Details are the small particulars that make up the whole, the discrete components that define, describe and individualize. In nonfiction writing, detail is neither invented nor imagined. It is directly observed from real life, the product of attentive and extensive research, the result of being where one needs to be for as long as it takes.

In character development, detail is the reporting of the everyday gestures, habits, manners, mannerisms, style and behavior of a character. What he wears, how she sits in the chair, the way he decorates his office, what kind of pet she owns, how he gulps his coffee, how she runs red lights — these are observed details that can offer small insights into character. The picture they help paint can be extraordinary, but the details themselves are not. They are ordinary — not ordinary as in flat or boring, but ordinary as in everyday, common and customary — the way people are in their normal, daily lives, how they act and the choices they make that are reflected in their style and manner.

I think it’s interesting, and a little odd, that this approach to detail comes not from journalism, which purports to tell the stories of our lives, but from another discipline entirely: anthropology. It is anthropologists who spend the time observing people as they live, attempting to understand character and culture not by asking questions but by noticing and recording the particulars, the daily rituals and customs. Journalists often plop into people’s lives and ask them to explain themselves (in quotable quotes and sound bites, if you please). Cultural anthropologists, on the other hand, approach fieldwork as listeners rather than talkers. They do not ask their subjects: “Who are you?” “What do you believe in?” “How do you live?” The people — the characters in this anthropological story, if you will — are understood, over time, based on the sum of the details of their lives. We writers have much to learn from this tradition.