When I was in middle school, we had a unit our English teacher called "magnifying the moment." The aim, if memory serves, was to teach us how to use sensory language to enrich our writing. We were handed a bland paragraph devoid of detail, and our job was to fill a page (or more!) with the missing sights, sound, smells and etcetera.
Being the overachieving little punk that I was, I opted to write ten pages of what I'm sure were meaningless, tiresome descriptions. (Worse than anything on this list, I'm sure.) But my efforts garnered praise from the teacher, which was my primary motivator at that age. I didn't have many friends.
The point of this sad little reminiscence is to contextualize the unlearning I had to undertake when I set out writing my first novel. Coming from the world of theatre—where you have an entire design team to fill in the details implicit in your script—I brushed off my old "magnifying the moment" skills and filled pages and pages with unreadable prose.
It was then that I learned a valuable lesson: sensory details should serve the story, not stop it cold.
We've all been there—we're engrossed in our reading, enraptured by the high stakes plotting, desperate to know what happens next...when the author pauses for half a page to inventory the exact geography of a new location or wax poetic about the color of a new character's eyes. I'm sure there are readers who devour that kind of indulgence. But few things will get me to DNF a book (as the kids say) faster than overwritten description. Especially in crime fiction, I think, we just don't have the time.
Of course, we can't jump to the other extreme, leaving out these details entirely. We do want to be able to visualize the world we're stepping into, to hear what the characters hear, to feel what they feel. We do need to know the color of someone's eyes. (Although Rebecca Makkai would beg to differ, in this fascinating post.) The trick is to use those details to push the narrative along.
Am I an expert at this? Not yet! But hope springs eternal. And in the meantime, I'll share a few examples from There's No Murder Like Show Murder that I'm a bit proud of. Moments when I managed to keep the plot moving while still trying to make my middle school English teacher* proud.
"The whole theatre seemed to exhale at once. Actors drifted into the wings, crew members grabbed for their cigarettes, and the house lights had everyone in the auditorium squinting in the sobering glare."
This is an example of a line that had, in an early draft, eaten up close to an entire page. Large group scenes carry the temptation to overwrite, to give everyone their moment in the spotlight. But there are a few key details our narrator notices. And, as it turns out, that was all we needed.
"The cool nighttime breeze welcomed me home, clinking through the wind chimes Mom had hung on the porch years ago."
Perhaps it's too much to squeeze into one sentence—the weather, the time of day, the location, and a little twinge of grief that sets Tasha up for the emotional confrontation to come. But you have to admit, it's economical.
"The whole place smelled like teakwood and opulence, but there was no time to enjoy ourselves."
In early drafts, I spent inordinate amounts of time describing the Harbour Inn, especially since I based it on an actual location in Old Saybrook that is far too fancy for me. There are other details peppered throughout this chapter, but our narrator has other things on her mind. Only the most salient sights, sounds, and smells break through her focus and make their way onto the page.
(Did my first three examples all start with the word "The"? Let's shake things up, shall we?)
"Her dark hair was pulled into a messy bun, and the circles under her eyes looked like they were ready to take over her whole harried face."
Character descriptions, as I mentioned, are tricky for me. But I try to use every detail to reveal something about what the person wants, what they're doing, where they're coming from...something more than we'd see on their driver's license.
"Feeling the gun against my spine and [name redacted]'s fingers digging into my waist, I knew there was no use trying to struggle out of [pronoun redacted] clutches."
This was an opportunity to make danger feel tangible, to use sensory details raise the stakes. The language isn't the most poetic thing I've ever written, but it gets the job done. There's no time for poetry when there's a gun at your back.
"Even the bathroom light caught her at an oblique angle, bathing her face in half-light as she turned my way."
An absolutely blatant ripoff of film noir aesthetics...but let's call it an homage. One specific image that I hope conjures up feelings of intrigue, deceit, and high drama.
Of course, I found a lot of examples that made me cringe. Clumsy metaphors, bland descriptors, and moments I may have magnified too much. But I'm not sharing those. My old teachers may be reading this, after all...
*By the way, the aforementioned English teacher came to my book signing. And yes, her approval means way too much to me, a fully-grown adult.
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