Writing Craft - Research: Observation and Accuracy

Greetings all, and a Happy Easter to those who celebrate it! I'm off uni for the week for the trimester break and now have a little bit of time to catch up on sharing what I learned in my Writing Craft lectures, which I've found is a good way to study and blog at the same time. Last post, I discussed what I learned in the first week of classes with 'Beginning to Write'. 'Research: Observation and Accuracy' was the topic for the second week of classes, so here's a recap of what I learned. 

Research: Observation and Accuracy

Readings for this week were The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (pages 3-8), Underworld by Don DeLillo (pages 11-24) and Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima (pages 3-27). 

During these sessions, we discussed a writer's attention to detail, and how we must always be paying attention to detail, even when we are not writing. This is an exercise that all writers can part-take in. Our lecturer and my tutor, like any good writing teachers, stressed that we should not generalize because it's boring, as are cliches. When we write, we need to find something fresh. 

This is why it is important for us to pay attention to details in our every day lives and then pick the things that you notice, but that no one else is paying enough attention to. When we write, we should be creating or describing a clear and specific world, filtered through our own minds. This also means writing about the bad, not just the good, and writing about things that might not be appealing, but are interesting. 

When it comes to attention to detail, we also need to decide how much is too much and how much is not enough. Of course, not everyone will be in agreement, but we should consider that not all detail is purely visual. The use of all perceptions - sight, taste, touch, smell, sound - adds to a more accurate and well-rounded description. Then we need to consider what details are relevant to the story and find a balance between crisp and vivid detail vs pedantic and cumbersome detail, which are sometimes necessary. 

After this lecture and tutorial, I had a lot to think about. I began to notice how much I payed attention to and was happy that I'd already been doing this in my everyday life. But putting those things on paper is something I always think in the moment I could write about this and then forget about it. So it's something I can now aim to do more of. Maybe you'll see some random flash-fiction a little more often from me.

My first assignment for Writing Craft was about sketching a picture using words, which I mentioned in an earlier post. I've already handed this assignment in and I was comfortable with the product. The point was not to create any story or plot or character development, but simply to describe something. I described the pin-board in my room and I'm hoping I managed to delete all of the cliches. 

How much detail do you pay attention to? 

- Bonnee.