Week of January 13, 2013: Painting with
Words
Thursday,
January 17—Detail
We’re continuing our discussion of the
elements of voice, and today’s topic is
details. Joyce Sweeney defines details as
“the specific elements mentioned in the
work.” A lot of the work of specificity is
done with nouns. Specificity always
trumps generalizations. When you generalize you
miss the opportunity to add
details.
Generalized sentence: He ate cereal.
Specific/detailed sentence: He ate Fruit Loops.
He
ate oatmeal.
When you’re working with nouns, you think of making them stronger and/or
making them specific/proper. The chart below
shows examples of what I mean:
|
Noun
|
Stronger Noun
|
Specific/Proper Noun
|
|
candy
|
chocolate candy
|
Hershey’s Kisses
|
|
shoe
|
sneakers
|
Zumba Carpet Gliders
|
|
store
|
thrift store
|
Goodwill Store
|
|
flour
|
cake flour
|
Pillsbury All-purpose Flour
|
Joyce told us that sometimes you don’t need to
describe, you just need to tell. If you tell the name of a teacher named Mrs. Crankster, you’ve already described
her. If you say wiener dog, no other
description may be necessary. If you write in
the shade of a Weeping Willow, you may have painted the picture with the
specific noun you chose. Joyce said that relying on nouns to tell details
“pulls the reader in and makes them do some of the work. Tell the details (and
only enough details) to make readers think.” Of course, as picture book
writers, we know that the illustrations will also fill in some of the
information and give clues to meaning.
For You
To Do:
1. Go on a stronger noun and specific/proper
noun hunt through some of your favorite picture books List out the details you
find.
2. Read through you latest picture book
manuscript. Underline all the nouns. Then go back through your nouns and
highlight the ones that are stronger and/or specific/proper. Examine all the
nouns not highlighted.
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