the matter of detail
I recently had a conversation with a friend who wondered how much she would need to know about an eighteenth-century ship in order to use it as a setting. I’m also reading a novel set during the Second World War. These two happenings made me start thinking about the use of detail in storytelling - the bugbear of historical novelists (as well as all other novelists).
I was stalled for years - really, years - in writing my first novel because I didn’t think I understood enough about the setting, the ambience of Henrician England. Political developments? Sure. Law? Naturally. The way an ordinary room was laid out? No way. And so I sat, and stewed. THE FIDELITY TRIAL is mainly set at Greenwich Palace, of which only a horseshoe now remains, and I despaired of ever understanding enough about it to write convincingly.
This, amongst a few other character weaknesses (my character, not my characters’, if you get my meaning), is the reason that THE FIDELITY TRIAL took six years (count ‘em) to write.
My feeling is this: you have to do your research. I say this in an apocalyptic way but I’ve never met a writer who doesn’t love research. It’s a question of the material being to hand. You have to know what you’re talking about in order to keep your reader’s suspension of disbelief intact.
By the same token, though, I’m really not enjoying this WWII novel, and it’s because of historical detail. There is absolutely too much of it. Every room a character walks into has to be described down to the last deal table and the flickering lightbulb over the bathroom sink. I keep getting the feeling that there is an amazing story in this book somewhere, but I can’t get to it because I’m constantly mucking through detail.
I notice this because it’s my problem, too - my endless challenge to talk less about the history and more about the characters. The truth is you have to know - in any setting, not just a historical one - a lot more than you write down. You have to give your reader the knee-jerk feeling that this story is happening here, at this time. The fact, for example, that the Vice-Chamberlain handled Elizabeth I’s gifts at the New Year is not important. It’s important that I know, but it’s not important that the reader be bashed over the head with it.
What it comes down to, I think, is that when you’re writing, this is your Greenwich Palace, your London, your eighteenth-century ship. Know enough to put the scaffolding up, and then use that most horrid of all tools: your imagination. If you’re convinced enough of what you imagine, your reader will be convinced too.
I understand that there are some novels in which the setting itself is a character - and to be fair, in this novel I’m reading and not enjoying, London during the Blitz is a character. But just as too much physical description of a character not only stalls your narrative but robs your reader of his or her own imagination, the trick is to put in the right kind of detail, not an avalanche of it thrown at the wall to see what will stick. I do not need to know how I might have gotten from Grosvenor Square to Monument Station in 1944. Or if I do, I don’t need to be told more than once.
The constant criticism of my work - from my agent and from valued critique partners - goes like this: ‘too much exposition’; ‘we don’t need to know this’; ‘get back to the story’. There is always a reason, if you’re a historical novelist, that you’ve set your story in such a place and time. That reason needs to bleed through the narrative, but it cannot stop the narrative. And that’s what too much detail does.
There are some writers who weave detail into prose with such deftness that I’m really left wanting to drop my pen and end it all. They can tell you exactly what a character ate over a five-course meal, and there’s enough going on that the foods add to the story in their own peculiar way. Nine times in ten, if you think you have that kind of deftness, you’re wrong. I hate cutting things out of a first draft (just in case, you know), but the second draft - the Sober Second Thought, as I call it - is where I have to be ready to wield my machete. Because I do have too much exposition, too much minutia about politics and customs, and while they interest me madly, they don’t interest the great majority of people. It’s enough that I know: I needn’t make others suffer too. And the biggest problem is that my detail about shit people don’t care about, on occasion, doesn’t hide my story so much as obliterate it entirely.
A new observation: if you read one page of prose and can’t figure out whether it’s a novel or a history text, you have a problem.
I know writers who chop detail from second drafts, and writers who need to add detail to second drafts. Which one are you? How do you handle setting? Does your reader need to know just enough to be there, or are there occasions on which he/she needs to know more? Less? I really am asking for my own purposes. As readers, what kind of detail puts you in the moment?
Till next time &c &c.
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September 1st, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Great post! When I read historical fiction I love getting a small history lesson as I go, but too much would maybe be too much. I want to know just enough to set the scene and be able to put the book down feeling virtuous and smart. Good luck finding that balance!
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September 1st, 2009 at 2:09 pm
I read that book (if it is the right one) and I thought it was awful, though I loved her others. Evidently she wrote it front to back and then switched it from back to front to disguise the absence of a story. I think all the detail would be quite lovely if it were backing something stronger up, and not just prose for prose’s sake.
Evidently her latest is just as bad. Sad, because I do think she’s brilliant.
Unless we are thinking of two different books, in which case, carry on.
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September 1st, 2009 at 6:58 pm
This is really interesting. On the whole, I think your statement that the genre of a work should always be evident, even in a page of material, is probably true, especially in terms of marketability.
And yet: one of my most talented writer friends from my MA program writes stories that are fictional but so dense and detailed that they seem, at first, to be nonfiction. Sometimes I have a hard time getting into his work, but when he really pulls it off, it’s just amazing — he wrote the best short story I read during that program. Exception to the rule and all that, I guess.
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September 2nd, 2009 at 10:48 am
Lisa - I’m always delighted when I find out that something I’ve written has taught someone something, almost as delighted as I am when I find out that I’ve moved someone. The moving, I think, is more important, though, and if the setting helps that, I’ve done my job.
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September 2nd, 2009 at 10:51 am
Lucy - YES, that’s it!! I am so disappointed because one of her other books gave me such a life-changing moment that I wrote her a squee fangirl letter. And your intelligence is good - the next book isn’t any better. She’s such a talent, and such a special blotch on the literary landscape - I hope she retreats back to the 19th century in her next book. That seems to be where she flourishes. She has such a unique ability to put human beings into historical settings - so many authors concentrate too hard on the history and forget the people - that it was really sad to realise how hard I was trying to like this book. Hoping for better soon.
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September 2nd, 2009 at 10:54 am
Katharine - I believe that there are people who can do what you say; I think of Evelyn Waugh and Michel Faber and their sense of detail and that’s when I want to give up. I would love to write dense detail and forget all about paragraph breaks, because when it’s done beautifully that is my favourite kind of writing. But I’m realising - for myself, anyway - that I have to get the story down first, otherwise I’ll forget it entirely. If I had my way, all my books would end up looking something like My Dinner With Andre and I imagine no one but me would like them…
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Katharine Beutner Reply:
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Based on my response to my workshop friend’s writing, I might well like it if you dispensed with paragraph breaks! But I totally get what you’re saying, and I think this post sets out some really good guidelines for thinking about how to fit in detail.
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September 2nd, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Great post, Sarah! I’ve always thought that writing historical fiction would be hard for just that reason: the research doesn’t scare me (though it’s certainly far more rigorous for historical, and having never tried it I don’t know if I’d truly be up to the task)… but I struggle with weaving in just the right amount of detail even with my completely-made-up worlds. I can’t imagine how much harder it is to find that balance in historical fiction.
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September 2nd, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Amy - I think historical fiction’s only real trouble (sometimes) is that you come across facts that don’t work with your story when you’re waaaay too far in to back out. (That’s where I am now, anyway.) But then again, I can’t even contemplate the idea of worldbuilding in fantasy without getting the shakes, so…
And Katharine, I don’t necessarily think the genre need be apparent, but the reader should know, from eyeing a page, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, whether it’s telling a story or stating a series of facts.
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September 2nd, 2009 at 9:56 pm
[…] Eve Kelly on “the matter of detail” in writing historical […]
September 3rd, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Awesome post, Sarah. Unfortunately, it’s exactly that sort of description that stops me cold from even contemplating writing an historical. Love reading them. But writing? Don’t think I could do it. I wouldn’t feel comfortable until I felt like an expert on every aspect of the period in question, and the amount of research needed for that to happen… well, I’d never get around to writing. So I’ll stick with fantasy and appreciate all the more writers like you.
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