This week, Jack Heffron, writer, editor and faculty member for Writing It Real In Port Townsend’s annual late June writer’s conference, shares “Dot the Dragon’s Eye,” Chapter Seventeen in his instructional book The Writer’s Idea Workshop: How to make your good ideas great, Writer’s Digest Books, 2003. Whether you are writing fiction, creative nonfiction or poetry, Jack’s discussion and prompts will prove extremely useful.

Hualong dianjing is a phrase used in Chinese painting and roughly translates to “Dot the dragon’s eye, and it comes to life.” It refers to the need for including the key detail in a painting. When the painter takes time to dot the center of the dragon’s eye with the tip of the brush, the dragon seems to gain the ability to see. It comes alive on the canvas. The admonition also speaks to the need for including the right details. A painter can brocade the dragon’s tale with intricate scales of many sizes and hues, but without the dot in the eye, the dragon will remain dead on the canvas.

The applicability of this statement to writing isn’t difficult to see. When we take time to present the details, our writing comes to life. If we focus only on big strokes, the writing remains generic, abstract, and lifeless. Henri Troyat makes this point (with a well-chosen detail of his own) when he writes,

No detail must be neglected in art, for a button half-undone may explain a whole side of a person’s character. It is absolutely essential to mention that person’s button. But it has to be described in terms of the person’s inner life, and attention must not be diverted from the important things to focus on accessories and trivia.

In my experience as an editor and teacher, no other aspect of craft leads to unsuccessful stories more than the lack of specific details and poorly chosen details. Most apprentice writers have seen enough movies — if they haven’t yet read enough books — to have a basic understanding of structure. Though they fret about whether to use past tense or present tense, the question of point of view, while important, often doesn’t speak to the core trouble in the project. Most often, the writer hasn’t evoked the world of the piece, its people and the place and the situation. Through the details we select we guide our readers, showing them what they need to see. Through the details we present the characters, as in Troyat’s “button half done.”

Too often apprentice writers perceive details as merely lending atmosphere to a piece, describing what the walls look like, the scent of a budding meadow. The details of the place need to do more than create atmosphere. Each should be chosen for its effect on the piece. It should be there for a reason.

Moreover, the details should be specific. Most apprentice writers know this law of narrative. We learn the need to write “tulip” rather than “flower,” “BMW” rather than “car.” But the lesson doesn’t end there. The fact that the flower is a tulip directs the reader in some way, reflects on the character admiring or holding the tulip, brings in the varied connotations of a tulip in the reader’s mind. The tulip evokes the physical world of the piece and speaks to its inner world. If “tulip” is an arbitrary choice, it doesn’t have much meaning within the context of the piece and doesn’t give the reader anything more than a visual marker.

The lack of specific, telling details creates a sense of emptiness and confusion. Inexperienced readers complain that it’s boring or that “I didn’t get it.” Often a writer will conclude that the premise is dull or that the ideas aren’t good, but that’s not necessarily the case. It may be a matter of finding the key details that will will bring the story to life. It may be a matter of emphasizing certain details and subordinating or cutting others. It may be a matter of examining the details in an early draft and looking for patterns that hold the key to the essence of the piece. By focusing efforts in this area the writer can find a new understanding and feel a renewed interest. The piece then can move forward.

You probably will find yourself in this situation as you write: You show a story to your writers group and receive wildly different interpretations of it or hear a whole lot of confusion going on. This response shows you that the story isn’t yet on the page, but it doesn’t mean the ideas are weak. It may be a matter of guiding the reader by selecting and presenting details more effectively. Every writer has suffered through this situation. Often it’s a matter of assuming a piece is finished too soon. Time to go back and reinvestigate it, to bring those key details to the fore.

Even if you don’t show it to other writers, you might find yourself feeling that the piece lacks a certain wallop. You’re satisfied with the structure and feel your characters are working. What’s missing? Why is the piece just sort of okay but really not riveting or moving in the way you’d intended? Put it away for a little while, then read it with an eye for the details. Is there a way of using a detail to embody a certain theme that you’ve spoken to directly and thereby lost the juice of it? Is there a detail in the story that you can develop into a motif or pattern, recalling it throughout the piece in an affecting way? Is there a key detail mentioned early in the piece that you might mention again at the end, giving the detail, and the ending, an extra bit of resonance while giving the piece a stronger sense of unity and closure?

Putting In and Taking Out
So how do you know which details bring the dragon to life and which ones just make the dragon’s tail longer? Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer and no answer that applies to every situation. You must find the answer with every piece you write. However, there are ways to improve your odds of finding it. First, you have to understand your habits and tendencies as a writer. Does your style tend to include many details or few? Do you often write long, lush descriptions that serve mostly to create atmosphere and show off your language skills? Or perhaps your descriptions serve your stories well but simply tend to run long. Do you fear seeming too obvious in using details as signposts and therefore obscure them whenever possible? Do you tend to have an instinctive sense of where to place and repeat certain details?

In a famous exchange of letters, Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe debated their approaches to narrative. Though they were discussing issues beyond details, encompassing all the elements of storytelling, their views are appropriate to our discussion. Responding to Fitzgerald’s claim that highly selective writers were the real geniuses, Wolfe wrote,

You say that the great writer like Flaubert has consciously left out the stuff that Bill or Joe will come along presently and put in. Well, don’t forget, Scott, that a great writer is not only a leaver-outer but also a putter-inner, and that Shakespeare and Cervantes and Dostoevsky were great putter-inners — greater putter-inners, in fact, than taker-outers ….

While reading this passage, I’m comforted by the realization that discussions of craft between literary giants feature no more erudition than what I find in similar discussions with my friends, and I hope you are too. “Putter-inners”? Not exactly the type of phrase you’ll want to tape to your computer or to drop oh-so-casually into conversations at the next literary fete. Wolfe liked to conceal his erudition behind a big-country-boy persona. He’s well aware of what he’s talking about. It’s interesting to note that Wolfe was very much a putter-inner, while Fitzgerald was a taker-outer, and so their views reflect their own approaches to writing.

Consider your approach. Are you a taker-outer or a putter-inner? How does this approach help your work, and how does it hinder your work? Are you putting in the right elements — a telling detail or two rather than hunks of exposition and explanation? Are you taking out the right elements–unnecessary and redundant passages and scenes — allowing the reader to make discoveries? As writers we need to know what to put in and what to take out. In fact, that process is the essence of storytelling. Anyone can simply spill the facts of “what happened” onto a page. It takes a writer to organize those facts into a compelling story, to select the most important details and discard others, to emphasize certain elements and subordinate others.

After we have a draft we examine the details that bring the piece to life. We look for patterns of details and ask ourselves how these patterns shape the story. We ask ourselves why, for example, that eucalyptus tree in the front yard keeps inching into every scene? Why do we note three times that the protagonist carries a sharpened crayon in her purse wherever she goes? We note, also, where details are missing: Where characters are standing in relation to each other during a pivotal conversation, the look on a character’s face, the length of the metal pipe the character hides under the driver’s seat.

These details bring the piece to life and help you guide the reader to certain themes, but they also ensure that your reader is not distracted by questions sparked by the lack of specific details. If the length of the metal pipe is not important, you tell the reader it’s not important by not bothering to describe it. On the other hand, if the pipe plays a key role you tell that to your reader by providing a more specific description. If it does play a key role and you don’t describe it, your reader may wonder about it, leading to questions that disturb the tension you’re trying to create in the piece.

Detail Ideas
In your writer’s notebook, create a place for jotting down details that occur to you or that you observe as you go about your day. They can spark ideas for a new piece, and they can spark ideas for work that’s ongoing. When you’re feeling stale or blocked, flip through your notebook and read the details you’ve collected there–a smashed pumpkin in the middle of a street, the smell of old books unearthed from a box in the attic, the way a friend’s mouth crooks whenever she’s trying to be clever, the smell of earth worms after a spring rain, and so on. You might find one that’s a good fit for the piece in progress. Or a detail might spark a new idea for the piece.

As we discussed, writers need to be observant. If you keep your eyes open, you’ll fill your notebook in a month. As you fill your notebook you’ll see that you notice certain types of things more than others. Your cache of details, for example, will include a lot of faces or gestures or cars or natural images. You might be particularly aware of smells or sounds. Or you might notice details that suggest a certain mood. As you review the details in your notebook, you’ll learn about yourself as a writer. You may want to review pieces you’ve written to find out if the tendency you noticed in the notebook carries over to your stories. For example, do your stories rely heavily on one type of sense? Are the details mostly suggestive of a certain mood? Can you vary your pattern a bit, adding sounds and smells, for example, to a piece that’s largely visual?

For some reason I write down interesting signs that I see–billboards, in front of churches, on streets and along highways. Recently, a store near my house closed. It had sold jewelry and fabric and statuary from India and was called Divine Miracles. One day while out for a jog I noticed the store was empty, leaving behind only the message: “Divine Miracles — Out of Business.” That one went into the notebook.

Questions to Consider
1. How does the effective use of details make your work stronger? How could you focus on details to enliven an ongoing piece?

2. What are the key details at work in a piece you’ve written that you particularly like?

3. How do writers whom you particularly admire use details to make their work rich and compelling?

4. Are you writing down the details you observe in your notebook?

Put It On Paper
PROMPT: If you’re stuck on a piece or disappointed with its results, read it with an eye for the details. Make a list of the key details and find ways to amplify them, perhaps by repeating them or by describing them more fully.

PROMPT: Create a specific detail for each of your characters—-or for characters you plan to use in a future piece. Freewrite about each character, noting as many details as possible. Choose one or two that evoke the essence of the character. For example, a character who is very neat and well organized (and perhaps a bit controlling) could be evoked by precise descriptions of their clothing-not a thread out of place.

PROMPT: To make a character surprising and complex, add a contradictory detail. Does your neat-as-a-pin, control-freak character from the previous prompt decorate his bedroom with posters of heavy metal bands?

PROMPT: Go on a detail hunt. Take a walk in your neighborhood and jot down all the interesting details you observe. If you feel the neighborhood is too familiar for you, go to a different one. Focus on sensory impressions, and while looking for the extraordinary don’t ignore the ordinary.

PROMPT: Go on a detail theft. Read a piece of fiction or nonfiction (or poetry for that matter) and steal a detail you like. Use it to begin a piece of your own or add it to an ongoing piece. Don’t feel guilty. Details take on their significance mostly through the context of the piece itself. Therefore, if you steal a cold bucket of chicken from Raymond Carver or a hunk of rope from Katherine Anne Porter it quickly will become your own.

PROMPT: Review a piece in progress with an eye for seemingly insignificant details — a character’s brown hair, a piece of leftover birthday cake, a neighbor’s dog. Freewrite about a detail, expanding its role and importance, perhaps making it the center of its own piece. Then decide if it can take a more important role in the piece in progress.

PROMPT: If you’re stuck on a piece, try to find which detail “dots the dragon’s eye.” Which one brings the piece to life — or could bring it to life if it were more prominently or more effectively placed. If you can’t find that “dot,” ask yourself which detail definitely could not be cut. If you had to keep only one, which would it be?

PROMPT: Freewrite about a place, either one in a piece you’re writing or one you may write someday. Load on the details. Then step back and choose three or four of the most telling ones, the ones that evoke the essence of the place. Cut most of the others and subordinate those you do decide to keep while giving prominence to those few details that are most important.

PROMPT: Write a scene in which characters are not confronting an issue between them. They’re discussing something else. For example, a married couple has a running feud about moving to a new city. She wants to go; he wants to stay. But rather than argue about it, they talk about plans for this year’s garden. Use a detail to suggest the undercurrent. For our couple’s scene, you could use a gardening catalogue that has arrived in the mail.

PROMPT: Read a piece you’ve written and cut five details from it, ones you feel aren’t essential to the piece. Then add five details to it. How has it changed? To extend the exercise, choose two details that are mentioned only once or twice and find ways to mention them at least two more times. How has their meaning changed within the piece?