Let’s Be Real: How to get specific in your writing

For those of you who have kids, you can usually tell when they’re lying, right? They may be telling a partial truth, but at the core, it’s not the whole truth. How do you know?

They usually provide less detail.

You ask, “Did you clean the bathroom?”

They say, “Yes.” (Fewer words no one has uttered.)

You follow up with, “When?”

They might say, “This morning.”

You probe deeper: “Did you get the shower, too?”

“What?” (Stall Tactics 101 here.)

“Did you clean the grout and tiles in the shower — spray first and then wipe it down?”

“Oh, yeah.”

You see my point. The fewer details you receive, the less likely you are to believe the statements being made.

It’s the same with writing. The less “real” we are, the less “believable” our characters’ choices, thoughts, and decisions are.

So let’s look at three ways to add specifics to your writing.

In the conversation

As an exercise, spend an hour or two for the next week just listening to other people’s conversations. If you can do it discreetly, take notes. What you’ll find is that people don’t talk the way they write.

Rarely do we speak in fully-formed, complete sentences.

We often say the same thing in a different way — multiple times — as we’re trying to make our point.

And those choice words change with emotion. They may be spoken gruffly or with a specific type of body language that slices the room into tiny air particles.

So when you’re writing conversations between characters, don’t feel the need to be grammatically correct all the time. Develop a character’s voice; how does the bully character sound different from his friend, Mr. Nice Guy?

If necessary, add in a sprinkle of description about how the conversation was spoken. But instead of “he voiced angrily,” try to show the anger with something he did. Maybe he didn’t stomp out of the room (everyone does that), but instead, he pinched the exterior of his lip in response to a friend’s intrusive question. He didn’t even have to reply. We know he is deliberating and a little peeved because of that one description.

In conversations, we don’t always SAY what we mean. But most of us have a hard time not disclosing what we mean by what we SHOW. Our body language, our eye contact, our fidgety tendencies, our avoidance.

In the description

Don’t tell me about a boat. Tell me about the Bowrider and its massive seating capacity. It doesn’t just ride well; it glides across the surface of Lake Skinner like it owns the place and wants you to know it.

Equally as irritating as being vague, don’t squeak out a detail in every. last. sentence. I don’t need to read a 20-word sentence over and over. Getting specific will require us longwinded wordsmiths (yes, it’s a problem here too) to quit peddling whatever we have on hand in the word department. Just as a shop owner whittles the store’s inventory to only the best-selling merchandise, we need to pair down how we describe a scene with only our most vivid words. It may very well be an awesome vocabulary word, but if I can’t “see” it in my mind, you may lose me.

In the props department

When my husband watches a movie, he has his eye trained on the set director. Oh, what, you don’t see those guys in the back? The guys that are sliding between scenes shuffling around the cardigan, transporting it from the back of the rocker to the ottoman?

He watches for mistakes that weren’t caught in the editing process when a set director forgot to wrinkle a shirt that should have been wrinkled or put a Coke can back where it was in the previous scene (movie buffs know that scenes are filmed out of order). My husband’s most recent “catch” was when a character on our favorite show, “Ted Lasso,” crashed her bike, but miraculously, her phone lay in the street without a scratch on it.

When we’re placing props, they should be used sparingly. But they will also need to be used strategically. If we have a cell phone in a crash scene that gets left behind, tell me what it would genuinely look like after that crash. Don’t just tell me that the cell phone was left on the road. Was it an iPhone 6 scratched up in tiny strokes? Or was it a Samsung Galaxy Gala inscribed with flashes of etchings like a Maris painting?

Details are what make our works step out from behind the secret shadows and be seen. We feel the emotions, we “get” the conversation, and we relate to the characters. Or at the very least, we either admire or despise them.

Keep up the great work, writers — you’ve got this!