On Writing
Tony Rossiter explores great words from great writers
Details fascinate me. I love to pile up details. They create an atmosphere. MURIEL SPARK
Details create atmosphere – no doubt about it. Whether you’re writing about the past or the present, whether you’re writing a whodunit or a romcom, detail is how you can create an atmosphere and bring the time and the place you’re writing about to life. Let’s look at a few well-known examples. In Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel excels at the small, telling detail. We can almost smell the rain-drenched wool cloaks and feel the sharp fibres of rushes under our feet. Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring gives us a feeling of real authenticity, with its fascinating domestic details of daily life in Delft in the 17th century, plus lots of technical detail about the process of painting and the way Vermeer prepared his paint. In Thomas Hardy’s Wessex novels the detail of his Dorset landscape is described with a naturalist’s eye. Ian