The Whale Belly

I spent another fifteen minutes working on my story. This was my third session. At the end of my second session, I finished sketching the general plot of the story (not that it was an intentional process, it just sort of happened). Today, I decided to return to the beginning and to try to flesh out each scene.

The good news? I have more than I did yesterday. I don’t want to downplay this accomplishment. It would be too easy to focus only on the problems that cropped up, but at least I can claim this victory.

The not-so-good news? I spent about half of my limited time just staring at the screen, unsure about what to write. I had to decide what to include to make the story more vivid and engaging while still advancing the plot. I could visualize the scene, but selecting specific aspects to describe so that readers could have their own experience was overwhelming. Of course, I wasn’t consciously thinking this while writing. My thoughts were more along the lines of “Umm…” or “Let’s see…”

According to James Wood’s brilliant book How Fiction Works, the ability to select details is a skill one can learn. For many of us, myself very much included, the minutiae of our daily lives blend into a backdrop that’s “amorphously full of detail,” which often blurs into vague routines and patterns of action. Quality literature teaches us to notice these details by focusing on them. This, in turn, makes the familiar unfamiliar and interesting. Wood describes this as a dialectical form of tutoring, where we read to learn to notice things better in our lives, thus becoming better readers, and so forth.

The details I typically use in my writing are overly relevant and functional. For instance, in the beginning of the story I’m working on, a woman is woken in the middle of the night by a knock on the door. She wakes, looks at the clock on the bedside table, then hurriedly puts on her robe. The details I’m mentioning are functional, highlighting objects the character must encounter and use to get her from the bedroom to the front door. But, as Wood explains, good detail in fiction often carries a “studied irrelevance” or “significant insignificance.” An example might be a character noticing the particular way a bird preens itself in the bird bath outside the window, while their father is dying inside the room. Besides the implied tonal and thematic significance of a bird preening itself in this context, it also accurately reflects the non-reverential ways human consciousness operates in pivotal moments. Instead of merely describing my character’s functional steps as she prepares to answer the door in the middle of the night, perhaps I should describe the slipperiness of the sash as she struggles to tie her inside-out robe in the dark.

This all seems connected to practicing patience. I admit, I’ve rushed through great novels, eager to move on to the next, just to brag about reading Anna Karenina or Ulysses. It’s probably why I’m so “well-read” on one hand, but a clumsy writer on the other. I’m not genuinely learning what novels aim to teach, which is to patiently notice details and to not rush. I need to be more deliberate about noticing and appreciating details when reading, just as I would savor a fifty-dollar entrée instead of scarfing it down. It might also be beneficial to engage in other novel activities that require observation: drawing, painting, attending classical music concerts, cooking, bird-watching, mushroom collecting, etc. And perhaps mindfulness meditation can help us be less automated in our behavior, making us more aware, open, and receptive to the vibrant details of life and art.

There’s more to be said about detail in fiction writing, but this is all I have to say at the moment. I would be so grateful to read other people’s thoughts on the topic though and how they go about selecting details in their own writing process.