Being a Better Writer: Empty Details

Today's topic is a bit of the inverse of the one I wrote last week. I didn't intend for this at first—in fact I had no plans for an inverse article when I sat down last Monday; the appearance of this one is entirely coincidence brought about by something I was reading.

But coincidence aside, it's a worthwhile topic to discuss, because it's something that can crop up all to easily in fiction ... even among experienced authors. For example, while I tend to notice empty details occurring pretty regularly among young writers, I also occasionally find them in finished works as well (one such notice being the result of today's topic). Given all the time that I've spent on this blog discussing the importance of little details and how we can feed things out to our readers, I feel that it's important, then, to discuss the inverse: empty details.

Empty details are the result of trying to add too much detail to one's writing. It can stem from a number of sources. Maybe the author in question feels that the isn't enough going on and tries to liven a scene up by adding more detail. Maybe they're worried that their dialogue seems sparse (this is one area where this issue seems to crop up most often). Or maybe they're just trying to reach an arbitrary word count for the day.

It could be any number of reasons. Well, the end result is that they fill their scene with these empty details.

Right, I've used that term a couple of times now. What do I mean by it?

You can read the rest of this post at Unusual Things