Tips on adding detail?

[cydare]

When I was younger I used to write with excessive detail, turning everything I touched purple. I was on a definite path of improvement and reached a better balance before some troubles stopped me from writing for a few years years.

Fast forward to this year when I've picked up the craft again. My current problem seems to be that my writing is too sparse. I'm having trouble with detail in all sorts of places - weaving in character descriptions, bits and pieces of the setting, and details in thought and emotion. I feel that it's difficult to connect to the story and characters because of this, though I'm not quite sure how to fix it.

Does anyone have any tips?

 

[Saigonnus]

For me, I tend to use the circumstances of the story to give description. If the character is looking down into a pool of water or out a window, they might see a bit of their own reflection, a good time to give a bit. As for environment, a little goes a long way, at least I think so. Like the other, use the circumstances of the story.

His boots click on the stone floor as he crosses to the window and looks out. Beyond the shadowy reflection of his dark eyes and angular face, he sees a cloaked woman just dismounting from her speckled mare. From her pale hair blowing in the gale, he figures it must be Kethri, back from Parlanthe. She is early.

Don't know if this helps, but it is how I do things.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[spectre]

can u give an example? something brief, or long but a real example.

Sent from my Alcatel_4060O using Tapatalk

 

[cydare]

Most of my writing is on a computer I currently do not have access to, but I can show you two pieces of my current WIP for now? They're as telling as my other work, I'm sorry.

The first one is what I mean to be the story's start. I've been working on fixing it for quite some tome now, so I rather like it. It's closer to where I want to be. I'd still like to find a way to add more details in terms of internal monologue/thoughts/feelings and such, to show how the main character experiences the world.

The second is another attempt to create a similar scene. Any details there seem bland to me, and lack flow.

---------------
I

Nailus, satrap of Medea and lord of Eyrad’s borderlands, insisted on gifting Thaddeus with names.

They came from different cultures, with different meanings, and various titles attached at the ends. Once taken, a name was quickly discarded. The satrap treated them like underthings which needed a thorough scrub before they could be used again.

Thaddeus had tried to politely decline on more than one occasion. He already had a name. His true passion lay in collecting faces. Perhaps his Eminence could consent to give him some those instead?

It was not to be. The satrap left him with a collection of monikers so vast, he could rename the entire Eyridian empire.

“You cannot use Thaddeus in public,” Nailus had said. “You were not blessed at birth like our children. What if a demon were to hear you? Or, gods forbid, one of the fair folk?”

Thaddeus had shrugged, remembering the scrape of nails against his skin and blood-drenched fingers knotted in his hair. It had happened before. Neither group held power over him.

“A human then, who recognises you. Thaddeus is a common name, but you need not tempt the fates by giving it away.”

“I do not give it away,” Thaddeus had explained. “It is mine.”

The satrap had lowered his face into his hands then, and remained thus until Thaddeus kissed his wrinkled cheek and relented once more.

Today, he was Varesh. It was a clunky name, pinned in ink upon a document he carried folded in his pack. Thaddeus paired it with a different face, gaunt, with a beak of a nose, and wore both in the Brass Desert as he waited for his charges to arrive.

They flowed from the south like a river, watering the sands with a procession of life the sun had yet to scorch dry.

Three dozen caravan camels. Twenty-one humans. Thaddeus could taste them before he could see them, the tang of vivacity coating the roof of his mouth. They were the only edible thing for miles around, save for the vulture which traced his footsteps and the deep lizards beneath the dunes.

Thaddeus ran a tongue over his bottom teeth. Birds and reptiles shouldn’t count. Neither should camels for that matter, grinning, spitting monsters they were. People were decidedly more succulent, if off-limits for this job.

Despite this, or perhaps because it, he smiled at their approach, taking care to keep Varesh’s lips tight and his own teeth tucked firmly behind them. When a woman broke away from the group, her pale robes pinned with the golden knot common to caravan leaders, Thaddeus fell to one knee before her. It was an unnecessary courtesy, demanded only by high lords and ladies from their subjects. Still, he took her offered hand and brought it to his mouth.

One small taste couldn’t hurt.

--------------
II

Thaddeus brushed his clothes free of wrinkles smoothed the lines of his face. Cargo this precious was to be taxed and protected by the best. Its merchants, the satrap had warned, were to be kept alive. As the caravan leader dismounted, making her way towards him, he was positively beaming.

The leader was tall, with a strong build evident even beneath the cloth which shrouded her from head to toe. On either of her sides stood two men, their hands casually groping along the the inner folds of their robes for what Thaddeus could only imagine was a weapon.

No.

Thaddeus winked at the one to his left and made an evocative gesture with his hands. A weapon simply seemed most likely.

The man’s eyes widened then narrowed into slits. He whipped out a small pistol bow and pointed it at Thaddeus’ chest.

“Down, Het,” the caravan leader said, placing a hand on her subordinate’s arm. “We don’t shoot strangers before introductions, amorous though they may be.”

The visible skin around the man’s hazel eyes flushed a deep crimson. He lowered his weapon but kept it out and loaded, an innuendo away from firing.

“Forgive my guards. They’re a little overeager.” The leader glanced down at Thaddeus’ innocent expression. “And it seems that so are you. ”

“Eager to serve, my lady.”

“Yes?”

Thaddeus took the woman’s words as his cue. He bent forward in a bow and dropped to one knee before the company. Taking the leader’s hand in his own, he touched his lips to her knuckles. From beneath his lashes, he could see Het squeeze his weapon with both hands.

“What do you do to strangers after introductions?” Thaddeus asked, standing at the caravan leader’s beckons.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On how positive an impression they make on us.” The woman pulled off the scarf which kept her face from burning, revealing a smile. “I am Samira, leader of this caravan. The sun shines upon our meeting.”

“Varesh, emissary of Medea, and your servant in travels,” answered Thaddeus. “And if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather have a cloud.”

“Some rain to go with that? Should I ask the skies to thunder?”

“Just a wisp of shade. Rain would spoil your cargo.” Thaddeus met her eyes. “Bells and balls, Samira.”

The caravan leader laughed. She had a voice like a warhorn which echoed throgh the desert and shook her like a tide. Behind her, the two guards began to advance until she waved them back for a second time. “Is that how you learned the password?”

 

[Chessie]

So that's a new one: the purple touch. Heh.

Hm...advice on giving detail. I was thinking of this very subject last night, actually. I think a lot of this has to do with your style and voice. If you are writing sparse but recognize more detail is needed, then take a step back and re-read what you just wrote. Take a mental note as you're reading of where detail can be added in and layer it that way. So instead of focusing too hard on getting the right amount of detail in as you're narrating, do it afterwards by pausing the writing, adding in some description, then moving on. Maybe give that a try and see if it helps any?

 

[Chessie]

Lol I've returned for a last thought. I'm currently writing 2 books (one is a redraft) and finished one in November. A pattern with all 3 of these stories is that when it comes to describing character, I've been placing personality ahead of physical descriptions. It didn't dawn on me until yesterday when I was driving down the road (when I do some serious thinking haha), the realization being that as a person, typically what I notice first about people is their personalities.

Is my first interaction with them funny like with a joke inserted in there somewhere? Are they a jerk? Are they gentle? What are they like? And then I notice their physical features. Now, I'm very very short so if a person is hella tall then I'll notice them towering over me right away. Or if they're pregnant. So there are some obvious things but for the most part, physical traits come second. How do you first notice people? Can you tie character descriptions to your natural way of observing the world? Yes, you can.

 

[spectre]

I don't see any immediate description lulls. The only thing I note is a lack of placing the setting, giving some kind of emphasis on where they are and allowing the environment a place as a character for the others to interact with but it isn't particularly removing at this point in the story. I would like to read the rest myself, keep in mind simplicity is it's own kind of description. It's blunt. Places for emphasis would be emotion and action. I like what you've written.

Sent from my Alcatel_4060O using Tapatalk

 

[Incanus]

Looking at the opening lines of the first sample, I'd say that it could be improved by making this into a scene, something happening right now, and in a specific place.

As it is, the use of past perfect verbs ("had") makes this intro less immediate. And there is no setting to speak of. Are they in a room in a palace, or taking a walk through a garden, or on the road somewhere?

One way to change this into something happening as we observe it, would be to start off with the satrap, in dialogue, suggesting a single name. Then, you could fill in the idea that this is just the latest of a long list of names. Save the "had" stuff for a little later. Start with something more visceral.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now. Hope that helps a little.

 

[Nimue]

I do like those passages, as scenes, but it's true that they're not particularly evocative, and I didn't really place them in a setting, mentally. It could simply be your style, a sort of flitting, character-interior-gazing treatment. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Maybe it works for this POV character, who doesn't notice the details of faces or landscapes.

But if you're not hitting something you want to, that's something else. I'm not sure how to give advice on this one, but I might suggest stopping for a moment at the beginning of a scene and envisioning it. What does the sunlight look like, this time of day? Are there hills or towers or strong features of the landscape nearby? (Basically, a color palette and silhouette for the scene.) I don't know if I do this in that many steps, but something like that occurs as I visualize it.

From there the details fill in. As a personal thing, I like to make sure I focus on light and shadow as well as color, on heat and cold, ambient sounds, odors in the air, the texture underfoot or under fingers. As an artist, too, I imagine you have faces in mind when writing! Try to pick out one or two strong features of those faces. As a recovering over-describer (okay, let's be honest, still-suffering) I find what irks me most is when I fill in very generic details--so I avoid things like detailing eye color or multiple adjectives of hair color or anything more than a brief glimpse of clothing, and instead focus on a few sharp details that reveal something about the character: personality, status, how people perceive them.

 

[Nimue]

Thinking more about this (I'm always about description, it's slightly ridiculous), I want to say that the aim of describing the setting for me is all about mood and atmosphere. Like the way movies are staged. This doesn't equate to anything as simplistic as "this character is sad, so it's raining". Not about a top-down authorial imprint on the world (at least, not one that obvious). You'll be better able to get away with something subtle and plausible--little touches of cold or heat, light or dark, like I mentioned above. But also, how the POV character feels about the place and the people they're faced with is going to affect the impressions that he or she has. If they're happy, they'll be open, noticing all sorts of details, characterizing colors or scents in positive ways. If they're despairing, they might think of the setting in dim, staccato observations. If they're thoughtful or entranced, you can spiral into the intricacy of something around them, be it sun through the leaves or fabric or a lover's face. Are they anxious or anticipating something? They'll be keenly aware of any sign or symptom of that thing.

I actually have a (not great, rough-draft) example of this kind of thing, that just occurred to me. I've strung together the bits of scene description.

This is from the beginning of the chapter, when the POV character is dreading what she has to do (revisit a ruined castle where she was held captive):

The sea breeze hit her like a wave as the raw line of the coast pulled nearer, as though the white fingers of the sea slowly washed over the earth. And on that dull blue horizon lay a shadow: crooked, black, and bare in the sun. ... She hit the pebbly beach not with her feet but with her knees, gasping in lungfuls of the cold, brine-soaked air. ... In that moment she accepted that there was nothing else she could do but wait, and she exhaled. The grey, restless waves crashed and their shattered waters rolled up over the beach, subsiding slowly. The tips of her boots sank into the wet sand. Strange, that here she could breathe so easily, but there was something in the stillness, the murmur of the waves, the lonely calls of the terns on the rocks. A moment of peace between fear and dread.

This next part is towards the end of the chapter, after she's been through the ruins, accomplished what she needed to (and essentially had a panic attack):

As she looked around, the sun winked at her through the outer gateway. Glinting on the waves of the sea, tantalizingly close. ... and then all the ruins were behind her, every stone, and only the broad open beach was ahead, and the beautiful rolling sea. The sun was beginning to tint the clouds with amber warmth as it fell, over the cliffs and the grey-green hills of the coast of Tirannon, the land that she had left behind and found her way back to. All of it was hers again. ... The wind lifted her cloak and illuminated the tears on her face with cold, and she would have embraced it if she could.

Ohhkay, I'm definitely still purple, can't wash that out. But this is the idea...you know, if you dialed it down a bit.

 

[Penpilot]

Nailus, satrap of Medea and lord of Eyrad’s borderlands, insisted on gifting Thaddeus with names.

They came from different cultures, with different meanings, and various titles attached at the ends. Once taken, a name was quickly discarded. The satrap treated them like underthings which needed a thorough scrub before they could be used again.

Thaddeus had tried to politely decline on more than one occasion. He already had a name. His true passion lay in collecting faces. Perhaps his Eminence could consent to give him some those instead?

It was not to be. The satrap left him with a collection of monikers so vast, he could rename the entire Eyridian empire.

“You cannot use Thaddeus in public,” Nailus had said. “You were not blessed at birth like our children. What if a demon were to hear you? Or, gods forbid, one of the fair folk?”

As I read your excerpts, it's not the description that's missing. For me, I'm not getting a sense of the character's personality. To me that's what's missing. I'm being told how the POV character feels on the surface level, but not much more. So things feel like I'm slightly removed from the story, like seeing it from behind a window.

The quoted bit above reminded me of something similar I wrote for an Iron Pen challenge. Here's a small quote. Notice there's a little more personality to the delivery, which I think brings the reader closer in. Not to say this is great piece of writing, but it illustrates my point.

“May I enter, Lord—?”

“Don’t call me that. I’m no more a Lord than the shit I took last night.” Bloody titles—required like tears at a funeral. You weren’t deemed to be truly grieving until you shed one. Just as you weren’t worthy to serve the King’s court until burdened with title.

As for how to address this, really get into a character's head, and see and describe things through their eyes.

How things are revealed to the reader depends on the POV character. All things are filtered through them and reveal personality and intentions.

A Knight walks into a bar--not the start of a joke--what they notice, and what words they use to describe things will be different from what a thief would use.

A Knight may take note of how many exits there are, how people are armed, and may use nouns such as citizens, ladies, kind sirs, to describe people

A thief may take note of exits and how people are armed too, but they may also take note of how drunk people are and how heavy their purses look. They may use nouns like marks, wenches, and bastards.

 

[FifthView]

I think Penpilot and Nimue have brought up some great points to consider while adding detail. POV personality and utilizing all the senses.

The passages read fairly well for me as-is, and the only thing I somewhat noticed concerns the way you have sometimes used an abstract summarization when you could have used a more concrete approach:

Thaddeus could taste them before he could see them, the tang of vivacity coating the roof of his mouth.

I don't really know what "tang of vivacity" means. What is the tang of vivacity? What is that taste? This might be an opportunity to reveal something more about Thaddeus' history or habit of experiencing the world. Rather than vivacity, maybe it's a blend of flavors a reader would recognize. Alternatively, maybe he'd naturally make a comparison with previous....meals, and so reveal more about himself; i.e., specifics that are more vivid. ("They had the flavor of street urchins brawling over the outcome of a game of marbles.")

They were the only edible thing for miles around, save for the vulture which traced his footsteps and the deep lizards beneath the dunes.

Thaddeus ran a tongue over his bottom teeth. Birds and reptiles shouldn’t count. Neither should camels for that matter, grinning, spitting monsters they were. People were decidedly more succulent, if off-limits for this job.

Here, "edible" and "succulent" are abstract, also. On the one hand, this section doesn't really bother me much, because it gives the sense that Thaddeus has a tendency to analyze in an abstract manner. Maybe that's entirely appropriate. But there might be a chance to carry through on a more vivid description (i.e. if you went a different route in the sentence preceding these re: my first point above.)

Also, you are talking about tastes in making your comparisons, but his mind leaps to a visual image of "grinning, spitting monsters they were" as an explanation of why camels....aren't savory. So there's this disjunction, and I wonder if sticking to a consideration of the one sense, taste, and perhaps incorporating smell would work better.

Thaddeus winked at the one to his left and made an evocative gesture with his hands.

I can perhaps guess what that gesture was, but it's unclear to me. Again, it is an abstract summary of what he did. (This particular line isn't troublesome for me, but I wonder if maybe it's a missed opportunity. I include it only because it fits into that tendency for abstract summary.)

He lowered his weapon but kept it out and loaded, an innuendo away from firing.

Maybe it's the part above that makes this line so troublesome for me when I get here. "An innuendo away from firing" is abstract, vague—and, ambiguous, because I think innuendo is referencing that "evocative gesture" mentioned earlier but on the other hand maybe the guard is somehow physically signalling that he's still on the edge of firing. I.e., he's the one giving some kind of innuendo in his physical behavior.

So I'm not really sure how big a deal all of the above is for your two passages, and the voice you are using may be exactly what you want to convey for Thaddeus. There is a feel of being detached, analytical. As I said, they read fairly well for me as-is. I do wonder if sticking to more concrete descriptions of things might make the details that you have provided more vivid. (Or even using descriptions more tinted by the POV personality and history, as in the case of that quick example I gave concerning urchins and marbles, heh.)

 

[cydare]

Thank you so much for all the responses! You've brought up points I hadn't thought of before, and suggestions on how to work through the problem through different angles than the ones I was trying. I'll be keeping all of this in mind as I try to find the voice I want and continue with my writing! This was incredibly helpful.

 

[SergeiMeranov]

I'm new so probably read everyone else and if you're still looking for more then come back to my suggestion. I honestly forgot where I read it but it was in a book about writing and the passage was discussing description as a general matter. It pointed out that a problem new writers tend to face is they will either be sparse or overly descriptive. The book suggested a good exercise to help work through this until you find your own balance is to use the age old advice of imagining the description of something using the five senses, i.e. how does it look, what would you hear, or taste, etc., and then pick two of them.

For example, instead of describing a character by saying they're old. You'd say they have long, almost brittle hair and a deeply creased face.

Or instead of saying they were devilishly handsome with long, curly brown hair, deep pools of mahogany brown eyes, and skin the color of polished ivory with a voice that sounded like a lilting harp being plucked. You'd just say "He was devilishly handsome with his curly brown hair and lilting, melodic voice.

Those are examples I've created so they may be poor examples, but that was the crux of it. Take your five senses and figure out what each one would tell you about a scenario, person, or thing you want to describe and then pick two of them to both make sure detail is present but prevent yourself from going overboard.