Etude | Autumn 2002 | On Craft



	Any factual, closely observed detail about a character might be considered “realistic detail.” She walked with a slight limp. He had a thin, pink scar across his forehead. She wore gray slacks. He had a leather couch in his office. Realistic detail is straightforward. It is not adjective-laden descriptive prose but simple statement. It is not symbolic or, in itself, revelatory. What gives it power is the sum of its parts, the accumulation, through the course of a story, of particulars. No single detail may be startling, but the story itself — and particularly the character or characters in the story — begin to take on texture, depth and nuance because of the accumulation of detail. Realistic detail is what it is. Value-revealing detail, or what Tom Wolfe years ago called “status detail,” goes further, adding an important layer of meaning. It is a detail that reveals something about what the character’s values, about what has meaning in his or her life, about the character’s character. The idea here is that the choices people make — about clothing, furnishings, cars, pets, manners, behavior — reveal underlying values. If a man is bald, that is a realistic detail, assuming he lost his hair naturally. If he is bald because he shaves his head, then his baldness is a value-revealing detail, a choice he made about how he wanted to appear to the world. If he’s bald and he undergoes a $10,000 hair implant operation, this is also a value-revealing detail. If he is short, and you note it, this is realistic detail. If he wears lifts in his shoes — a choice that reveals his concern about his height, perhaps his lack of self-confidence — that is a value-revealing detail. Value-revealing detail speaks for itself. Some value-revealing detail is quite obvious. A man drives a Mercedes. A woman keeps a NordicTrack machine in the corner of her office. These consumer choices, noted by the aware writer and used in a story, help reveal character, which is good. But they don’t challenge the reader to think very much. More interesting would be if the backseat of his Mercedes was three inches deep in cat toys or if she set down her triple mocha latte with whipped cream on the slats of her NordicTrack. I am not suggesting that details like these be fabricated, but rather that, when they exist, they be noticed and highlighted. It is sometimes the little quirks and inconsistencies of people’s lives that say the most about them.