How To Harness the Creativity of Details
How To Harness the Creativity of Details
by Philip Martin
Great Lakes Literary, LLC

Descriptive details about places, characters, and other story elements are essential tools for good writing. Well-chosen details appeal not only to your final readers but also to those crucial gatekeepers: agents and acquisitions editors.

Do your stories lack engaging details? Or have too many? How do you go about creating the most effective descriptive passages to hook your readers?

Let’s create an example from my own head.

When your hero Zoltan sits down at a tavern, is it at just “a table”? Or is it “. . . at a small wooden table tucked into a corner. He sat with his back to the far wall, and instinctively checked for ways in and out of the small room. None but the front door, about eight paces away, maybe fewer. He kept his hands under the table. By flickering candlelight, he saw the polished surface was marred with graffiti, inscribed with knife blades over many years. Some of the words were misspelled, scratched by oafs with dull blades. Others had fine calligraphy, their edges sharp and confident. He noted one brief inscription. Grom was here. It looked recent. Zoltan touched his pants leg at the boot. His own knife was there. But he didn’t intend to leave a mark of his own. There wasn’t time.”

As we look at the process of writing, it turns out that details are not just a result of creativity. They are also a source of it. How so?

First, as I thought specifically about a wooden table and what might make it interesting, it caused synapses to fire in my brain. I recalled the heavy oak study tables of my high school days with graffiti going back across decades of bored or mischievous scholars. That led me to think about what such carvings might reveal or contribute to a story. How would the hero react to seeing those carvings? Why does he carry a knife? Why doesn’t he have time? Will he meet someone who has sat at the same table?

So the scene began to build by a process of thinking about details. I won’t say the scene is a masterpiece. But it made me think about more than just a generic table. The creative juices began to flow. Such details might also cause more interest to grow likewise in a reader.

The trick is to limit the details. Make them specific, but cut them short. Leave us believing that you could have described endless facets of that table or room. But you picked only a few. The reader begins to wonder . . . why is this or that detail relevant? Why did the author take time to described the graffiti, that knife in the boot, the distance to the door? This is the intrigue of selected details.

In your imagination (or direct observation for nonfiction), you will encounter many possible details. Learn to choose a few that ideally have three aspects: they are specific, they are intriguing, and they contribute something to your story’s development.

Here, from a Japanese-influenced fantasy novel, Grass for his Pillow (2003, Book 2 in a trilogy), is a description of springtime coming to a monks’ temple called Terayama. Author Liam Hearn offers details that serve several purposes. First, their specificity makes us convinced that this is a “real” place and helps us place ourselves there in our mind’s eye. Second, the details have intriguing features, serving up an exotic setting that gives the book a distinct flavor. Finally, they contribute something to the story. (Note also his alternating short and long sentences, and the sequences of three things: three kinds of frogs, of plants, of birds.)

The air was full of the sounds of spring. The willows put on their gold-green fronds. Swallows darted over the flooded fields and crafted their nests under the eaves of the temple buildings. Every night the noise of frogs grew louder, the loud call of the rain frog, the clacking rhythm of the tree frog, and the sweet tinkling of the little bell frog. Flowers bloomed in a riot along the dikes: bitter cress, buttercups, and bright pink vetch. Herons, ibis, and cranes returned to the rivers and the pools.

This fulfill my three tests. It develops a sense of specific reality. Also, the imagery creates interest: I find myself oddly intrigued by the types of frogs. And it contributes to the story (in more than one way). Swallows (and spring) go about their business, ignoring the human story. This reflects a core element of this novel, as the protagonist (Takeo) is often swept along by great forces not in his control. This description also sets a mood of imminent change, of swelling potential, which mirrors this transition point in the story. Takeo has taken refuge in the monastery for the winter to hide from enemies, regain strength, and consider his next move. It is a place of suspended animation, of seeking wisdom about what he should do. The brief description of a specific spring foreshadows that now he is ready to break out into greater action. The imagery is sharp, significant, yet held in check, full of anticipation.

Another excellent example is the opening of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937).

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats – the hobbit was fond of visitors.

The passage is specific and therefore convincing (the green door has a brass knob in the exact middle; it sounds like a “real” place to me). It is selective in what it describes: the comfort of the home (and the invisible desire of the hobbit, not yet met, to keep it well polished and cozy). This sets up the story about to be launched: the arrival of visitors – very odd, demanding ones (an old magician named Gandalf and a host of dwarves) who will disrupt the poor hobbit’s comfort and send him off on a life-altering journey.

The techniques are applicable to fiction and nonfiction stories alike:

* Consider the many details of a scene. Use all your senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, hearing.
* Be specific. All hobbit doors or springtimes or tavern tables are not the same. (Personally, as an editor, I’m generally happy with simple words, such as a green or blue door. Other editors might prefer aquamarine or cerulean. Puce? I have no clue what color that is, I admit. But you can use fancy terms if they fit and you think your reader will enjoy them.)
* Be interesting. Select just a few details to create the greatest effect. After considering details about a door set in a hillside, for instance, which might be the most curious or intriguing? How can those details encourage interest in the scene or the place or characters? Why is the door handle set in the middle? That’s a bit odd (but fits some hobbity sense of order, perhaps?)
* Be relevant. Consider how such details might reflect or help build the greater story at hand. What is unfolding? or has recently? or will soon? that your details can hint at (without being too obvious about it).

An Exercise

Take a passage in your own writing with a good spot to add or reconsider a short description. The initial pages of your manuscript is as good a place as any. If you are pitching work, these first pages may be all that an editor will read. Consider two or three details most interesting to highlight. Build a description around those. Remember, a little goes a long way.

If you’ve done this right, the process of thinking about interesting details (through observation for nonfiction, in your imagination for fiction) will help you become more creative and will make your stories richer, more intriguing, more compelling.


Copyright 2006 by Philip Martin, director of Great Lakes Literary, LLC, and series editor of The New Writer’s Handbook, an annual anthology. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint, contact the author at www.GreatLakesLit.com. Any brief quoted passages from published works are used for the purpose of literary criticism.

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