The other night I attended the Writers’ Guild of Canada Awards.  I got to talking with a fellow writer who threw out, “It’s all in the details.  The mark of good writing is on how detailed it is.  Bad writing is generic.”  Everything is in the details.  The tricky part is knowing what details to include and what to leave out.

You don’t want to use up four valuable pages with description on a single, inconsequential location.  To know the difference, you have to ask yourself, “what is the story I’m telling”, which goes back to my previous article, “Which Story Did I Tell”.  Even simpler than that, if the description you’re adding doesn’t move your story forward, cut it.

Knowing the vivid details in your mind always enriches your story, but these details don’t all have to be on the page.  The more you know about your characters and the world in which they live, the more detailed you can be with their use of language, their mannerisms, their wants and needs.  It all contributes to subtext.  What you don’t put on the page is just as important as what you do.

A writer who skimps on the details often relies on clichés and copies scenes from other shows.  Their writing lacks originality and depth or it meanders without purpose.  Without being specific about your story and knowing what you’re writing and why, your story falls apart.