Q: A beta reader for my manuscript wrote on it that I need more “concrete details.” What did she mean?
Concrete details appeal to our five senses. All of us live in a world in which we constantly see, hear, smell, taste and touch and so also should our stories’ characters. So rather than describe a city as forlorn, you might describe the sky as overcast, the boarded windows of closed stores, the stench of garbage and urine as passing an alley, the grime on buildings as one leans against a wall, and so on.
Related articles:
• Use concrete details to make writing more vivid
• How to make your writing more vivid
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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.
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