God is in the details, and that takes time.  Time well invested so we won't squander the time of others.