Writing With Details - Jessica Morrell

Jessica Morrell – Writing With Details
2010 Willamette Writers Conference
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Senses (or Scenes?) – Fiction: Has advantages and disadvantages over non-fiction, memoirs and screenplays

When people read, they hear their own voice inside their head. Sound arrests reader’s brain and nervous system. Sound from primeval days -> bred into our nervous system; (sub-vocalizing).

Put movie in character’s head. Don’t want characters alone. Want movie to keep going.

Show Not Tell:
Show -> Drama.
Like a film. Seduces reader.
Tell -> Instructions
Telling like a boring science teacher. Informing reader.

Earliest memories: Remember them from using/remembering your senses. Senses ingrained in us since when we were born.
Good writing haunts us. Readers remember. Get great emotional impact from senses.
Shape beginning with senses.

Begin novel:
1) Start fast
2) Have to announce what genre book is
3) Increase early tension.
a. Need details to amp up tension
i. Details to match desired mood

Aside: Recommends P.D. James (Dagliesh) – Likes to take innocent settings and defile them
1) Even with innocent setting need to foreshadow danger ahead
2) Every time you have an opportunity to use details to foreshadow things to come take advantage of the opportunity
a. Foreshadowing makes readers trust you

List of important stuff:
1) Secondary characters important
a. Not just main characaters
b. Put in details for secondary characters
i. Gives reader something to remember and identify secondary characters
2) How to make characters unhappy – something wrong.
a. Use setting
i. Uses settings to give info
b. Use inner dialog
c. Make characters uncomfortable through setting and dialog



She loves manuscript reading like a book and not a manuscript.
1) Respect their command of language
2) When they have great sensory details
3) Need a sensory detail in every page

Wants us writers to be scavengers and collectors of life.
1) Carry notebook and take notes
a. Dialog you overhear
b. Collect Artifacts of life
c. Look around all the time
d. Even if it takes place in an alternate world
2) Intimacy
a. Intimate parts of our lives – Full of real world
i. Part of our experience
b. Need sensory details to create intimacy
3) How do you choose the details?
a. Need meaning
b. Need depth
c. Create motion
4) Significant Details: For most important scenes
a. Loss, reversal, crises
i. Need the most details
5) Wants characaters “ill-at-ease”, “off-kilter”.

As writers, look for details.
1) Don’t clump details together
2) Should be looking for sensory details that will make reader understand things
a. Like painting – Painters make distinct choices
i. Shades, colors,
ii. Details like whether to shade or not

Details:
1) Different emotional intensities”
a. Match with details
2) Need variety of ups and downs; slow and fast.
3) Can’t have long paragraphs of details.
4) Locate what’s most important
a. Start with bigger picture
i. New locale: (especially with danger)
ii. Start out and zoom in
1. Take deeper into scene
5) Level of detail: Decide on and vary.
6) We want to put details into beginning of scenes


Our senses:
1) Sound:
a. Dialog critical
b. Use all different kinds of sounds
i. (Voice and other)
1. Combine voice and sound
2. Voice gives information on characters
c. “What does this remind me of?”
i. Comparative writing critical.
1. Eg, similes, metaphors.
a. Use and look for.
2) Sight?
a. Want seasons to be part of story world
b. Sensory details ground readers
i. Reading is supposed to be intimate.

3) Taste:
a. Foods
i. Use assumptions by reader.
1. (From their diet).
b. We all have proof of reality
c. Examples: tastes of world -> ashes, fog
d. Look for connotation from details


4) Scent:
a. Wired into limbic system
b. Shared in our memories
i. (Example: Steven King – puts one smell in every 3 pages).
c. Bad smells creep us out. (which is really good)
d. Examples: dirty hair, cheap cologne
e. Smells: don’t process in many other ways as limbic system does the processing.

Details:
1) Go for obvious
2) Also, what’s not there
a. Small things – that are off
i. Like tiny clues
1. Eg. – Any avoidance behavior (avoid kisses
2. In subtext
3) Sit down and watch people
a. In malls, parks
i. How people wig out of things
4) Try not to isolate senses
a. Try to combine them
i. Surround by all senses
5) Goal – Want reader to be there
6) Color charts: (As in Home Depot paint sections)
a. Get names for colors
i. Eg. – exploring color names of lipstick
ii. Sunrises and sunsets
1. A lot of people use the same descriptions
iii. This a chance to pick out colors
iv. Grey -> Depression
7) Blood – Kind of freaky for most of us
a. Symbolic word
b. Want to use things that are primeval
c. Use sparingly
d. Intense: because of nervous system
e. Find responses to primeval sensory things
f. Brings out big guns
8) Translate stuff -> emotion -> detail
a. Sometimes characters are like people in real life – not in touch with their nervous system responses
b. Pass details through filters of characters
c. Sometimes we choke on words
9) Roses: Signs of poverty and beer cans
10) Cigarettes: Small details
a. Readers know they’re poor
11) Mosquitoes -> irritants -> Consequences (Key – consequences)
a. Details: The mosquitoes of writing
i. Wants readers to itch
ii. Want to see consequences in story
12) Orientation – grounding details
13) Fantasy – you need to be more original
a. Too many familiar things
14) The more exotic the setting the better the details need to be
a. More outlandish, original and vivid
15) Follow through on details throughout book
a. Since we live in contemporary world – don’t need all the details
b. Some are implied
c. Remind people of what they already know
16) Subtext (Recommends her book on: “Between the Lines”)
a. Movies - Art departments have lots of subtext
b. Fiction – Choices are made that can be irreversible
i. Dress (and dress colors)-> subtext
ii. Details Example: Venetian blinds:
1. Prison bars or Shadows of faces
17) Last thing:
a. Shaping memorable characters
i. Need to keep peppering and reinforcing peoples’ looks and manners throughout novel

Example: Great Gatsby
1) Show opulence. Off putting:
a. Uses comparisons
b. Surrounds with senses
i. Different arresting word pairs
Recommended Book: “Beekeepers Apprentice”
Shirlock Holmes

Examples of too many details:
1) Tolkien
2) PD James
3) First part of some “Dickens” book (?)
Layers of sub-text, character and plot: