Don’t describe the trash can.
Develop an eye for the emotionally resonate.
After a lifetime of writing passionless reports for a grade, when a creative non-fiction writer learns that they can create scenes on the page, the instinct is often to overstuff their stories with descriptive language. The new writer will dedicate dozens of words to describing the color of the walls or the number of cups in any room they are reporting on. Much of this description does not bring the reader into the scene as intended, but instead leaves them staring at a pile-up of words that more resembles a junkyard than a scenic view.
An experienced writer takes great pain to distinguish which details help move the story along and which clutter it with inconsequential noise.
Let’s take a look at the first paragraph of Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s excellent profile of Gwyneth Paltrow for New York Times Magazine:
“On a Monday morning in November, students at Harvard Business School convened in their classroom to find Gwyneth Paltrow. She was sitting at one of their desks, fitting in not at all, using her phone, as they took their seats along with guests they brought to class that day — wives, mothers, boyfriends. Each seat filled, and some guests had to stand along the back wall and sit on the steps. The class was called the Business of Entertainment, Media and Sports. The students were there to interrogate Paltrow about Goop, her lifestyle-and-wellness e-commerce business, and to learn how to create a ‘sustainable competitive advantage,’ according to the class catalog.”
In this section, Akner covers a lot of ground to set up both Paltrow and the audience in attendance. As we addressed in previous letters, good details often pull double duty as some combination of characterization, mood-setting, or providing logistics. Akner does this and efficiently clears away questions of when and where this scene is taking place. But also with the line beginning with “She was sitting at one of their desks, fitting in not at all,” Akner begins to characterize Paltrow as this otherworldly presence even in a socially elite space like Harvard. And by including the small snippets about the course title and class catalog, Akner let us know what type of person would be interested in hearing from Paltrow, which characterizes her even more.
When Akner is describing a scene, each detail has a specific purpose. Were Akner a more novice writer, she could have easily inserted additional details like, “A big dark green chalkboard rests behind Paltrow. There were 100 wooden seats in the room. Her iPhone was five inches long. The walls were beige, and next to the gray teacher’s desk, a small white trash can contained dozens of crumpled papers.” So on and so forth. On their own, there’s nothing inherently wrong with each detail. But they certainly don’t add anything that Akner didn’t already convey with the details she chose.
As author Mark Kramer says, “Beginning narrative writers often set scenes too casually or with too much detail. Give the reader a feeling of volume, space and dimension, but don’t build a diorama.”
The tendency to overdress scenes can come from a place of insecurity — a new writer’s lack of attunement to what a reader will find interesting or necessary to understand the point of a scene. There are not many shortcuts to acquiring the sense of what will resonate with your readers. It comes through experience and experimentation. But one step you can take towards appropriately dressing your scenes is to work on understanding what matters to you.
Directly after I report on an event or conduct an interview, I sit down with a blank document and record my first impressions. How did the people there make me feel? What stood out to me about the scene I just witnessed? What was something odd about the interaction or environment? I jot down my fresh take on the experience with little regard for cataloging every mundane fact of the setting. I will not describe a trash can I saw simply because it was there, but I will instead mention it if it made me feel a particular way.
What the first impression draft lets you do is highlight what mattered most to you from the jump. You can pull those threads later and use your supplemental references, like short videos, notes, photos, or audio snippets from your reporting to help you build out your scenes when you dive into the draft. You’re training your sensibilities to find what stood out among all the noise.
Awareness of tapping into the emotional aspect of reporting separates creative non-fiction from the dry non-fiction reports people may be used to.
Awareness of tapping into the emotional aspect of reporting separates creative non-fiction from the dry non-fiction reports people may be used to. When I tell stories, I try to be aware of how charged every detail I select has the potential to be. For better or for worse, a writer gets to decide what falls into the frame they throw around a scene. With that, it’s best not to use the limited space to describe the trash can, unless, of course, that trash can makes you very, very happy.
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Great advice! And totally applicable to fiction writers as well. Thanks for the read.