A friend of mine recently sent me a chapter of his memoir. The tone of this memoir is quiet and calm—like most of us, shootouts and runaway trains are not part of his life. That’s fine, but since there isn’t much action to keep the reader’s attention, I suggested he deliver a richer picture of the characters in the memoir by adding a bit of color.
The use of seemingly commonplace details—“adding color” in writing parlance—helps define your characters and makes them more interesting to the reader.
For instance, my friend has a scene where he and his mother are going through a family photo album. I thought this was an opportunity to develop the character of his mother by focusing on the album. Was it worn? Leather or plastic? Did she keep pressed flowers in it? Did she keep it safely on the top shelf of the hall closet or toss it casually in the magazine rack beside her easy chair?
These simple details would tell us a little about his mother and make our reading experience richer.
An example often repeated in writers’ workshops goes something like this: Don’t tell us he ordered a beer, tell us he ordered a Budweiser (Tsingtao, Guinness Stout, whatever). The beer a man drinks tells us something about the guy.
If you have him stomping the dust off his steel-toed work boots before he enters the bar, we begin to get a feeling for him. If he orders a long-necked Lone Star the image of a rough, unsophisticated man grows. If he slips a thin gold band into his Levis as he pulls out the barstool, our understanding of who he is and what he’s like becomes even more clear.
Note that the color in this example wasn’t delivered only by the use of adjectives, but also with verbs (“stomping,” “slips”) and nouns (“work boots,” “Levis”). Color can be added with adverbs and dialogue, too.
Specific verbs and nouns (and authentic-sounding dialogue) are best to use to give your writing color. Be wary of the overuse of adjectives and adverbs.
I’m not trying to sell a book here (or maybe I am?), but there is a excellent chapter by Thomas Hunter titled “Bring Her On and Let Her Scream: Adding Colorful Description to Enliven Your Nonfiction” in The Portable Writers’ Conference. Hunter’s information works well for fiction writers too.
Just a write thought.