What Do You Mean By "Use Concrete Details?"

A reminder to describe the things you're writing about.

When you’re writing, in any genre, describe a thing you’re talking about. Allow the reader to see in her mind what you see in your mind.

Work in concreteness (roses), not abstraction (love). Description and details—of scenery, of people, of props, of the built environment, of the landscape—labor night and day on your behalf. Let description do its job.

I have heard said, of sketching: The better you see, the better you draw. And the better you draw, the better you see. The same is true in writing. The better you see, the better you write, and vice versa. As Terry McDonell told NPR many years ago, "I think that what distinguishes the best writers is voice….(The writers I worked with) were completely different voices, but they were immersive, and they paid very close attention to detail so that you saw exactly what they were writing about."

He went on, "You never saw the word 'amazing' or 'unbelievable.' You saw specifics."

In her essay “Writing Short Stories," Flannery O'Connor says, "Fiction operates through the senses" and

"The first and most obvious characteristic of fiction is that it deals with reality through what can be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, and touched."

Show, Don’t Tell

Beginning writers often forget descriptions. The writer knows what a certain house looks like, so assumes everybody knows. When I write about my husband Raven, I imagine him. In writing I drop his name everywhere, assuming everybody knows how Raven looks, how wolfishly green his eyes are and how he wears his hair long and wild. But you probably don't.

Readers like to know what nouns—especially persons—look like. So use more concrete details.

Readers Remember Concrete Details

Often in class I will ask a writer to read something aloud. Afterward I query the listeners, What do you remember from that piece? I ask such a question so the writer can learn what sticks in a reader's mind. Nine times out of ten the listeners remember visuals, objects they were able to imagine, thus see—a leafless tree along a shallow brown river, a door falling off a red car, a hemp pull cord for a toilet in a cruise ship cabin. They don't remember the high-falutin' reflections. Nope, they don’t. Sorry.

The test, then, for effective details is, Are they memorable? Did you see them and thus recall them so that the reader likewise can see them?

You Can Be Trained

And I want to add more more piece of information. Description is a matter of training. I force myself, sometimes late in the writing process, to add lines of description. "Raven's a tall, thin guy with a head shaped like Adonis who wears a shirt with holes in it when he's painting." So, go back through your writing during a revision and make sure that you have described all the things that I as your reader may actually and truly want to visualize.