How to choose specific details over generic ones

1 The bottom line

Replace each abstraction or stock phrase with the one or two details only someone who looked would know. Readers can picture and remember a specific thing, but they slide past a generic one.

2 Key takeaways

• Treat the first phrase that arrives as suspect. The easy phrase is usually borrowed from something you have already read.
  • Francine Prose12:32 says the stupidest way of saying a thing is the first to come to mind, so your job is to notice it and look for another.
  • Jonathan Franzen24:57 stops reading a book at the second cliche, because it shows the writer was not attentive.
• Look at the real thing before you reach for words. Specific language comes from attention, not from a bigger vocabulary.
  • Richard Powers1:15:35 went from "tree tree tree tree" to red oak, maple and hornbeam, then to one individual red oak.
  • Henrik Karlsson15:30 stared at a plant and found the white flower was not white and his leaf count was wrong.
• Keep one or two details, not five. Readers build the whole from small pieces.
  • Michael Connelly3:49 described a detective by the groove his teeth left in the earpiece of his glasses.
  • Jonathan Franzen23:29 says a 500 page book may have under a page of weather in total.
• Turn abstractions and numbers into things a reader can picture. No one can form an image of a paradigm.
  • Patrick Radden Keefe38:26 swapped "200 yards" for "two football fields".
  • Harry Dry3:57 found the host remembered Irishman, pitbull and leg of lamb, and forgot "better way" and "seamless transition".
• Choose details that belong to this person or place. Generic details only name a category, such as an era or a genre.
  • Amor Towles31:47 skips the Beatles and asks what the girl in the 1960s kitchen would see: a frozen brick of peas.

A great detail will do the work of you know, 50 shitty sentences.

Wright Thompson, The Barn

2.1 Catch the stock phrase as it lands

The first phrase to arrive is usually borrowed, so treat ease as a warning.

• Distrust sentences that come easily. R.F. Kuang16:24 learned from Verlyn Klinkenborg that how good writing feels has no link to how good it is.
  • Easy words are "volunteer words for volunteer thoughts". They repeat discourse you have already read.
  • When the work feels like teeth-pulling, you are building from scratch. You are more likely to say something nobody has said that way.
  • Francine Prose12:32 can only do two or three hours on a first draft. A friend told her a first draft is a barrage of cliches you must fight off. She says revision is far less tiring.
• Rewrite any sentence you know is rote. Ava Huang2:07 never writes anything she knows is a cliche.
  • When she catches a stock phrase or bit of jargon, she finds another way to say it.
  • She rewords what she reads, which brings her own essence to the idea.
  • Jonathan Franzen24:57 counts borrowed sentiments, ideas and situations as cliches too, not only "white as a sheet". He says he has hit a third cliche within three pages in books by some award-winning writers.
• Cut generalities until only you could have written it. Brandon Stanton13:30 says cliches and generalities put you in a pool of other people and protect you from exposure.
  • In an interview he knows it is going well when someone tells him something he has not heard in 10,000 conversations.
  • He cites Tanqueray's line "I was the only black girl making white girl money". It took about 10 words to show a singular voice.
• Swap abstract nouns for things you can picture. Steven Pinker9:02 says to ask whether your reader can form a mental image from the sentence.
  • Avoid words like level, perspective, framework, paradigm and concept.
  • Harry Dry3:57 writes the vague word at the top of a sheet and asks what he actually means. He rewrites until he lands on something you could drop on your foot.
  • Pinker's example: a sentence about stimulus intensity and reaction really means that kids look longer at a bunny than at a truck.
  • Dry turns "regain fitness" into "getting off the couch" and "running 5K".

2.2 Look at the real thing

Particular words come from attention, so look before you write.

• Alternate looking and writing. Henrik Karlsson15:30 does still-life exercises. He stares at a plant, writes what he sees, then corrects it again and again.
  • Put a sentence down, look at reality, and ask whether the sentence matches. If not, rewrite and look again (David Perell25:39 on Karlsson).
  • The common error is to fuss over adjectives and forget the sentence is meant to represent something. Go back to the thing itself David Perell26:32.
  • Karlsson points to Delacroix's diary, which records yellow and purple in shadows most of us would call black.
• Slow down until a generic thing becomes a particular one. Richard Powers1:15:35 says specific description comes from attention, which he calls the most profound source of meaning.
  • His walk to the office went from "tree tree tree tree" to named species to one red oak doing something the others nearby did not.
  • Paul Harding15:30 says to take in what you are looking at and stay with it long enough to find something. He frames patience as a learnable skill.
  • David Whyte38:03 could name the hawk in the Galapagos in Latin, but the name hid its essence. He says to keep paying attention until your label breaks down.
• Question the thing, or see it from the other side. Robert Greene20:37 says to imagine the bird looking at you.
  • In J. A. Baker's The Peregrine, the author realizes the hawk sees him as an ugly, pink, flightless biped.
  • Greene26:40 also asks what a thing actually is, then asks again. A dollar bill is paper with green paint representing a quantity only humans agree on.
• Film it in your head, or draw it. Atul Gawande53:46 was told by his editor to imagine telling the story with a GoPro on his head.
  • His first piece had strong data on EKG diagnosis but never showed what an EKG looks like. The fix was to let readers see what the cardiologist and the machine each see.
  • Kevin Kelly38:41 photographs and draws in order to see, since you cannot draw something real without looking closely.
  • Michael Jamin34:55 asks "what are we literally watching?" in every scene. His dead neighbor's house, with walls coated in a tacky yellow film from cigarettes, stuck with the host after one hearing.

2.3 Pick the one or two details

One exact detail does the work of paragraphs, so find it and cut the rest.

• Hunt for the detail that replaces fifty sentences. Wright Thompson43:21 treats concrete details as the real engine of a piece.
  • Michael Jordan's security code name, Yahweh, says everything without comment.
  • Harlan Coben56:56 calls it the flushed toilet moment. It takes very little, but it has to be really good.
  • Coben describes Route 23 in Wayne, New Jersey with one tattoo parlor sign: "Tattoos while you wait".
• Pick the one detail that says something about the character. Michael Connelly3:49 watches the people he writes about and looks for a single telling detail.
  • He saw a detective chew his glasses at crime scenes, then saw the groove his teeth left in the earpiece. That showed clenched tension with no explanation.
  • Susan Orlean39:56 says to pick one strong image and hit it hard. Too many adjectives go mushy and cancel each other out.
  • Orlean notes the Laroche lead has several descriptors, but each is clean and names one specific quality of his physical presence.
• Write many candidates, then keep the two that work. Jonathan Franzen23:29 says you need fewer details than you think.
  • Write down 50 things and whittle them to the two that really work. A minor character may need only two sentences.
  • He says readers finish a book feeling the weather was well described, though it takes one sentence at each of about twenty points.
• Describe a place with two or three details a visitor would recognize, then move on. Bill Browder29:45 avoids describing for the sake of describing, because readers have limited capacity for detail.
  • He used the smell of Sheremetyevo airport and the brass coffee-can shapes on its ceiling. Two specifics conveyed a dated, unkempt whole.
  • Michael Jamin35:34 includes a detail only if the story needs it. The cigarette smoke on the walls tells you about the neighbor. His hair color never appears.
  • Readers who knew the Villa Este hotel on Lake Como or Sheremetyevo wrote to say they recognized them instantly.

2.4 Choose details that belong to the person and place

A generic detail names a category. A particular one belongs to someone.

• Ask what the character would actually notice. Amor Towles31:47 says a writer who only researched the era reaches for frozen peas, the Frigidaire and the Beatles.
  • He asks what an eight-year-old girl would really see. His answer is the frozen brick of peas sliding out of the box, and the kid sneaking one to taste.
  • As a script reader, Michael Arndt19:40 said no to 90 to 95 percent of what he read. Bad scripts were set in a "generic American city" and imitated a genre.
• Pick objects and gestures that reveal the whole person. Patrick Radden Keefe10:12 says a green sofa tells the reader nothing.
  • An old Victrola on the counter and a vintage TWA poster of London say something concrete about a person.
  • Andrew Hunter Murray30:21 gives characters small physical realities, like indigestion from the breakfast buffet. You need only a tiny amount.
  • Murray admits some characters in his first Breaking and Entering book failed because he treated them as vehicles for plot.
• Write down the odd details and keep the ones that feel like they mean something. Andrew Sean Greer1:03:24 wrote down everything as a travel writer, down to the brand of the air conditioner.
  • The details that reached Less were poignant and funny: a dog shooed between the chef and the waitress, a talking parrot.
  • He looks for the unexpected, such as a ski resort in Morocco or chicks dyed bright pink.
  • He took notes while waiting two hours for food in Vietnam. His rule was that he could not make anything up.
• Reach past sight, especially for smell. Nat Eliason1:21:18 says even half a sentence about the smell of a place brings it to life.
  • Henry Shukman1:12:27 says we assume snow is visual, but its sound and scent bring it alive too.
  • Mark Forsyth26:17 says never describe a smell with a list of smells. Translate it into another sense or an image instead.
  • Forsyth cites Raymond Chandler: a woman "smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight" Forsyth23:06.
  • Elif Shafak26:30 used smells and tastes to carry her narrator's memory, as in Proust's madeleine dipped in tea.

2.5 Turn claims, numbers and themes into moments

Replace the general claim with the moment, object or picture that shows it.

• Name the moment, not the theme. Jack and Ryan of AJR11:18 say the word love does not interest them, but a precise moment does.
  • They recall a quote about writing the child's burnt sock on the ground instead of the brutality of war.
  • Alex Hormozi30:24 says pain happens in moments. He imagined one woman in a coverall at the beach, chafing between her thighs, always standing in the second row of photos.
  • Shaan Puri40:42 says to prove the "before" with one picture, such as washing dishes in a bathtub, not "I wasn't doing too well".
  • AJR's song Inertia is a list of small observed examples, like the friend who keeps saying he will quit his bank job. Listeners recognise their own friends in it.
• Turn numbers into pictures. Patrick Radden Keefe38:26 uses few statistics, and only for something dramatic.
  • A loaded 18-wheeler takes 200 yards to stop at 65 mph. He deleted "200 yards" and wrote "two football fields".
  • Peter Attia22:49 turns lifting 40 pounds into holding a grandchild in the air for 20 seconds.
  • Attia says vague goals cannot be trained for. Patients must name the activity, such as walking 18 holes of golf at 90.
  • Michael Mauboussin9:33 adds a short worked calculation to each figure so the reader sees where it came from.
• Drop one human detail into abstract news. Johnny Harris1:12:53 admires an Economist interview that noted the new Syrian leader's palace is five times the size of the White House and echoes with emptiness.
  • "Unifying a country" means nothing visually. The empty palace with no staff to serve coffee shows the job.
  • You have to be brave to include such details, because they might fall flat.
  • Robert Greene24:38 makes an abstract idea concrete with bodily sensations. In his sublime chapter he focuses on what you feel in your blood and heartbeat.
• Build examples from true, particular things. Tim Urban36:14 did not invent funnier stories. He used what really happened.
  • His India line is about scrolling Google Earth, zooming out, and finding himself still in the southern third. He says every example in the talk is true.
  • Ali Abdaal17:08 used to generalize every example to fit all viewers, and the work was bland. Viewers took their own lessons from the specific one.
  • His 20-minute Google Sheet video, on how he manages his time, was his highest performing video of the last six months.
  • Scott Dikkers59:03 says specificity is always funny in a joke. The Polar Express know-it-all corrects "magic train" with "a Baldwin 2-8-4 S3 class Berkshire type steam locomotive built in 1931".

2.6 Spend detail where it counts

Details cost the reader attention, so vary them, squeeze the dull stretches and light only what matters.

• Alternate dense passages with sparse ones. Jack Carr19:10 gives his protagonist fresh physical details and avoids clichés like "emerald" for green eyes.
  • He does not over-describe. A room with white walls and a fireplace lets each reader bring a personal memory of it.
  • He checks whether the last chapter was heavily described and goes lighter in the next.
  • Michael Dean21:35 says Wallace packs 37 details into one paragraph. Only three of the essay's 33 paragraphs are that dense.
• Squeeze the boring stretches into one telling detail. Rob Henderson12:40 cut eight or nine pages of basic training to one or two by leaning on a bed made with perfect corners.
  • Then time can expand for pivotal moments, like the long drive to his adoptive home.
  • Brie Wolfson10:40 says a piece about hotels could cover only the check-in line, the key card and the greeting.
  • Experts resist cutting because they hate leaving out anything core, but Wolfson says the cut material is usually not memorable.
• Light only what carries meaning. Tim Mackie and Jon Collins1:20:26 describe John's gospel as a Rembrandt, mostly dark with a small bead of light.
  • Everything the light touches is important. Show readers only what carries meaning and let the rest stay dark.

2.7 What the books say

Barbara Minto's book gives two checks you can run before you write a sentence: name what the reader could hold at the end of an action, and picture what you mean before you put it in words.

• Replace a vague verb with the thing a person would hold when the action is done. Barbara Minto, The Minto Pyramid Principle
  • Verbs like improve, strengthen or review do not answer "How?" and do not tell you when the step is finished. Picture a person doing the action and name what they hold at the end.
  • Minto's example: "Reduce accounts receivable" became "Establish a system for following up overdue accounts." The concrete wording exposed a missing step: telling salesmen to stop calling on chronic nonpayers.
• Picture what you mean before you write each key sentence, then copy the picture into words. Barbara Minto, The Minto Pyramid Principle
  • An image packs many facts into one shape. Recall the skeletal image behind your point and write that down, so the reader rebuilds it and remembers it.
  • Minto's example: three bars of different lengths show that A is longer than C far faster than a stated syllogism does.

2.8 Where writers disagree

Banning cliches, cutting details and using rare words each work for some writers and not for others.

• Ban the cliche, or rescue it? Ocean Vuong29:56 says there is no such thing as cliche, only a tired idea of the thing.
  • Put the rose in Mike Tyson's ear instead of a bride's hair and you are somewhere new. Banning roses and grandmothers in kitchens only shrinks what you may write about.
  • Babel rescued the sunset by displacing it into a beheading: "the low red sun rolls across the hills as if beheaded" Vuong39:37.
  • Franzen24:57 allows one cliche per book. Huang2:07 allows none she knows of.
• Cut details, or keep the exact ones? Robert Mac52:22 pushes back on "cut details" as a blanket rule.
  • A joke starts with a nebulous setup and ends on a very specific punchline. A war story needs fewer details because the setting does the work.
  • In the Mitch Albom story, the aunts get stuck on dates while the uncles tell the core war story.
• Rare words, or shared images? Robert Macfarlane1:00:56 uses uncommon words only when they are exact.
  • The Gaelic "run" names the shadows clouds cast on moorland on a bright windy day. English needs a long sentence for it.
  • The Cultural Tutor1:07:45 calls Westminster Abbey a palimpsest. The cost is that a reader may need a dictionary.
  • Steven Pinker10:20 prefers images from shared experience, like the spirit of the hawk in place of "aggression", before any technical term.
  • Steven Pressfield1:16:37 seeded a few Greek terms in Gates of Fire so readers trust the writer knows the era. He admits it is a trick.