Should I add more detail to my story, or just leave it vague and add it all in later?

There is a huge difference between plot and story. A plot is a sequence of events that happened for a reason. A plot requires only technical detail.

A story is an experience. It is the observation of or an entry into the live of, a particular person in a particularly place and time, who is experiencing the events of the plot.

A plot can be received on a purely intellectual level. Who was the murderer? It was the man with the brown shoes.

A story is received viscerally. It is received by the same set of senses that real life is received by (thought through a different sensory input, obviously). We remember its scenes, not merely (or not only) its words. Thus we have a memory of Rivendell or the Shire or Mordor in our heads that is a visual and auditory and olfactory memory, as if we had actually visited these places. (Peter Jackson obviously received a very different memory of these places than I did!)

Creating a story as a visceral experience obviously requires more detail than the simple recounting of a plot. On the other hand, it does not require that you relate every detail that goes into the reader's visceral experience and ends up in their sense memory of the event. Rather, you rely on what is called the "telling detail", the few scraps of imagery that irresistibly pull a much more complete picture into the reader's head.

This when Prospero says:

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples

We get a picture in our heads that is much more complex, full of many more details, than anything that is explicit in the scene. "cloud-capp'd" is the telling detail that evokes an image in the mind that pulls all the rest in with it.

This is whe whole art of detail, to find the telling detail that pulls a whole world of detail in its wake.

If you find that you are leaving out most of the detail, it may well be that on first draft you are really just relating the plot. That may work as a writing technique, but on second draft, you are going to have to tell the story, and that is going to require more than just filling in some more details. Creating an experience for the reader is very much about selection of scenes and about emphasis. It is about when to illustrate in detail and when to bridge. But it is also, certainly, about the telling details that transform the reception of words into the reception of images.

The right selection of scenes and the use of telling detail will never be boring to the reader because it is immersing them in the experience. Some experience will require more details than other to create. Don't worry, therefore, whether you have too much detail. Worry about whether you have the telling details. And when you find the telling details, relate those, and then let them do their work of pulling in the rest of the scene. Don't go on with additional detail that may only interfere with the image that the reader is forming based on the telling detail.

posted over 7 years ago

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Mark Baker‭

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