Your descriptions can't just offer sensory details . . . the details also have
to be specific. The cumulative effect of specific sensory details is
verisimilitude--the sense that these events have really happened.
For instance: "She was a beautiful blonde," is vague and nonspecific. Add
specific details like: "Her nose was dusted ever so lightly with freckles, as
softly colored as the skin below." And you have a concrete picture of this
"beautiful blonde."
The chapter goes on to say: "Specific descriptions make true more homespun
locations as well." Here is an excerpt from Louis B. Jones's ORDINARY MONEY:
There is a stop sign at the 7-Eleven, and you go left onto Robin Song Lane, then
right onto Sparrow Court, and Wayne and Laura Paschke's house is the third on
the left, the same model as the neighbor's, but painted an out-of-date sherbert
green, with a big chicken-wire thing on the side, left there by the previous
tenant . . .
Use specifics when describing what vehicles our characters drive. Someone
driving a VW conjures a different picture than someone who drives a Ford F150.
Also, name exact colors, fabrics, musical instruments.
The exercise:
Think of a place well known to you from your youth--a street, park, school . . .
Write a passage where you describe this place with great specificity. What color
were the bricks? Was the slide straight or curving? How far was the pond from
the house? If you can't remember key details, fill them in with your
imagination. For a bonus round, do the same for a person you knew from this
place.
