Use specifics.
Read these two short readings and then answer a question.
Here is the first:
The mendacious doctor walked stealthily through the door. He came toward me contemptuously. His look was full of misanthropic malice. Fear filled the room. Sweat ran down my cheeks as he turned silently toward me, came near, held up a long needle and got ready to give me the much-feared injection.
Here is the second:
The doctor clicked the door lock behind him, flipped off one set of overhead, fluorescent lights, furrowed his brow, and then, eyes wide open, grimaced. He clicked on his headlamp and snapped his latex clothes. He stopped, chuckled, smiled thinly and cracked his knuckles before drumming them on the stainless steel countertop. I saw three large, fresh drops of blood on the collar of his white lab coat. He took 10 steps toward me, raised one eyebrow, winked and placed the point of a 10-inch needle at the soft spot beneath my lowest right rib.
So, which of these two readings invites more fear?
If you are like most people, it is the second one. Why? The second creates a better picture in your mind’s eye, and the first’s sentences veer into subtle fiction and cliché. The second excels and creates a better picture because the second example uses more specifics.
Effective writers use specifics. Specifics paint a better picture, and specifics capture attention. To illustrate, let’s look at what has widely been regarded as the worst opening to a novel in the history of the English language – from novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton in his book George Clifton.
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
“Through one of the obscurest quarters of London, and among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the police, a man, evidently of the lowest orders, was wending his solitary way. He stopped twice or thrice at different shops and houses of a description correspondent with the appearance of the quartier in which they were situated, and tended inquiry for some article or another which did not seem easily to be met with. All the answers he received were couched in the negative; and as he turned from each door he muttered to himself, in no very elegant phraseology, his disappointment and discontent.”16
Why did this passage become infamous? This opening reeks of cliché. It seems forced. It overdoses on adjectives and adverbs. It fails to paint a clear picture. It drifts into inaccuracy — because flames should burn or ebb not “struggle, something impossible for an inanimate flame, ” nor should they “become agitated,” an emotional state. Yet Bulwer-Lytton’s key problem transcends these. The lack of clear specifics comprises his central problem and causes the others.
Look at some of these vague concepts he used: “occasional intervals,” “obscurest,” “evidently of the lowest orders,” “correspondence of the appearance of the quartier in which,” “no very elegant phraseology” and “some article or another that did not seem so easily met with.” This vague lack of specifics muddies the novel’s opening.
Consider a possible rewrite with more specifics and fewer vague terms:
One inch of rain fell in sheets across London one early March night, puddling on and poring over gray, brick-and-gravel streets. Violent wind gusts rattled the old, slate housetops and extinguished yellow candles ebbing in the dark.
One man pushed his way through Hoxton on the east end, moving between and huddling under the thatch overhangs of pubs and opium dens. Little relief came. Rain rivulets streamed from each building corner and fell toward him at each wind gust, drenching his charred, flaxen jacket and running along his bald, scarred head into his blue eyes. Water streamed from his scruffed, gray chin.
At one bar, he pried the door open to ask for a hat. At another, five minutes later, he pleaded for an umbrella. Both owners said a simple no and pushed their doors closed against the storm. Each time, the man turned his head down, squinted his eyes tight, shivered his shoulders with a cough and trudged on.
“I will get them,” he muttered. “I will remember.”
Specifics paint a better picture. Tension emerges in this rewrite.
With specifics, you should be precise, as though you were a careful scientist describing the result of an experiment. You should avoid words like very, really, totally, nearly, approximately and extremely.
Futhermore:
- Rather than saying colorful, you should say red or cardinal or vermillion or gray.
- Rather than writing tall, you should write 6-foot-2-inches.
- Rather than exclaiming hot, you should exclaim 104 degrees.
- Rather than blurting beautiful, you should blurt the color of a sunset or the shape of a hand.
- Rather than declaring a city, you should declare a specific one, like London or Rexburg.
- Rather than saying putrid, you should describe the gray color and yellow ooze bringing the smell.
Specifics begin with clear nouns and adjectives, but good verbs help too. Crawling is better than walking slowly. Reaching is better than trying hard. Touring is better than “going on a vacation for an education.”
Beginners tend to overwrite. They use big, thesaurus-derived adjectives. They show off. Here is a deliberate example of poor writing from the great expert on writing William Strunk Jr.: “A period of inclement weather set in.”17 His purposeful overwriting caused problems. Why? Inclement in Siberia may be nice in Idaho. And how long is the period? Five minutes? Five months? A word like inclement slows readers, forcing them to find the meaning. So, the more advanced writer makes things clear and neglects showing off. Something like this: “Rain fell for six days.”
Even when writers become clear, becoming more specific helps. A beginner might write:
“It was a cold day.”
Someone with more experience might paint a picture:
“We walked across the Gibbon Meadow of Yellowstone as six feet of snow crunched beneath our feet. The thermometer dropped to 20-below just as the sun turned orange and descended below the horizon. I saw breath of huddled elk. Half-inch icicles hung from my mustache. I spat, and it shattered when it hit the ground.” (Apologies to Jack London, but notice how I never needed to say “cold.”)
The true work of writing comes in picking the right detail, the right specific, to convey the right emotion you wish an audience to feel. I learned this principle from a colleague once. She described the travail and strength of a young couple trying for a baby through in-vitro fertilization. Procedures produced pain and raw emotion. My colleague wished for readers to feel empathy and to admire this couple. She found a pivotal moment in her story and described a doctor who walked into the exam room to extract an egg from this woman’s ovary — using a 12-inch needle.18
Wow. Twleve-inches. The difference between “long” and “12 inches” jars readers. This example helped me see an essential writing truth: Specifics evoke emotion. And there is this too: Long to me might be short to you. With vagueness also comes misunderstanding. Specifics make things clear.
I applied this knowledge when I once wrote an article about the death of my father, who died when I was 10 years old. With my first draft, I stumbled toward vague cliché. I wrote,
“My father was a family man.”
As I rewrote, words of another colleague echoed in my ears, inviting me to find more detail. So, I asked myself, what image shows my audience that Dad believed in family – without really saying it directly? I came up with something like this:
“The paramedics pushed his gurney down the blue-carpeted hallway past 25 golden-framed school pictures of my four siblings and me.”
I think this second version captures the loss and pain better than the first – through specifics. Notice how I let my audience infer that my Dad was a family man without saying that fact directly.
Humility emerges with specifics. When you tell a reader a vague description, you force him or her to react to your meaning of the described events. When you instead avoid vague terms and rely on specifics, you allow the reader to create and to choose his or her own meaning from the specific image you create, as the example of my father’s death illustrates. This choice provides more pleasure to your reader.
For example, in a story you might see a character worried or afraid. The writer can either say,
“The person was worried.”
OR a writer can describe the reaction to fear, such as:
“A person shivered after seeing a crime scene.”
The description implies this fear, but it lets the reader determine the meaning of the shiver. A tight writer also lets dialogue convey more of the emotion or meaning of the shiver:
“I felt fear,” she said.
So, paint a specific picture for best results. Successful writers convey those right details. They let the readers insert the meanings of the picture they see.
A nine-inch needle or 25 pictures on a wall captures pain, sacrifice, longing, even love without really saying those emotions directly. These examples illustrate the point of specific writing.
To be sure, some writers use vague words, but they follow the vagueness with a definition, as the following example does, adapted from an article I remember seeing in The Wall Street Journal:
“Disney was so studious about details that it once stopped all other construction in one of the ship’s playrooms until a painter got an eyelash on a wall’s cartoon character correct.”
(For what it is worth, many communication writers know that the essence of journalism remains fairness, even objectivity. Specifics keep communicators from words that convey too much opinion in a news story. Rather than saying: A large earthquake hit causing a tragedy, they rely on specifics, such as: “A 6.0 earthquake struck, injuring 14.”)
Your compliments become more meaningful and memorable with this principle.
Rather than:
You are nice guy. Thanks.
Say something like:
I prayed two minutes before you came with those macaroons. I asked God if someone would come to visit. You answered my prayers.
Your sales pitches become more persuasive and effective with this principle.
Rather than:
Our pizza is delicious.
Say something like:
We use hickory smoke to barbecue our pizza, and we serve it fresh from the brick oven with vine-ripened Roma tomatoes, two pounds of aged mozzarella and 50 slices of Tuscan sausage.
Your speeches grow more moving and emotional with active use of this principle.
Rather than:
We should let freedom become important to us.
Say, as Dr. King did, something like:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain in Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain in Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every mountain and molehill of Mississippi.19
By specifics, think of everything from color to number to sizes and shapes. Smells can evoke memory and power. Make comparisons using metaphors or similes, but only when words fail to convey the picture more accurately. Specifics expel metaphors. Specifics make movies more powerful and their stories more emotionally effective. The details in imagery and video move a viewer in the same way details move a reader in writing. Make sure you attend to detail in your writing as great moviemakers do in their cinema. Remember the water in the glass in Jurassic Park? Remember the breathing in Sixth Sense? Remember Potato Head’s arms coming off in Toy Story? Writing expert William Strunk Jr. said,
“If those who have studied the art of writing are in accord on any one point, it is this, the surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by being definite, specific and concrete.”20
Here follows a more detailed example of making things more specific and the power that follows:
“After an agitating experience that caused her true stress, the woman with an eating disorder ate a lot of junk food and then left the room.”
I mean for this example to convey respect and empathy to those who suffer with eating disorders. The vagueness in words such as “agitating” or “true stress” fails to fully convey the desired empathy, however. Let me become more specific, showing you this woman’s tender feelings in the days before she might have sought help while avoiding most vague terms:
“After a 15-minute argument with her boyfriend over a lost ticket stub, Jane Adams opened the Frigidaire, ate nine pieces of German chocolate cake, and walked across the gray, slate-tiled hallway to the white bathroom. She locked the door, flicked on a Whitney Houston song, knelt and leaned over the toilet, heaving three times. She stood, squinted hard, looked in the mirror and wiped a trickle of blood from her upper lip. She sprayed three squirts of Febreze Morning Mist air freshener. “And I will always love you,” the song said.
Did I succeed in helping you see her plight? Do you feel more empathy? If I did, the result came from being specific.
Simlarly, a poorly told joke evades specific details, even though it might still elicit a chuckle:
A man got sick one day and took to his bed. His wife called the kids together when he did not get any better. They had a wake for him.
While the kids talked to their Dad, she made a dessert down in the kitchen. Soon, the man rose from his bed and went downstairs to the kitchen, wanting to grab one of the desserts. She told him not to have one because she was cooking for the funeral.
A well-told joke, however, includes great details, even though it may take a little longer to rumble to the punch line:
Old Sven collapsed one chill November Saturday after chopping maple wood near his house in the birch forest, five miles outside of Eagle River, Wisconsin. He arose, sauntered home and changed into his flannel, tractor-print pajamas. It grew quiet and his breathing became labored. So, Sven lay down on the plaid-quilted single bed in the green guest room. His wife, Lena, tended to his care. He said nothing and sipped only a cup of water or two. On the evening of the sixth day, Lena looked out at the Big Dipper and then glanced back at Sven’s furrowed brow. She sighed and prepared, touching his cheek. She found the phone mounted on the wall near the Kelvinator washing machine and dialed their three children, Ole, Karl and Ingrid.
Over the next hours, they drove north from Milwaukee and Madison, gathering for a wake.
Each, in turn, came to the guest room, sat down on the paint-streaked wooden chair in the corner and told Sven of love and of old times. He nodded and mumbled quietly.
As the children talked and cried, Lena retreated to the kitchen and baked three-inch tarts with peach and cherry filling. She swirled a flaky butter crust across the fruit. As the tarts cooled, she dolloped a tablespoon of sugared, whipped cream on the golden crust.
Miracle of Miracles!
Sven smelled the tarts and placed his legs on the floor. He sat, stood and wobbled out the door. His gait grew longer. His pace faster and more sure.
Sven ambled through the hall, down the pine stairs, across the orange, shag-carpeted living room, around the red dining room table and into the brown, paneled kitchen. He halted, stood taller and reached for the biggest peach tart.
A wooden spoon rattled across Sven’s knuckles. Whack! Lena pointed and shook her index finger two inches from his face. “No!” She said. “Those are for the funeral!”
Part of the joy of the second telling comes from the picture the reader makes in his or her mind. Sven seems like a malingerer to some. Lena seems strict to others. Their marriage seems rocky to still more. Or maybe he is just sick, and the family experienced a cherry miracle. The reader creates meaning this way, adding to the amusement in individual ways.
Part of the prophet Isaiah’s genius as a writer comes through his use of specifics. In some chapters, he chooses terms like: “rejoice in Rezin and Remaliah’s son;” “Lift up the voice, O daughter of Gallim; cause it to be heard unto Laish, O poor Anathoth. Madmenah is removed; the inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves to flee.” These places and people are specifics, but they faded from memory. They confuse us because we know nothing of them today. But if Isaiah talked of Barack Obama or George W. Bush rather than Rezin and Remaliah and if he spoke of specific cities like Dallas or Orlando rather than Anathoth or Madmenah, we’d see his prophetic, specific voice.
When Isaiah wished to warn of the dangers of vanity, he described how vanity looks specifically in 2nd Nephi 13:
Moreover, the Lord saith: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet.
Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts.
In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments, and cauls, and round tires like the moon;
The chains and the bracelets, and the mufflers;
The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the ear-rings;
The rings, and nose jewels;
The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping-pins;
The glasses, and the fine linen, and hoods, and the veils.
And it shall come to pass, instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle, a rent; and instead of well set hair, baldness; and instead of a stomacher, a girding of sackcloth; burning instead of beauty.21
I sometimes replace “changable suits of apparel” and “wimples” in this passage with modern fashion names like Abercrombie or Hilfiger, and the point Isaiah illustrates blossoms to life even more for me.
Isaiah also prophesied in a time of crisis. His nation faced an invasion from Assyria, an ancient-day superpower of torture and terror. Isaiah wished to paint a hopeful future for his people. He turned their minds with specifics to the Millennium in 2nd Nephi 21.
This poetic passage stirs our souls even today: (Cockatrice and asp are poisonous snakes, by the way.)
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’s den.22
So. How do you know how to become more specific. Look for these two yellow flags to help you find places to become more specific:
Flag #1: Watch for adverbs. Adverbs modify verbs. Most adverbs end in “ly.” Simply look for words that end with “ly,” and you have an adverb.
(Oops! Do you see the example? Simply. Omit it. … Look for words. Search for words. Find words.)
It sort of works like this. You remember how some people complain when a writer or speaker complains about the adverb “literally” when the person meant “figuratively.” They complain when a speaker says, “The event made me literally jump to moon,” when “The event figuratively made me jump to the moon.”
But to a more experienced writer, the problem becomes neither of these. The problem emerges with the wrong verb altogether. “The event blasted my emotions.” or “I jumped, waved and collapsed during the event.” Omitting the adverb helped focus on specifics that showed.
Therefore, omit the adverbs and replace the verbs with a stronger, more specific verb, as shown in these examples:
Walked slowly.
Crawled.
Hardly worked.
Malingered.
Acted stressfully.
Shuddered.
Flag #2: Watch for adjectives. Adjectives often come before nouns and describe or modify them. Look for adjectives. In a sentence that says, “The colorful horse ran,” colorful is the adjective. Very always signals trouble.
When the adjective feels vague, it fails. When the adjective passes judgment, as adjectives such as “good,” “bad,” “terrible,” “rare” or “ugly” do, the action slows. Replace the vague or judgmental adjective with a more specific and neutral one instead. Let your readers see by omitting the first word in these pairs and then by replacing each with one more specific:
Colorful.
Red.
Very green.
Emerald.
Big.
Two thousand pounds.
Long.
Four hundred yards.
Distant.
One light year.
Rare.
One in 10.5 million.
Strange.
Orange plaid.
This writing principle requires more than finding adjectives and adverbs, however. This principle involves looking for places in a story or article where a specific could convey more emotion or importance and adding them in the right place, as I wished to do when I rewrote the story of my father’s death.
A colleague once told me: “When you have enough detail, that’s when you need to add more.” Details make meaning, emotion and impact. Use them more frequently as you rewrite.
The following example illustrates this power. This true, mostly, story comes from my life. This first version comprises a decent effort to convey this simple story. Then, let’s examine it to improve it:
One of the greatest experiences of my life, which really changed my life, was a trip to Shoshone Lake in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, in July 2005. I remember especially one night when we were camping out by the campsite called Tranquility up there on the southwest part of the Lake, looking toward that cool geyser basin, four miles away.
The sun was quickly going down over the horizon to the west. I looked at the lake, and it seemed to be glowing dimly in a reddish tone. There were hardly any waves and the lake seemed, appropriately, quieter than it is earlier in the afternoon.
Then, the sun did what it does every day. It fell joyfully behind the horizon, leaving one cloud that was glowing dimly and all orange in a twilight sky. I heard the call of a pair of black birds called Crebes. When they call, it is a deep, mendacious, even foreboding, sound in their throats – sort of a warning that the day is ending.
As I went down slowly toward the beach of small, sharp, dark pebbles of obsidian and basalt, I saw a large rock. The gray rock was the size of an old-fashioned card table. I decided to sit on it. I sat on the top of the rock for a few minutes.
But, I decided, sitting and watching the growing dimness and that lake with no ripples wasn’t really good enough for the moment. I choose to reverently get down from the rock and get appropriately onto my knees. I next closed my eyes. I prayed inside my head. I said in my head, “Thank you for this beauty and for my family.” I felt tears of gratitude quickly fill my eyes.
I felt something important that night that made me believe sincerely that there was a God in heaven. The experience changed me. I walked back slowly to my Coleman tent. With my hand, covered in dirt, I wiped carefully a couple of tears away from the spot on my cheek just below my eye. I unzipped quietly the tent and got down onto my knees and went into the tent. I enjoyed the moment. Shoshone Lake is beautiful to me.
Now, let’s evaluate this paragraph by paragraph, marking some yellow-flags:
One of the greatest experiences of my life, which really changed my life, was a trip to Shoshone Lake in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, in July 2005.
We can change this with a more specific verb.
A trip to Yellowstone in 2005 transformed my life.
I remember especially one night when we were camping out by the campsite called Tranquility up there on the southwest part of the Lake, looking toward that cool geyser basin, three miles away.
We can make this more specific. Exactly where did we camp? What does the camp look like? Can we more carefully describe the geyser basin?
We set our camp amid the ponderosa pine 30 feet above the southwest side of Shoshone Lake at Tranquility Camp in Yellowstone’s backcountry. The Shoshone Geyser Basin spewed steam three miles to the west across the water.
The sun was quickly going down over the horizon to the west. I looked at the lake, and it seemed to be glowing dimly in a reddish tone. There were hardly any waves and the lake seemed, appropriately, quieter than it is in the afternoon.
Then, the sun did what it does every day. It fell joyfully behind the horizon, leaving one cloud that was glowing dimly and all orange in a twilight sky. I heard the call of a pair of black birds called Crebes. When they call, it is a deep, mendacious, even foreboding, sound in their throats – sort of like a warning that the day is ending.
We can add specific colors and names to tighten the passage. We can do so without stopping the flow describing Crebes.
The sun set the second night, leaving a yellow glow near the horizon. One orange cloud reflected off the still, silver lake. I heard the throaty, low call of two white-crested Crebes flying nearby.
As I went down slowly toward the beach of small, sharp, dark pebbles of obsidian and basalt, I saw a large rock. The gray rock was the size of an old-fashioned card table. I decided to sit on it. I sat on the top of the rock for a few minutes.
We can use better verbs to tighten the narrative, and we can find more specifics to make it more enjoyable.
As the others slept, I slouched down the path toward the black gravel beach, picked up a pebbled piece of obsidian and skipped it three times near shore. I perched myself alone on a gray, table-sized rock for 10 minutes, cleared my thoughts and sought peace. The stillness grew.
I chose to reverently get down from the rock and get appropriately onto my knees. I next closed my eyes. I prayed inside my head. I said in my head, “Thank you for this beauty and for my family.” I felt tears of gratitude quickly fill my eyes.
We can cut cliché. “Tears of gratitude” suggests cliché. Quickly overwrites. We can spend a little more time finding details and describing the scene, cutting adverbs too. Rather than saying, “I prayed,” the following example shows the exact, specific prayer.
But I wanted more. I climbed down from my rock in the twilight, slid to my knees, touched my hands to the water and splashed my face. I closed my eyes and said inside, “Thank you, Father, for this beauty. Thank you for my family. Please forgive me of my sins. And, I know you can, please tell my dad up there that I love him and miss him. If that’s OK.”
I felt something important that night that made me believe sincerely that there was a God in heaven. The experience changed me. I walked back slowly to my Coleman tent. With my hand, covered in dirt, I wiped carefully a couple of tears away from the spot on my cheek just below my eye. I unzipped quietly the tent, and got down onto my knees and went into the tent. I enjoyed the moment. Shoshone Lake is beautiful to me.
We can add more specifics and cut vagueness. Rather than end with a summary statement, we can choose to add a detail that leaves the piece with honest emotion so readers can infer the meaning of the story. We can show, not tell.
I stretched, limped back up the trail to camp and approached my six-foot, blue Coleman tent. I paused and reached my hand toward my face. I saw dirt under my fingernails and glimpsed the smudged outline of a fingerprint lined in gray. I blinked a tear and wiped it away before it ran down my cheek. I paused again, unzipped the tent, and crawled into my brown sleeping bag. I said, again, “Thank you, Father,” and lay, smiling, eyes wide open, for more than an hour in the growing dark.
As you examine this finished version without an interruption, note the shorter length. A more specific approach often cuts words, especially as you focus on verbs:
A trip to Yellowstone in 2005 transformed my life.
We set our camp amid the ponderosa pine 30 feet above the southwest side of Shoshone Lake at Tranquility Camp in Yellowstone’s backcountry. The Shoshone Geyser Basin spewed steam three miles to the west across the water.
The sun set the second night, leaving a yellow glow near the horizon. One orange cloud reflected off the still, silver lake. I heard the throaty, low call of two white-crested Crebes flying nearby.
As the others slept, I slouched down the path toward the black gravel beach, picked up a pebbled piece of obsidian and skipped it three times near shore. I perched myself alone on a table-sized rock for 10 minutes, cleared my thoughts and sought peace. The stillness grew.
But I wanted more. I climbed down from my rock in the twilight, slid to my knees, touched my hands to the water, and splashed my face. I closed my eyes and said inside, “Thank you, Father, for this beauty. Thank you for my family. Please forgive me of my sins. And, I know you can, please tell my dad up there that I love him and miss him. If that’s OK.”
I stretched, limped back up the trail to camp and approached my six-foot, blue Coleman tent. I paused and reached my hand toward my face. I saw dirt under my fingernails and glimpsed the smudged outline of a fingerprint lined in gray. I blinked a tear and wiped it away before it ran down my cheek. I paused again, unzipped the tent, and crawled into my brown sleeping bag. I said, again, “Thank you, Father,” and lay, smiling, eyes wide open, for more than an hour in the growing dark.
This powerful principle of choosing specifics can improve your writing. You can follow it. As you use better specifics, your writing will create pictures in your readers’ minds, will become more humble and will improve persuasion.
This principle requires work and thought, but the result is prose that is more clear and powerful.
If you would write to serve, learn to be specific, rather than vague. Learn to show rather than tell.