The Devil is in the Details

The Devil is in the Details

What a great phrase. It’s evocative, intriguing, and at the basic level informative. What does it mean? Watch out for the small print, or perhaps find out what they’re not telling you.  My thought for the day is related more to what an author or reader might concern themselves with. Just how much detail do you need to provide the reader?

I just finished reading a book where the author did everything except tell the reader how many buttons the character had on his jacket. Was that level of detail necessary? No, not for the reader to picture the character, nor to determine what and why the character was doing what they were doing. Did it provide the reader more information to visualize the character? I doubt it. Especially since the author provided the same level of detail for most of the characters, protagonist or not. Did it improve the comprehension of the story? Possibly, I don’t think that it helped me to follow the story. In fact I think that it might have slowed down the story’s pace.

Having made that observation I thought I’d go back and check out the level of detail my favorite author used in describing her characters. She starts out slowly, giving only small clues to what the characters looked like. A single line for each, pointing out an item or two about their appearance. Then she begins to get steam in her locomotive’s engine and starts to add more and more detail.

By the time she gets to her first description of the hero’s mentor, she’s up to a paragraph for the man. His hair, his clothes, and finally his eyes are revealed. Granted, his appearance is very different from the rest of what society would expect a teacher of the young to look like; however, he is a wizard and as such deserves a little leeway in choosing his hair style and clothes.

It is perhaps by way of comparison that we begin to see how this side of the story will unfold. The dull normal people who live in the world that we see every day, and the magical folks that the hero will be spending most of the rest of his life with.

As for the hero himself, our first look gives us barely a sentence of information. Granted he is a toddler, roughly one year old. We are told of his most distinctive physical attribute, the lightening shaped scar on his forehead. Seven pages, and ten years later, we see him again. This time we are given a much more complete picture of the lad.

We’re told of his general size, a mention of his physical prowess. We read of his clothing, the fact that he now wears glasses, and the effect of his nearly indentured servitude upon his daily life. Another seven pages and we are treated to the first sign that this person will be very different from those around him.

Were Ms. Rowling’s extensive descriptions of the characters in the books excessive? Did they slow down the story as the previous author’s? I don’t think they did.

So I’m left with the question, of how much detail is necessary for a story, unanswered. Apparently the amount of detail the reader needs is governed not by volume, but rather by pertinence.