Using Detail Effectively

Too many writers think of description or using detail as a string of adjectives.

Wrong.

It’s all about using detail that brings your characters and settings to life.

Barbara Kingsolver didn’t just depend on her imagination to come up with the details that would help cement her success as a novelist. She researched the locales in her fiction. A lot.

Even as she was writing other novels such as Animal Dreams (1990) and Pigs in Heaven (1993), she kept what she called the “damn Africa file” on her desk. She would tap that folder when writing The Poisonwood Bible. Talk about using detail effectively! Published in 1998, the novel would become a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and sell more than two million copies.

Kingsolver’s use of detail doesn’t just set the scene. It says everything about how her narrator–one of five in the book–views her introduction to life in the Congo, where the family has just moved.

“They had made a horrible roaring fire at one end of the church. Oily smoke hung above us like a net, drooping under the thatched roof. The scent of it was strong enough to choke any animal you can think of. Inside the bright orange rim of the fire, I could see the outline of some dark thing being turned and pierced, with its four legs flung out in a cry for help.”

As Garrison Keillor reports in the Writer’s Almanac, Barbara Kingsolver believed that “the best research gets your fingers dusty and your shoes dirty, especially because a novel is made of details. I had to know what a place smelled like, what it sounded like… There’s no substitute for that. I’ve been steeped in evidence-based truth.”

I love Barbara Kingsolver saying that “a novel is made of details.” Details are what bring a novel to life–but only if they do their job. So the next time you’re setting a scene or describing a character, steer away from that stillborn string of adjectives that so many writers routinely tap. Instead, consider the image you’re trying to create, the mood you’re trying to set, along with the person you’re highlighting in the particular location you’ve chosen. Then let those be your guides.