Devil in the Details: Lesson 6

Experiment that will show you why and how

You know the line, “The devil is in the details”? All good writing thrives on specific details—not abstractions. You gotta earn your abstractions. Otherwise your writing will seem foggy—as if no one is really there.

We began to work on this in Lesson 4, “Think of Unpacking a Suitcase”.

Let’s expand on that.

Table of Contents for all 19 lessons

Writing teachers use this line to explain: “Show. Don’t tell.” I agree but add this: You get to tell, meaning, you get to use an abstraction, but you gotta earn that right with your details.

So, what do I mean by abstraction? Big words: love, hatred, young, old, independent, free, honest. Let’s discuss this, play with it and give me something to read and comment on in the comments. If that scares you, Direct Message me 200 words and I have a chat for paid subscribers to do this, so go paid!

Doing this in comments also works because those who join us may comment as well. I’ll carefully comment on those as well and we learn together.