Making Details Purposeful

[polymath]

I don't think, Margo, you and Guardian are in disagreement so much as differing over aesthetic sensibilities, both reading and writing. I see your differences as a cultural divide.

As I see Margo's latest response, basically we're telling the very same, just from a bit different perspective. I don't think it's cultural divide, rather a matter of writing and reading style and personal taste.

Different perspectives, styles, and tastes isn't a cultural divide? I know Margo and I have a cultural divide, most of it from geophysical influences, gender identity, and social indoctrination differences. I know we too have a cultural divide for similar reasons.

[Guardian]

Sorry. You're right. Translation error from my part. In my mind I translated that part as cultural diversity and not as cultural divide.

[Margo]

My sense of problematic coincidences is they don't involve a proactive causal action by a protagonist, though a causal coincidence early on is less problematic than a late-breaking coincidence. I feel a profoundly dynamic protagonist causes his or her own complications as well as strives to resolve them. When a protagonist's dramatic complication is self-incited in an opening act, then addressing it and denouement's final outcomes are profoundly proactive and unified.

YESYESYES, this is what I'm concentrating on in my outline process right now, looking at each step in the action-reaction-complication cycle for where my protagonist's actions and choices are driving the events.

I don't think, Margo, you and Guardian are in disagreement so much as differing over aesthetic sensibilities, both reading and writing. I see your differences as a cultural divide.

I suspect as much, though some genre difference also might be coming into play.

[polymath]

My sense of problematic coincidences is they don't involve a proactive causal action by a protagonist, though a causal coincidence early on is less problematic than a late-breaking coincidence. I feel a profoundly dynamic protagonist causes his or her own complications as well as strives to resolve them. When a protagonist's dramatic complication is self-incited in an opening act, then addressing it and denouement's final outcomes are profoundly proactive and unified.

YESYESYES, this is what I'm concentrating on in my outline process right now, looking at each step in the action-reaction-complication cycle for where my protagonist's actions and choices are driving the events.

Yay, Causation! Have you read Aristotle's Poetics? He locates causation as the principal plot-moving force. Freytag locates tension as the second axis. I locate antagonism as the third. They're distinguishable though I believe their syngergy makes them indivisible. Combined I believe they're what makes details artfully purposeful.

[bcomet]

Details. What a great topic.

I don't know how this might or might not apply because how I view details in a novel depends on the novel, so it is difficult for me to just have a rule.

I am also keenly interested and have had a lifelong interest in dreams and dreamwork. In dreams, details can take on enormous meaning symbolically and/or they can transport the dreamer more fully into his/her dream experience (world building). Likewise, this can also be true in novels or movies.

Look at The Wizard of OZ where the world changes from black and white to color. It becomes magically alive.

I am currently rereading several Harry Potter books. In these, Rowling is constantly referring to details that hardly contribute to the action so much as they are continually weaving her world, keeping the reader immersed in it. It's delightful and fun.

In Saving Fish From Drowning, a book I found really dull, the details droned on and on like a travel guide and bored me to death. But that was my take. I wanted to get on with the story already, not have to wade through a ton of sight seeing. However, the author, Amy Tan, is highly regarded and many people loved this book.

Another point is that detail use can get tricky. For example, sometimes there are details that have been packed with all sorts of layers of meaning, but I've also noticed some writers I've worked with who throw in too many meaningful details. Motifs that are intended to be powerful can be overdone.

Sometimes, the details or the scene or world building is relaxing and sometimes it is trying (and too difficult) and sometimes it is just padding that can get in the way of the story.

But, when the world shifts or deepens, the focus on the details helps transport a reader too. So there are moments or transitions in a story where the details take you in deeper, closer. Likewise, there are moments to let the reader imagine for himself.

However, this is such an interesting topic to me because different readers crave different backdrops of details.
I, for example, am very visually oriented and in my own writing, I almost never think about smells unless they are important. In contrast, there are at least two people in one of my critique groups who miss smell so much when it is not included that it pulls them out of a story thinking about it. (I would imagine CheekyChook, with all her happy photos of chocolate includes taste so palpably in her writing because her forum posts even make me want to go eat sweets and I haven't even got a sweet tooth!)

Anyway, there is much to think about. A good discussion.

[cheekychook]

Details. What a great topic.

I would imagine CheekyChook, with all her happy photos of chocolate includes taste so palpably in her writing because her forum posts even make me want to go eat sweets and I haven't even got a sweet tooth!

Anyway, there is much to think about. A good discussion.

LOL Funny you should say that. I've had several people tell me that my posts, my blog and my novel make them hungry. I guess that's a good thing? The book makes people crave savory stuff too, though---I'm the one who's sugar obsessed. :)

[bcomet]

Details. What a great topic.

I would imagine CheekyChook, with all her happy photos of chocolate includes taste so palpably in her writing because her forum posts even make me want to go eat sweets and I haven't even got a sweet tooth!

Anyway, there is much to think about. A good discussion.

LOL Funny you should say that. I've had several people tell me that my posts, my blog and my novel make them hungry. I guess that's a good thing? The book makes people crave savory stuff too, though---I'm the one who's sugar obsessed. :)

LOL!

Some of the most successful writers include food in their novels, Cheekychook, so your road to fame and fortune is virtually a piece of cake!

[oldhousejunkie]

I suck at details. Really.

I get so caught up in conveying the characters, the place, and the time within the dialogue that I have to force myself to go back and set the scene. So I guess I'm lucky in that I am purposeful, and I feel that what details I put down are meaningful in that they convey the time and place without having it hashed out in dialogue.

I guess you could say that I have no patience for details. Which would explain why I can only read Gone with the Wind in chunks because otherwise I would gouge out my eyeballs from all the detail. So I suppose that puts me in your camp, Margo, because I think Gone with the Wind could have stood on its own without all the scene setting.

However, when it comes to dialogue, I rely a little more on my sub-concious due to the fact that I have done a great deal of research on the time period that I'm writing in. I've immerse myself with my characters...almost like I am eavesdropping on them. So there are times when I realize that the dialgoue has gotten a little meandering (just like real life conversations), and I have to go back and decide what accomplishes the goal, and what doesn't.

PS: Margo, I really enjoyed your blog post about writer-reader relationships. I agree 100%!

[polymath]

I had a waking dream this morning about details. Of course, being a dream, it wasn't completely logical or rational. However, the context was most illuminating. Artful details, like everything else essential to a narrative, are a magical presto chango, hocus pocus, or abracadabra, more like, for invoking the quintessential participation mystique that immerses readers in the settings and personas and events of a narrative. Abracadabra is most illustrative for its literal translation thought to originate in Aramaic, To create as I say. Anyway, that's the essence of the dream.

[Margo]

PS: Margo, I really enjoyed your blog post about writer-reader relationships. I agree 100%!

Thank you. I really appreciate you saying so.

[bcomet]

PS: Margo, I really enjoyed your blog post about writer-reader relationships. I agree 100%!

Thank you. I really appreciate you saying so.

Margo, oldhousejunkie,

Hi. Can you give a link to that post so I can go back and reread? Thanks!

[Margo]

Margo, oldhousejunkie,

Hi. Can you give a link to that post so I can go back and reread? Thanks!

Here ya go:

http://urbanpsychopomp.blogspot.com/201 ... eader.html