Stuck on a small detail

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starrykitten

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I'm writing a short story and have found myself hung up on one detail. It isn't even that important of a thing in the story; it's just something my characters encounter that I can't envision in a way that feels right. When you get stuck on small details, what does that tell you about the project/yourself? How do you work around it?

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Outofcontext

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Just keep writing until you finish the manuscript. Go back to whatever the issue is in a week or so. Having fresh eyes always helps. It works for me, anyway.

OoC
 

blacbird

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I'm writing a short story and have found myself hung up on one detail. It isn't even that important of a thing in the story; it's just something my characters encounter that I can't envision in a way that feels right. When you get stuck on small details, what does that tell you about the project/yourself? How do you work around it?

If ever the recommendation "Kill your darlings" applies, it would seem to do so here.

Read the sentence bolded above, aloud, ten times in succession.

Then you should know what to do.

caw
 

Raivnor

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If it feels disingenuous, try to find someone else to read it. They might be able to tell you what about the detail doesn't work right. Otherwise research the detail and try to know more about it. Knowledge always helps you write better.
 

chompers

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Sometimes those small, seemingly unimportant details are actually a symptom of something wrong on a larger scale. So I try to figure out why it feels off. Then fix it.
 

jerrimander

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But. But. Butty but but. As a reader, I get stuck on little details. One story I read kept changing the gender of a dog. Annoying. As a writer, I obsess over one word in a sentence, which a reader would never look at twice. Unless it's fellow AWers, of course.
 

buirechain

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I often find if I'm having trouble describing something small, I need to take a step back and look at the picture in a larger manner. Sometimes I can rearrange things so that it barely gets mentioned and barely gets described. Other times I realize that I don't actually need it--which is amazingly liberating after banging my head for a while.
 

kkbe

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To me, small problematic details signify small problematic details.

Mostly because I'm all anal retentive and stuff, striving for perfection. And I worry those damn little details to death until by God, I get 'em right--in my own head, I mean. Which is where I tend to live when I'm writing, to the detriment of just about everything else. . .

:)
 

mommygoth

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Definitely just write it, even if it sounds bad, and keep going. Later, you can edit or remove. Sometimes I go through four or five rounds of edits to something like that before I finally give up and kick it to the curb.
 

dondomat

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Blitz storytelling--whenever a pocket of resistance appears, surround it and move on into the interior, and once you're done with the majority of the conquest--come back to the pockets of resistance and mop them up one by one... When it's just them, and the rest is done--it's much easier to breathe.
Every details is important, but you don't have to fix them chronologically.Even if, when it's done, it turns out you have to tweak three more scenes in order for stuff to make sense--go ahead and tweak them. Wordprocessors are not typewriters. This is all super easy now.
 
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jaksen

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And if you're writing a mystery, the small details are the ones which will trip you up - or elucidate the whole darn thing. You've got something that doesn't quite 'work?'

Offer it to your characters. They're the ones in the story. Quite often they'll tell you how to fix it.

And yes, I talk to my characters sometimes, as in, damn it, Oscar, where did I go wrong? And he'll say, Well, you forget to mention that...

(Totally serious here. I had a place in a recent story where the ending seemed all garbled. I took a long walk and one of the two MCs, a police officer with mild autism, told me, 'Ummm, I heard the phone ring. Isn't it obvious?' I went back to the story, saw that he was right and the story all made sense. Sold it, too, which is always a plus.)
 

Sedjet

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I write a keyword for myself - one that's easy to ctrl F - and research to fix it later. But yeah, if it's not that important than maybe it can be cut.
 

dantefrizzoli

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Just try to move forward from it, or come back to it later, if you still feel you want to change it or get rid of it, then do so, but if you end up forgetting about it, then don't worry about it- it's just a tiny detail
 

jaksen

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Details? You're hung up on details? The writer Michael Crichton once got stuck on a 'detail' involving how the dinosaur DNA inside a mosquito's gut was put inside a reptile egg (or amphibian) in order to produce a dinosaur. The exact mechanics escaped him, so know what he did?

He skipped that detail. Did it hurt the success of his novel or the subsequent movie which evolved into a series? Not so much.

There are details, and then there are DETAILS. Don't worry so much. Keep writing.
 

Jamesaritchie

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It's the little details that make one story sell while another, similar, story gets rejected. Little details are what make story, character, and setting work, make them come alive.

So I work on the little details as much as possible. I edit/rewrite each page as I go, and much of my time is spent getting the little details right. Sometimes I have to settle for, "Well, it isn't perfect, but it's as good as I can make it." Learing to say, "Good Enough" is important.

You say, It isn't even that important of a thing in the story. If it has any important at all, it needs to be there.

If it advances story, if it adds to character, if it makes setting more realistic, if it adds to the quality of the writing, or if it merely adds verisimilitude, it needs to be there.

But it doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be the best you can reasonably do.
 

blacbird

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Sometimes I have to settle for, "Well, it isn't perfect, but it's as good as I can make it." Learing to say, "Good Enough" is important.

With which I completely agree.

You say, It isn't even that important of a thing in the story. If it has any important at all, it needs to be there. If it advances story, if it adds to character, if it makes setting more realistic, if it adds to the quality of the writing, or if it merely adds verisimilitude, it needs to be there.

With which I also agree. But that's the key point, isn't it? The statement in the OP that says "it isn't really that important to the story" pretty much says it all for me. Now, in the absence of having a look at the story, and without knowing what this detail is, from a reader standpoint, it's hard to make that judgment. But if the writer is concerned that it isn't important, and yet somehow is finding it a blockade to advancing the story, methinks it just should be dropped. Or at least put aside and ignored, allowing the narrative to advance. If it becomes a point of significance, it can always be inserted later. If it never does, it doesn't need to be there, period.


But it doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be the best you can reasonably do.

There is no "perfetc." Ever. "The best you can reasonably do" is all anyone can strive for.

caw
 

Kris Ashton

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Many times in the course of editing a story I've agonised over a line that just doesn't seem to work, no matter how I chop or change or rearrange it. I'd say eight times out of ten, it has been because it's irrelevant and needs to be cut altogether.

So ask yourself - does it need to be there at all?
 

Jamesaritchie

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With which I completely agree.



With which I also agree. But that's the key point, isn't it? The statement in the OP that says "it isn't really that important to the story" pretty much says it all for me. Now, in the absence of having a look at the story, and without knowing what this detail is, from a reader standpoint, it's hard to make that judgment. But if the writer is concerned that it isn't important, and yet somehow is finding it a blockade to advancing the story, methinks it just should be dropped. Or at least put aside and ignored, allowing the narrative to advance. If it becomes a point of significance, it can always be inserted later. If it never does, it doesn't need to be there, period.




There is no "perfetc." Ever. "The best you can reasonably do" is all anyone can strive for.

caw

Well, the OP didn't say it had no importance, she said is wasn't all that important, which means to me that it has some importance, however small. My philosophy is that if something has any impornace at all, however tiny, it goes in because that might be the one thing that sways an editor.

As for perfection, I keep hearing that there's no such thing perfect, and maybe it's true, but there are things so close to perfect that the difference doesn't matter.

And, really, who's to say something isn't perfect? Why do we assume that nothing can be perfect? I've certainly read some short stories and a handful of novels that, if not perfect, came so close that the difference was indiscernible.

And have yu ever seen Michelangelo's stature of David? I'm certainly not going to say it isn't perfect.

Everything gets criticized by someone, but all critics are themselves imperfect.

But it doesn't matter. Even if "perfect" doesn't exist, some thing are certainly more perfect than others, some things come so close to perfection that they stagger the mind, and while perfection may be an unobtainable goal, I have no problem striving for it.

In order to be perfect, or even to come close, details matter. Details are perfection. Either something is important to the story, or it has no importance at all. There is no middle ground.

I've sold stories for the tiniest of reasons, for one sentence that made the editor say, "This is why I became an editor". Nor was that sentence of any real value to the story. Remove it, and the story still would have read fine, but the editor said that one sentence put my story far above the other contenders. That one, really unimportant sentence that did nothing but describe something, made the editor say that was why she became an editor, and why she picked my story.

I do often have to settle for Good Enough. I do often just have to let something go because I'm just not good enough to get it right, but letting go is always a last resort.

If a sentence of any kind has even the tiniest tidbit of important to the story, or if I know the story could live without it, I work my ass off to get it right, to make it perfect, before I left go.
 

dantefrizzoli

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Try to focus on the story as a general aspect, maybe think about the storyline, or focus on the characters, but try not to focus too much on any small detail, while writing or editing because it can really throw things off as well as frustrate you
 

Jamesaritchie

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Try to focus on the story as a general aspect, maybe think about the storyline, or focus on the characters, but try not to focus too much on any small detail, while writing or editing because it can really throw things off as well as frustrate you

For some writers, probably. Certainly not for me. I write all my stories by concentrating on the tiniest details. I sometimes rewrite a page ten times or more, trying to get some tiny little detail exactly right.
 

Buffysquirrel

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As a reader, I get stuck on little details. One story I read kept changing the gender of a dog. Annoying.

I did that with a cat in one story. Fortunately, I caught it in the edits.

To the OP: What I'd do is mark the place, finish the story, then go back and fiddle with the problem. With one novel I wrote, I had to leave an entire scene until I'd finished the novel. Not sure why--I think my head wasn't in a place where I could write it till then. You don't have to get it perfect first time.
 
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