Laer Carroll
March 3rd, 2011, 12:23 PM
Every writer is likely to answer the Details questions differently. Partly because of our personal style, but also because what we want to get across in different stories require different approaches.
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The basic point of the "Tell not show" thread, which got lost in a terminology discussion, is that scenes and summaries of scenes are not opposites. They are areas on the ends of the spectrum of how much detail is included in a scene or summary.
Consider the following summary. They took three days to cross the desert, harried by wind and burned by the sun. It contains scenic elements harried/wind and burned/sun.
The author could have just ended the previous scene with a transition statement: They shouldered their packs and step resolutely onto the sand. And begun the next scene with a transition statement: They dropped their packs gratefully on the porch of the green X valley. Or not wrote an in-transition statement, starting the next scene in the middle with something like: Sheila sighed and put down her flagon. Josh quirked an eyebrow from across the table.
Thus the summary would be an invisible, implied one. But the author with the one-sentence summary may have had what s/he thought were good reasons for writing what is almost a micro-scene.
Of course everyone knows that you usually include micro-summaries in fully-worked-out scenes. When someone goes from a living room couch through a hall to answer a door bell, we rarely want to detail each and every movement.
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I've noticed that the amount of detail we put into stories seems to have increased over the centuries. Jane Austen was fairly lean with detail. Georgette Heyer had a lot of summary. A good many modern literary and mainstream novels are fat with detail, more travelogues of life than swift narrative. Even action thrillers may be stuffed with details of time and place, even of action.
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What kinds of detail are there? Sensory detail is one, of the various public senses. These can be included whether the viewpoint in a scene is outside of any one character, a sort of ghost spectator, or inside a character.
When we are "living" vicariously as one of the characters the author may include the private senses: visceral ones, skin sensations, odors, tastes, one's orientation in space: the balance and kinesic senses.
Ghosts may be stuck to one place or person. Or they may be free to roam the universe, godlike, potentially (but not always) omniscient.
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Details can be contained in adjectives and adverbs. Nothing wrong with that; a writer's purpose is what determines in any particular passage what is good or bad, not some general declaration - "The adjective is enemy of the noun, the adverb the enemy of the verb."
But much detail can be included in the noun or verb. We can run, jump, amble, crawl, leap, mope, lope, stride, trot, and so quite-far on.
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The pace of the scene we want to write may influence how much detail we want to put in the scene. A leisurely scene may need more detail, a (physical) action scene may demand fewer. Though we may want our action scene to have breathing spaces. Between two swift sections of a scene we might place a brooding, tension-increasing section, where the main character builds up anger or energy before burst into the next section of the scene.
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A lot of detail can be implied by what has gone before. If our characters are at a table eating we do not need to mention the salt and pepper shakers and faux-chandelier overhead - unless that detail is important enough to call attention to it. We can assume ketchup and mustard if our scene includes home-cooked hamburgers.
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OK, breakfast is done. Time for me to get to work. Over to you, Sky Command.
____________________________________
The basic point of the "Tell not show" thread, which got lost in a terminology discussion, is that scenes and summaries of scenes are not opposites. They are areas on the ends of the spectrum of how much detail is included in a scene or summary.
Consider the following summary. They took three days to cross the desert, harried by wind and burned by the sun. It contains scenic elements harried/wind and burned/sun.
The author could have just ended the previous scene with a transition statement: They shouldered their packs and step resolutely onto the sand. And begun the next scene with a transition statement: They dropped their packs gratefully on the porch of the green X valley. Or not wrote an in-transition statement, starting the next scene in the middle with something like: Sheila sighed and put down her flagon. Josh quirked an eyebrow from across the table.
Thus the summary would be an invisible, implied one. But the author with the one-sentence summary may have had what s/he thought were good reasons for writing what is almost a micro-scene.
Of course everyone knows that you usually include micro-summaries in fully-worked-out scenes. When someone goes from a living room couch through a hall to answer a door bell, we rarely want to detail each and every movement.
____________________________________
I've noticed that the amount of detail we put into stories seems to have increased over the centuries. Jane Austen was fairly lean with detail. Georgette Heyer had a lot of summary. A good many modern literary and mainstream novels are fat with detail, more travelogues of life than swift narrative. Even action thrillers may be stuffed with details of time and place, even of action.
____________________________________
What kinds of detail are there? Sensory detail is one, of the various public senses. These can be included whether the viewpoint in a scene is outside of any one character, a sort of ghost spectator, or inside a character.
When we are "living" vicariously as one of the characters the author may include the private senses: visceral ones, skin sensations, odors, tastes, one's orientation in space: the balance and kinesic senses.
Ghosts may be stuck to one place or person. Or they may be free to roam the universe, godlike, potentially (but not always) omniscient.
____________________________________
Details can be contained in adjectives and adverbs. Nothing wrong with that; a writer's purpose is what determines in any particular passage what is good or bad, not some general declaration - "The adjective is enemy of the noun, the adverb the enemy of the verb."
But much detail can be included in the noun or verb. We can run, jump, amble, crawl, leap, mope, lope, stride, trot, and so quite-far on.
____________________________________
The pace of the scene we want to write may influence how much detail we want to put in the scene. A leisurely scene may need more detail, a (physical) action scene may demand fewer. Though we may want our action scene to have breathing spaces. Between two swift sections of a scene we might place a brooding, tension-increasing section, where the main character builds up anger or energy before burst into the next section of the scene.
____________________________________
A lot of detail can be implied by what has gone before. If our characters are at a table eating we do not need to mention the salt and pepper shakers and faux-chandelier overhead - unless that detail is important enough to call attention to it. We can assume ketchup and mustard if our scene includes home-cooked hamburgers.
____________________________________
OK, breakfast is done. Time for me to get to work. Over to you, Sky Command.