Concrete Details
Now that you’re ready to experiment with the magic of concrete details,
the following five steps will help you along your way to mastery.
Would you say you had a plethora of details?
A few concrete details added to an otherwise abstract paper can make
the world of difference. Descriptive passages, however, require many
concretes for best effect. Most students first learning concrete details add
a handful, see the improvement, and call it good when adding three to five
times as many would have made another world of improvement.
Before writing your story (or after writing a draft), decide which objects
deserve the most description. Ask yourself these questions:
» Which objects play the biggest parts in the story?
» Which objects best create a visualization of the entire setting?
» Which objects are the most interesting?
» Don’t forget to include people and their possessions like clothes, cars,
etc.
Examples: read through these lists of details related to these scenes:
Movie theater: screen, carpeted, striped walls, speakers, exit signs,
rows of seats, cushions, cup holders, cement floors, sticky shoes, popcorn
and jelly beans, aisles, aisle lights, crying babies, ringing cell phones,
people bumping your seat from behind, tall people with big hair, cuddly
couples, your date’s hand on the armrest between you, his/her fingers,
your sweaty palms and rapid heartbeat, usher, projection room, etc.
Surfing: 6’ wave, tube, surfboard, design, wax, rash guard, your feet,
legs, arms, hands, etc., water dripping through your hair and running
across your face, breeze, sounds, smells, salt water in your mouth, and the
long, dark, oblong shadow swimming through the wave toward you.
Exercise 1: create a list of at least twenty objects for half of the following
scenes (take your pick). If you get stuck, imagine you’re looking at a
picture of the scene. Start in one corner and scan across visually.
» Reading in the park.
7: Show not Tell 103
Practice
» Diving into a swimming pool.
» Sitting in class.
» Sunday dinner at grandma’s.
» Watching a video with friends.
» Making a proper lane change on the highway.
» Tectonic plates sliding along the San Andreas Fault.
» The Big Boom theory.
» The Theory of Relativity.