by Bill Kirton
I have
enormous respect for Elmore Leonard and I’m forever quoting his 10 ‘rules’ for writers.
They really do make sense, especially his exhortation to ‘leave
out the part that readers tend to skip’ and get rid of anything that ‘sounds like writing’. But, while I
agree in principle with rules 8 ‘Avoid detailed descriptions of characters’
and 9 ‘Don’t go into great detail describing places and things’, I think
detail, even in descriptions, is a useful writer’s tool.
Whenever I give talks or workshops on writing short
stories, I stress how great an impact you can create with details, and the
thing I quote isn’t a story but a song. It’s Ode to Billy-Joe – the Bobby Gentry hit from what feels like 2
centuries ago. I’m sure you know it but, just in case there are some who don’t,
it tells the story of a small, domestic tragedy (Billy-Joe McAllister has
jumped off the Tallahatchie
Bridge
Poppa said to Momma as he passed around the
black-eyed peas,
‘Billy-Joe never had a lick of sense. Pass
the biscuits please’.
It’s the
apparently trivial details of the ‘black-eyed peas’ and the ‘pass the biscuits’
that make the suicide so poignant. They make it real. Stendhal, who figures
quite often in things I say about writing and novels, called them ‘petits faits
vrais’ (little true facts) and said they give authenticity to a story.
I’m sure
Mr Leonard would agree that there are plenty of exceptions which disprove his
‘rules’. His first, for example is ‘Never open a book with weather’. But the
first words of Bleak House are ‘Implacable November weather’. Then,
after brief mentions of muddy streets and smoke, comes the wonderful (and
often-quoted) passage about fog:
‘Fog
everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where
it rolls deified among the tiers
of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of
collier-brigs; fog lying out on the
yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small
boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the
firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the
afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog
cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice
boy on deck.’
That’s much
more than weather. The first time I read (or heard) it was at school, when
football (and not even girls and certainly not literature) was all I cared
about, but it’s stayed with me – its rhythms, its sinister threats, its
oppressiveness – and all deriving from its visual impact. Detailed descriptions
for their own sake get in the way. They may be beautiful sunsets, wonderful
vistas across the glens, tumbling seas or simply navy-blue serge trousers and
waistcoats, but if they hold up the pace or keep the people out of the picture,
they’re intrusions. But if you use them consciously, deliberately, they don’t
just have an effect on characters, they can create them, too.
