Style: Chapter 2: Details

Details, quite simply, are one of the most important parts of literary writing. The way writers use details—what they choose to present to their readers, the language they use to do this—becomes an essential part of their style.

There is a spectrum of detail writing. Some writers go to extremes (e.g., Rick Bass, Proust, Nabokov). Other writers are more minimal (e.g., Raymond Carver, Hemingway, Kafka). But basically, all the greats are on the spectrum somewhere. Where on this spectrum you reside will be up to you and your own stylistic preferences.

To be clear, I’m not saying writers should avoid abstract or general language (that is, language lacking details). This kind of language serves as a bedrock for details. Or, switching metaphors, it is the scaffolding upon which the details—the stucco, the ornamentation, those gleaming wrought-iron sconces—are set. What I’m saying, to quote the great poet Mary Oliver (and to switch metaphors yet again), is that “What is abstract, general, and philosophical is woven with the living fibers of grass, red roses, nightingales, snowy evenings, and dawns.” Hard to put it better than that.

Below, I’ll get into the different ways writers use details. As usual with these style essays, my examples are from my “textbook”: The Penguin Book of the Modern Short Story, ed. John Freeman (New York: Penguin Press, 2021).

Details for Scenes and Characters

Details are usually (but not exclusively!) used to describe two things: scenes (i.e., places) and characters. There is an art to adding details. What kinds of details should you include? Where in the text should they go (all at once or scattered)? How many details are enough? Can you go too far? (To that last question: rarely.) Answering these questions will depend on your own tastes as a writer, which will depend on your own tastes as a reader. (All great writers (really, even all mediocre writers) are great readers.)

Here are two guidelines:

1. When adding details to—that is, when describing—physical scenes, add broad details early, so readers understand the scene in a general sense. Then, if you’d like, you can weave in smaller, less important details later. For example, you might write that two characters are sitting on a sofa in a room bathed in sunlight. Later, you can describe the sofa’s floral pattern, or the play of shadows from the elm trees out front, or the framed painting on the wall of the Count of Toulouse, etc. The important thing is that a reader shouldn’t have to, in essence, go back and read a scene again to experience it properly (unless this is your clear intent).

2. Focus more on details of scene than those of character. My favorite (contemporary) writers tend to focus on the former, I suspect by a ratio of around 80:20. Character details—what they wear, the style of their hair—can get tiresome, mainly because the writing is often hackneyed or clichéd (how many ways can we describe a man’s suit, a woman’s hairstyle?). The greats these days often put a flower in a boutonniere or have a bra strap fall from a shoulder, and then create the surrounding scene. Consider this a rough guideline. Some writers, to be sure, describe characters in wonderful detail. I’ve simply found, while editing, that most writers describe characters in, well, un-wonderful detail.

Time for some examples:

Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” is absolutely bursting with details (they carried a lot of things). Note that his details below are simply objects, but what an effect! Here’s a taste:

The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. . . . [It goes on, gloriously.] —Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried,” 126

Jhumpa Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter” is a spectacular story of details, in fact it is largely driven by these details. (I’ll talk about this story a few more times below—it’s too good for only one or two examples.) An average writer might just have Shoba walk into the kitchen, but Lahiri gives us more:

Shoba walked over to the framed corkboard that hung on the wall by the fridge, bare except for a calendar of William Morris wallpaper patterns. —Jhumpa Lahiri, “A Temporary Matter,” 243

Here are some scattered details from Susan Sontag’s “The Way We Live Now”:

. . . his stupendous Majorelle desk . . . —Susan Sontag, “The Way We Live Now,” 109

. . . a pianist who specialized in twentieth-century Czech and Polish music . . . —ibid., 116

. . . a letter from her nine-year-old dyslexic son . . . —ibid., 120

. . . an eighteenth-century Guatemalan wooden statue of St. Sebastian with upcast eyes and open mouth . . . —ibid., 120–1

George Saunders’s “Sticks” is basically a story of details. It’s only around a page. Just read it. Here’s the first sentence:

Every year Thanksgiving night we flocked out behind Dad as he dragged the Santa suit to the road and draped it over a kind of crucifix he built out of metal pole in the yard. —George Saunders, “Sticks,” 170

Details should often be interesting in some way (I’ll get into this idea—in more detail!—later). In other words, details should count. Here, thanks largely to one wonderful detail, is a great-sounding sentence:

One thing I liked was how the screens at night pulsed with the tender bellies of lizards. —Lauren Groff, “The Midnight Zone,” 437

Beyond Sight

Many of the examples above involved sight. This is not surprising. Sight, especially in a literary sense, is the most memorable, some would say the most vivid, of the senses. But to create a rich and vibrant world for our readers, we should also consider the other four senses.

Ursula K. Le Guin begins her story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” with sound (and sight): “With the clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring . . .” I not only see these swallows; I also hear what set them soaring (and what wonderful alliteration). Here’s another example of sound from this story:

In the silence of the broad green meadows one could hear the music winding through the city streets, farther and nearer and ever approaching, a cheerful faint sweetness of the air that from time to time trembled and gathered together and broke out into the great joyous clanging of the bells. —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” 18

I promised more from Lahiri. What follows is a relatively simple example of scene description. There are smell, sight, a bit of touch (the warmth), intimations of sound. Note how she moves the reader from inside to outside. Also note again how the details are interesting. Writing details is not just a box to check:

Shukumar gathered onion skins in his hands and let them drop into the garbage pail, on top of the ribbons of fat he’d trimmed from the lamb. He ran the water in the sink, soaking the knife and the cutting board, and rubbed a lemon half along his fingertips to get rid of the garlic smell, a trick he’d learned from Shoba. It was seven-thirty. Through the window he saw the sky, like soft black pitch. Uneven banks of snow still lined the sidewalks, though it was warm enough for people to walk about without hats or gloves. Nearly three feet had fallen in the last storm, so that for a week people had to walk single file, in narrow trenches. For a week that was Shukumar’s excuse for not leaving the house. But now the trenches were widening, and water drained steadily into grates in the pavement. —Lahiri, “A Temporary Matter,” 246

See what I mean about focusing on details of place rather than character?

Here is an example of smell:

Douglas sat at the kitchen table and held his face in his hands. He could smell the ham, salami, turkey, Muenster, cheddar, and Swiss from his day’s work. —Percival Everett, “The Fix,” 296–7

Here we have touch and taste (as well as sight):

Georgie and I went out to the lot, to his orange pickup. ¶ We lay down on a stretch of dusty plywood in the back of the truck with the daylight knocking against our eyelids and the fragrance of alfalfa thickening on our tongues. —Denis Johnson, “Emergency,” 161

Below are a few more examples of sound and smell. Hopefully these will give you some inspiration to slip non-sight details into your writing:

. . . the sound of ice cracking under the droshky wheels . . . —Nathan Englander, “The Twenty-seventh Man,” 206

He breathed out a piercing, ammoniac smell . . . —Tobias Wolff, “Bullet in the Brain,” 223

She could smell the scent of the damp alder and cottonwood leaves . . . —Rick Bass, “The Hermit’s Story,” 229

The ice was contracting, groaning and cracking and squeaking up tighter, shrinking beneath the great cold—a concussive, grinding sound, as if giants were walking across the ice above—and it was this sound that awakened them. —ibid., 236

Specificity

By specificity, I mean details that refer to things by their specific names. These include brand names, species names, street names, etc. So don’t write that Bob drove down the street to the diner to buy a coffee. Write that Bob drove his ’78 Firebird down maple-lined 45th Street, all the way to The Flapjack (a diner known for its World Famous Flapjacks), to get his usual morning cup of Colombian drip with a splash of oat milk, the best coffee in town.

Specificity often seems obvious when you start noticing it. It is an effective way to add verisimilitude to your writing. (Henry James called the “solidity of specification” the “supreme virtue of a novel.”) And yet, specificity is something lacking in much of the work I edit.

Lucia Berlin starts with a plain declarative statement, and then brings it to life with specificity:

I learned to steal. Pomegranates and figs from blind old Guca’s yard, Blue Waltz perfume, Tangee lipstick from Kress’s, licorice and sodas from the Sunshine Grocery. Stores delivered then, and one day the Sunshine delivery boy was bringing groceries to both our houses just as Hope and I were getting home, eating banana Popsicles. —Lucia Berlin, “Silence,” 191–2

Andrew Holleran’s “The Penthouse” is filled with specificity. Here’s an example:

The penthouse he rented commands the north side of Abingdon Square, like some fortress castle, overlooking what was the heart of gay life in 1980, the Village. The previous owner had been a drug dealer named Norman Pearl—a man who would flood the terrace in winter and hold ice-skating parties where all the guests, on LSD, went whirling around to Donna Summer. —Andrew Holleran, “The Penthouse,” 265

I’ll just list examples of specificity from Charles Johnson’s “China” (from pages 73–76): “Lincoln Continental,” “Seattle Times,” “Coronet Theater,” “Mount Zion Baptist Church,” “Day of the Fair,” “Quo Vadis rows pomaded sweetly with the scent of Murray’s,” “Moody Bible Institute in Chicago,” “DeSoto,” etc.

I’m not saying one can’t go too far with specificity—if you’ve read early Modiano, or much of Davenport, or some of the Beat Poets, and others, you can get lost in the capitalizations—but for the most part, the more specificity you include in your writing, the better. It not only gives your readers actual things to experience; it also usually just sounds great. (And remember, so much of style is about the sound of your prose.)

Make Your Details Interesting, Amazing, Unique, Beautiful . . .

Details are not something to rush. The masters are rarely frivolous or thoughtless with their details. Rather, their details are often (as the heading title says) interesting, amazing, unique, beautiful. Often all of these at once. As I said above, coming up with details, like much else in developing style, is an art. While, indeed, the first step is often simply adding any details (the editor clears his throat), over time, try to make your details exceptional. Below are some examples:

Jones bought the dress in Mammoth Mart, an enormous store that has a large metal elephant dressed in overalls dancing on the roof. —Joy Williams, “Taking Care,” 65

They got into the old, forest green Buick LeSabre, Sheila behind the wheel and Douglas sunk down into the passenger seat that Sheila’s concentrated weight had through the years mashed so flat. —Everett, “The Fix,” 297

. . . here was a place where I had once stumbled and broken both of my index fingers; I was sitting on this bench when I first wedged my hand into Azera’s tight brassiere; there was the kiosk where I had bought my first pack of cigarettes (Chesterfields); that was the fence that had torn a scar into my thigh as I was jumping it; in that library I had checked out a copy of The Dwarf from a Forgotten Country for the first time; on this bridge Dedo had stood, watching the boys recover the ball, and one of those boys could have been me. —Aleksandar Hemon, “The Conductor,” 338–9

You might be wondering: How do I come up with something like a large, dancing metal elephant dressed in overalls? Not to get too far off-topic (this could be a whole separate essay), but I have two answers:

1. Do your field research: Get out, visit your scenes, take notes. I can usually tell when a writer is describing something, especially a scene, without having done their field research. It simply doesn’t feel real. The writer wasn’t there, which in turn makes it feel as though we, the readers, aren’t there. For more on this topic, I recommend you check out my field research essay.

2. Steal: I have pages and pages of notes of what I call “interesting things”: details for outside, details for inside, details for the sea, details for the city, character details, lists of strange objects, lists of furniture, lists of flowers and trees, and much, much more. Many, probably most, of these I pick up from my readings. (Did I mention that if you’re serious about writing, you better be serious about reading?) Of course, I’m not suggesting you plagiarize, but you can get tons of ideas from other writers. This is what we do; we’re all thieves, to an extent. (Recommendation: Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon). But change things. Instead of a large, dancing metal elephant dressed in overalls, write about a large metal orangutan dressed in a muumuu. Great!

Details for Showing (Rather than Telling)

I know this is kind of a tired topic. Every editor is always repeating the mantra: show don’t tell, show don’t tell. The idea, I fear, has taken on the stench of cliché. Kind of like starting sentences with coordinate conjunctions, or ending sentences with prepositions, or using to-be verbs—all things that are absolutely fine in many instances.

But, in general, I’d say that the more sophisticated and literary the writing, the less telling (and the more showing) I see. The “rule,” in other words, is there for a reason. It simply makes for better-sounding prose. Again, I could write a whole separate essay on showing vs. telling, but what I’m trying to say is this: when possible, it’s better to allow a reader to determine tone for themselves (from details, dialogue, actions, etc.) than it is to tell readers about the tone (by using tone words like happy, angry, etc.).

In the following examples, note how the writers convey (show) tone with details, and how they, to a large extent, avoid using tone words to tell their readers how to feel.

In this first example, in addition to tone, note the specificity (such as the names of the trees). I also want to stress how interesting Watkins’s details are (those last two sentences!). Remember, details are not just something to do; they are something to craft.

Late that spring a swarm of grasshoppers moved through Beatty on their way out to the alfalfa fields down south. They were thick and fierce, roaring like a thunderstorm in your head. The hoppers ate anything green. In two days they stripped the leaves from all the cottonwoods and willows in town, then they moved on to the juniper and pine, the cheat grass and bitter salt cedar. A swarm of them ate the wool right off of Abel Prince’s live sheep. Things got so bad that the trains out to the mines shut down for a week because the guts of the bugs made the rails too slippery. —Claire Vaye Watkins, “The Last Thing We Need,” 381 (the original is in italics)

Alice Walker’s “The Flowers” is a short piece filled with details of scene. Again, note how the writer conveys tone without explicitly conveying tone. Near the end of the piece the protagonist, Myop, “stepped smack into [the] eyes” of a dead man . . .

Myop gazed around the spot with interest. Very near where she’d stepped into the head was a wild pink rose. As she picked it to add to her bundle she noticed a raised mound, a ring, around the rose’s root. It was the rotted remains of a noose, a bit of shredding plowline, now blending benignly into the soil. Around an overhanging limb of a great spreading oak clung another piece. Frayed, rotted, bleached, and frazzled—barely there—but spinning restlessly in the breeze. Myop laid down her flowers. ¶ And the summer was over. —Alice Walker, “The Flowers,” 37 (the original is in italics)

Below, Lahiri captures a sense of loss through the simple description of “the long black hairs she shed on her pillow.” As usual, the details are also interesting and wonderful:

These days Shoba was always gone by the time Shukumar woke up. He would open his eyes and see the long black hairs she shed on her pillow and think of her, dressed, sipping her third cup of coffee already, in her office downtown, where she searched for typographical errors in textbooks and marked them, in a code she had once explained to him, with an assortment of colored pencils. —Lahiri, “A Temporary Matter,” 244–5

The following paragraph is absolutely drenched in tone, but there is not one tone word. It’s all details:

Whenever he called her now, which was about once a month since their breakup, she removed the microcassette from the answering machine and placed it on the altar she had erected on top of the dresser in her bedroom. It wasn’t anything too elaborate. There was a framed drawing that she had made of a cocoa-brown, dewy-eyed baby that could as easily have been a boy as a girl, the plump, fleshy cheeks resembling hers and the high forehead resembling his. Next to the plain wooden frame were a dozen now dried red roses that Eric had bought her as they left the clinic after the procedure. She had once read about a shrine to unborn children in Japan, where water was poured over altars of stone to honor them, so she had filled her favorite drinking glass with water and a pebble and had added that to her own shrine, along with a total of now seven microcassettes with messages from Eric, messages she had never returned. —Edwidge Danticat, “Water Child,” 313

Conclusion

So how to add details to your own writing? The first step is to simply be aware of the many ways writers use details. I suppose it goes with saying: I think starting with the stories mentioned above is a great first step. But go much further. If some of the writers in the Penguin book resonate with you, chase down more of their work. You might also try using ChatGPT or Google to find, for example, “writers in the style of Rick Bass.” I just tried this, and I got a great list.

Once you begin to acquire an ear for these details (by reading and reading and reading), then consider doing what I call a “details edit” with your own work. Pick a story or essay of yours, and slowly go through it, adding nothing but details. Don’t worry about plot or characters or sentences or anything else. Only details. Go too far. You can always delete later. Then, do a “specificity edit”: nothing but specific details—again, these are brand names, names of organisms, etc.

Finally, have you done your field research? (I often do field research after I’ve written a first draft—in fact, I wrote a whole novel this way.) Get a good notebook, list every (important) scene at the top of every third page or so, and start observing (and scribbling). Then, after you’ve filled these pages, sprinkle away in your text. Obviously, use only your best details (leave the unremarkable ones on the cutting room floor). There are few substitutes to field research when looking for details (but don’t forget about reading (and stealing)).

As I’ve said now a few times, adding details is an art. It is not easy, nor should it be. Details often separate merely good writing from great. It is not to be rushed. So tell me about the very small gnats on the table, that moved in little darting motions, and then would hold amazingly still, and when you came in close, they looked like small fluffy dogs with wings (which made them impossible to kill); tell me about a large sign on the diner wall that said “All I Need Today Is a Little Bit of Coffee and a Whole Lot of Jesus”; tell me about some rocks on the ground—schist? quartzite? dolomite?—that glowed like gems when you licked them. (I’m just stealing my own examples from a story I’m working on, set in the desert, where there were ample gnats, Jesus paraphernalia, and rocks (I’d done my research!).)

If you can excuse the cliché: it’s all in the details. For most writers, filling stories and essays with details is an essential part of developing style.

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