Using Concrete and Significant Detail

1
Using Concrete and Significant Detail

• Creating Mood and Tone

2
Describe this
Did you say the pear was yellow? Gold? Gold as
the sun? Gold as straw? Did you say the apple
was green? Grass green? Pond algae green? Was
the fruit in a basket? With a handle? Shallow
or deep?
3
Concrete Detail

• Detail must be applicable
• to the senses
• Sight
• Taste
• Smell
• Touch
• Hearing

4
Significant Details

• Significant details build mood, create tone, or
  offer judgments.
• Work in place of bland generalizations
• Operate on connotations that are developed
  through a person s culture and personal
  experience.
• Make the reader feel clever.

5
Compare

• He was 60 years old. His skin was wrinkled and
  was the color and texture of a walnut shell.
  His pants were baggy and his shoes scuffed. He
  was hunched over and he had blue eyes, white
  tufted hair.

• He had lived and lived. His skin was wrinkled
  with the etchings of a thousand stars and his
  eyes were clear enough to see through the dense
  mysteries of the earth. His hair perpetually
  stood on end , as if to release the energy that
  comes from thinking profound and benevolent
  thoughts.

Which man do you know more about?
6
Now you try it

• A man walked by the river. He wore no hat. It
  was sunny.
• Revise to make the man
• Foreboding/Threatening
• Heroic
• Pitiful

7
When you want to spin a good yarn, use concrete
and significant detail.