Sweatin’ the Small Stuff
Or, Details: How to Find ’em, How to Use ’em
Use details! is an exhortation every fifth-grader knows–that is, if his teacher knows anything about how to teach writing. It’s practically a mantra with me. Details put a reader into the setting, smelling the popcorn or feeling the sultry air or hearing the sizzle! of sparklers on a warm July evening.
Sometimes the details are easy to find just by closing your eyes and casting back to a memory. But for the quirky and unexpected, you just have to be there. Some writers carry a small notebook to tuck in a pocket or purse and whip out when a sensory impression smacks them: the laugh of a passer-by or a unique body-build. I have sometimes carried notecards for the same purpose, so I can arrange and classify them later.
Anyone can train herself to notice and note details. The test of a good writer, though, is how to use them. You may have read novels that read like inventory lists. Just because you have pages of fascinating notes about life on the prairie doesn’t mean you have to use them all. I sometimes compare it to making oatmeal-raisin cookies: you don’t spoon out the dough and then poke in the raisins. You stir in the raisins, so they’re integrated with the dough. When it comes to details, you don’t stud your narrative with them to prove how much research you did. You fold them into the action, so they add the scene without distracting from it.
I like to show rather than tell, so here are some examples of how I used random research facts to enhance a story.
Fact: A “swazzle” is a reed used by renaissance puppet masters to affect the puppets’ voices.
His lips twitched, but the light was too dim to show it for a smile. He reached under his cloak and took out a small object, a reed of some kind. When he tucked it into his mouth, I knew it for a “swazzle,” used by puppet masters to produce a high, shrill voice. But never used to better effect than that night. “Easily,” he said, in an eerie tone that made me shiver. The True Prince
Fact: In Elizabethan court garments, sleeves were often made and attached separately.
“Look, lads!” Gregory called. I looked, and a little cry escaped me. He had slipped on a pair of beaded yellow sleeves and struck a pose, singing, “In yellow sleeves to honor his maid, he rides far afield with the beauteous lady–“
“Where did you find those?” I asked, a shade too quickly.
“Why, here at the bottom of the court pile.”
From the other end of the table, Master Stewart frowned. “I’ve been searching for ’em of late. They don’t belong there, nor on thy twiggy arms. Put ’em on the pile to be steamed and stuffed.” The True Prince
Fact: London Bridge once sported a central tower, where the heads of traitors were displayed.
West of the Bridge, where the exuberant current piled up against the piers on its way seaward, the watermen ply their trade–hundreds of boats, all sizes and sorts, busily ferrying people from London to Southwark and back again, their oars blurring like dragonfly wings. Little one-seater wherries dart here and there, cleaving a path among the covered barks and cargo vessels, while jeweled barges of the nobility glide on the rise and dip of long oars.
The sight was so lively, so merry, I almost laughed out loud–until the swoop of a raven’s wing drew my eye to the memorial tower nearby. Spiked to the wall, about fifteen feet up, the heads of three traitors stared a grim warning to boats and foot travelers alike. Traffic passed unheeding below their eyeless gaze. The Playmaker
Fact: Yaito was a bizarre form of Japanese therapy for aches and pains.
Sogoji was beside one of the beds, where Mrs. Lanski lay facedown. Her dress was unbuttoned, and he was setting fire to her bare back.
“What are you doing?” I yelled. He jumped and quickly raked a pile of smoking grass off the lady’s back.
“Hazel. You early?”
“Not much. What’s going on?”
His hands fluttered like startled sparrows. “When Lula-san has aches and pains, she ask for yaito–“
The missus herself slowly turned her head. “Why, Hazel. Sogoji said you might be over today. Good to see you, honey.”
Sometimes you feel like the whole world has flipped over without you–or that you’ve flipped, all by yourself. I couldn’t think of a thing to say.
Fact: Intense periods of history breed their own slang terms, and World War II was no exception. However, no one was likely to use this much slang unless he was showing off:
The next morning Frank asked for cackleberries and gaskets, meaning eggs and pancakes, knowing we never got both. But Mom just laughed and said he’d learned a new language while he was away. After breakfast he told her she was the best egg buster in the business and he was off to visit the feather merchants but would be back in time for blanket detail and chow that night. My Friend the Enemy
Fact: Remember vaporizers stuffed with Vicks? How many kids do, these days?
Sunday was miserable, for a lot of reasons. We all stayed home from church: I was sneezing and coughing, Estelle was still crying, and Mom just ran out of steam. As though to make up for it, she kept the vaporizer on all day, filling the house with the nose-biting smell of Vicks as we slept off and on like soldiers with battle fatigue.
My Friend the Enemy
Fact: During late-May through early-June, cottonwood trees release their seeds, which are carried on the wind by white fibers.
The wind was picking up, blowing fluffy white cottonwood seeds off the trees. A gusty ghost-shape swirled by.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Gee announced. “I want to sleep inside after all.”
Fact: Up until a couple of years ago, tourists visiting Big Brutus (a huge electric shovel used for mining coal in SE Kansas) were allowed to climb the steps leading up to the top of the boom.
Finally, Pop returned to take charge of Gee, and when I got my chance to climb to the top of those 150 steps, it was worth the wait. I could see all the way to Missouri, or it sure seemed like it. Kent Clark talks about stepping back to look at the big picture, and if that wasn’t a big picture I don’t know what is . . . .
The Middle of Somewhere
Fact: Early movie cameras were temperamental and subject to static-dust.
I sighed; even Sylvie sighed. Sam straightened up from his camera-crouch and opened the lens, then squirted a puff of air inside with a rubber syringe: his habit after every take, to blow dust off the film. “It looked o.k. to me. We don’t have that much film stock to waste.”
I Don’t Know How the Story Ends
Fact: Before the invention of the “Moviola” film-editing machine, silent films were painstakingly cut by hand.
“Here, you need to take this knife and scrape that end of the film–Careful, not too hard. Just enough to get to emulsion off.” After scraping, I brushed the frame lightly with glue and lined up the ends exactly on the splicing block.
The whole episode went together like that, a bit here and a piece there, much of it in silence except for the scritch of the knife and the pulse of the overhead fan. . . .
Glancing at the Seth Thomas clock on the wall behind me, I gasped. “It’s been over an hour!”
“Some fun, huh?”
“I was just thinking–it’s like rearranging time! Suppose your life was on a film, and you could cut any part you wanted, or move the pieces around to tell a different story?”
I Don’t Know How the Story Ends
As with any skill, practice makes perfect. But finding and using details to enhance your fiction writing is also fun.