The art of the telling detail
- Tue, May 15 2007
- Filed under: Writing
When I was working for Reuters covering the July 1997 coup in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the airport was dismantled by a procession of people, each more desperate than the last. First, retreating royalists soldiers cleaned out the XO Cognac at the duty free. Then the victorious troops moved in, raiding the safes and taking the computers, the lines of connected waiting-room chairs and air conditioners, strapping them atop tanks. What remained when I arrived was the roof, the bullet-pocked walls, and a carpet of broken glass and scattered tourist photos still taped to trampled visa applications. Children and a few parents from the village by the airport arrived late in the day to take what little was left – wiring from behind the walls, light fixtures, scraps of paper. In the men’s room, two teenage boys ripped the door from its hinges and wrenched the urinals from the wall. A young boy walked across the glass shards with two paddles, one red and one green, which were used to direct aircraft to their stopping points. He saw me and shrugged. I tried to explain how to use the paddles in my halting Khmer. I waved them over my shoulders and then crossed them in the command for a full stop. He seized them, laughing and waving them in all directions, making criss-crossing lines and collision courses. “Barang!” he screamed, laughing, and ran away with the paddles. Foreigner.
I’m remembering that day with you through telling details, like the trampled tourist photos. The trampled photos packed an entire, complex story into a single image, so they were worth sharing. So did the stolen cognac, the loot-laden tanks and the boy, waving his paddles. At least that’s the idea. I could have simply told you the airport was looted, but I wanted to show you the scene. I wanted to convey the telling details. They are what makes life interesting and stories alive.
The power of the telling detail is that it does what good writing is meant to do - it transports us to a place, a time, a person’s mind. It shows us what that moment felt like to live, and what it meant.
This week, I want to blog about writing. Because no matter how great our talents as marketers, we will always need the gift of good writing.
The best writing advice I have ever been given is old and oft-cited, but it is also dead on: show, don’t tell. Do it with a telling detail. Don’t just talk about your programs in abstract language. Force yourself to define the small story elements that stick in the mind. Strip your prose of tired adjectives. Banish the passive voice. Yank the reader out of her bored, tuned-out state with a startling image she can’t forget.
Do you have an image like that? A sentence, a story? Send it to me here, in a comment. Inspire others with your talent.
I leave you with these words, from a book on writing fiction - but they surely apply to writing about our work. They say it better than I can.
Specific, definite, concrete, particular details - these are the life of fiction. Details (as every good liar knows) are the stuff of persuasiveness… John Gardner in The Art of Fiction speaks of details as “proofs,” rather like those in a geometric theorem or statistical argument. A detail should be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched… [and] the detail must matter.” —Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction: A guide to Narrative Craft.
Comments
I have painted pictures with words in order to promote our organisation and the beautiful landscapes and wildlife our organisation is striving to protect. The images conjoured allow our supporters to experience the site from the comfort of their own home and promotes a sense of well being.
Just try it, it might even rejuvinate your own interest in what you do…
Hi Katia—I follow your blog. I am working on a website about specific community projects for which I am involved and passionate about. At the moment I have a blog of creative non-fiction, and will share a short piece of “flash fiction” with detail—I think the goal was to stay within 55 words or less. More (very detailed!) writing can be found at my myspace blog (address above).
Here’s a sample:
For two years, Miranda had sworn that she would be in Prague when she turned 40. That she’d be sitting in a wooden chair in a dark café over a cup black tar coffee, alone, ears perked to hear the pontifications of two men sitting just inside the worn blood red velvet curtained doorway. They argue about ice hockey and Philip Morris and Nietze. Their fingers (too dirty) cradle cigarettes (now too short) sending ribbons of smoke up overhead – dancing ribbons that curl around each other and play in the dusty rays of mid afternoon sunlight that rudely cut through secrets like a floodlight. Innocent ribbons of smoke, like children, unaware.
Miranda will not be in Prague for her 40th birthday. Sometimes plans change.
Last spring, the Bet Tzedek Legal Services newsletter featured a particularly touching story. Rather than merely citing another court victory against a notorious Los Angeles sweatshop owner, the story began as follows:
“It reads like a scene from a Dickens novel: A 17-year-old sews labels on clothes for 70 hours a week, without lunch or rest breaks, earning three cents for each piece he completes. The year? 2006. The place? Downtown Los Angeles.”
As an aspiring filmaker, other than an Internet Marketer, I can tell you that the ‘show, don’t tell’ line is basically the mantra of every screenwriter.
Katya, I suggest you and all your reader to take a look at STORY by Robert McKee to have more wise insights about this subjects (I believe that Janet Burroway, who you quote in your post, is a McKee disciple).