Years ago, I used to run multi-day memoir-writing workshops. I’m telling you, I totally miss those experiences. I often find myself sharing bits of those lessons with my private clients as they build out their manuscripts. Particularly when they’ve got a narrative-driven work and they can’t figure out why their stories are falling flat. I thought I’d share one of these segments with you today, with one caveat: different genres require varying degrees of detail. You can over-burden a how-to pretty quickly with this stuff. Hope you find it equally as helpful.
According to Aristotle, humans have 5 senses: sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing
As writers, we tend to focus on what we see—the table someone is sitting at, the dress someone is wearing, a smile, or frown…
We often, however, forget about the other senses.
But it’s this full picture that your readers want. They want to be in the moment with you, to experience it as you do (or as one of the other players does). They want to hear the clock ticking, smell the pork chop broiling, taste the sour milk left in the refrigerator just one day too long. They want to feel the brush of fur against their arm, particularly if they’re not expecting an animal in the room.
We want these things because that’s how the human brain is wired.
Years ago, The New York Times reported on a scientific study involving the human brain. The brain, they claimed, lights up in unexpected regions when one reads evocative detail. For instance, the words lavender and soap and cinnamon light up the very same regions that govern our sense of smell. It’s as if a reader experiences the written word as they would the physical world.
More importantly, readers respond even more dramatically to very specific details.
Consider your own response to these two sentences.
- He walked in and noticed that his mother was cooking dinner.
- He walked in and noticed the familiar scent of onions. He didn’t have to see them to know they were crispy, almost burnt, with just the smallest hint of garlic, his mother’s trade secret.
Or this.
- She got in the car and drove off.
- She got in the 79’ Pinto hatchback, a set of fuzzy dice dangling from the mirror, and drove off.
Each of us carries within us an encyclopedia of associations.
When I smell lilacs, for instance, I’m immediately transported to 1972, sitting in my great-grandmother’s garden in rural North Dakota. This is a happy memory.
Funny, when I read the word flower, however, nothing comes.
When I hear a clock ticking, I feel nervous, like I’m going to be late, and I hate to be late. The whole world comes to an end when I’m late.
When I feel a piece of chalk in my hand, I’m reminded of the cool plaster pillars that held up my apartment in Shiraz, Iran. The color—pale green. The tendency to look chewed up because my baby boy was always gnawing on them.
When I taste lemon, I think of the lemonade I tried to sell door-to-door as a kid, the kind no one would buy because they could see the dirt I threw into it, thinking I was funny.
So when you offer up specifics, carefully selected details, you’re allowing others to experience not just their own world, but also the world that you inhabit.
None of us sees the world in the same way.
You are unique. Each of us is unique. We do not observe the same things.
Each writer observes very different things. The feel of starched sheets, the sound of birds, the smell of cleaning fluid.
When you pick up a book, notice what that writer chooses to expand on, and what he or she leaves plain and unadorned.
Why has the author expanded those details, and not the others? Think about it. How would the piece change if the author focused on other details, expanded on other things?
As writers, we often take our view of the world for granted. We assume others notice the leathery texture of the teacher’s hands; the smell of pot when you come around the corner; the way the shadow falls on the floor, making the magazine rack look like a child with no head.
But it’s our job to try to capture that. To try to put words to what we observe.
Great if you’re writing fiction, you’re no doubt thinking. But these kinds of details are important in memoir, too, in story overall. These details will help you avoid writing something that reads like a textbook. Textbooks give us just the facts.
I’m going to give you a very specific example.
Let’s say you’re describing one of your characters. In a paragraph or two I want a lot of details so I can imagine these individuals.
To relate to them, to feel for them, I’ll want to see them, hear them, and get a good read on their emotional state and how they deal with the world. I’ll want to know how old they are, if they twiddle their fingers when they talk, if they hesitate before they start a sentence, if they make weird breathy noises on the phone, if they smell like cheap cologne.
When you’re reading, think about those details. Write them down.
The details we choose to describe need to serve a bigger purpose. You’re not dropping them in to fill up the page.
And that statement above is really important. It’s worth the price of admission.
Let me give you an example of precisely what I mean.
1. Abby came in and sat on the big leather couch next to the potted fern. The green, curly fronds—wispy like cattails– brushed her upturned nose, and she sneezed, loud, like a 300-pound wrestler.
Now this.
2. Abby came in. Brushing her graying hair back with one hand, she couldn’t decide where to sit. Considering the big leather couch, the antique cane chair, and the oversized beanbag in the corner, she perched instead on the edge of the desk. Her watch beeped, then the cellphone in her purse. She hid her offending wrist, a thin slice of bone, behind her back and kicked her expensive bag under the desk. Selecting a perfume this morning had apparently given her trouble because she smelled of Gardenias and orange blossoms.
The first example tells us nothing about Abby’s character. And unless you’re dealing with allergy issues, we don’t really care how she sneezes.
The second example shows us just how indecisive Abby is. I can peg her age and her shape, and I can already guess her problems. I have a feel for how this woman interacts with the world. And I feel grounded. Ready to hear what’s going on.
So how do we writers figure out what it is that we notice? How do we draw out the interesting details we absolutely take for granted?
Well, you just start paying attention and taking notes. Wish it were more complicated than that.
