Blurred details

My writing career started in sports writing. When I wrote a story, regardless of the sport, I had to keep in mind who my audience was.

For instance, if I was writing about basketball, I had to consider if the story was going to appear where basketball fans would see it, where sports fans (but not specifically basketball fans) would see it, or where the general public (but not specifically sports fans) would see it.

Depending on who would be seeing the story, I would have to adjust what kinds of details I would use. For a story meant for the sports section, I had no need to describe that some baskets are worth two points while others are worth 3, or that in organized leagues they play a certain amount of time and not to a pre-set winning score like on playgrounds. But if I was writing something that would appear in the local news section, I might need to clarify these things for readers who have seen no more than a handful of basketball games in their lives.

On the other hand, if I was writing for a basketball section, which would sometimes have leading into a new winter sports season or the state finals, I could completely ignore those basic details and even skip over clarifying which local teams have been very good recently and which ones have struggled. The basketball fans who would read that story already knew.

Knowing your audience is also very important to your fiction writing in many ways, including how much detail is required of you as an author.

For instance, if your story takes place in China but is written for an American audience, you are going to have to include details that a reader in China would find to be obvious. The description of the average home, the typical dress for different people, the cultural expectations and norms and other aspects of life will have to be made clear to the reader. Otherwise, the reader may become confused, placing American expectations on a Chinese-centered story.

This applies with time as well. You may be writing a story that take place in America for an American audience, but if the story takes place in 1820, all the details from above will still need to be established. Creating your own future or fantasy world? Anything that is different from what a reader would expect in the 2020s should be revealed.

These details may be revealed creatively. The most immersive worlds give their details through the characters emotions and reactions, rather than by information dumps. But however the writer chooses to show these details, showing them will be necessary for the reader to get the full experience of the book.

On the other hand, if you are writing contemporary fiction for a contemporary audience, these kinds of details are optional. You may still need to give details on characters' physical traits, their backgrounds and other material specific to your story. But an American author in 2021 does not need to tell an American audience in 2021 too much about what our cars look like, the tense political climate, what it is like to go grocery shopping or a hundred other things that would just be obvious here and now.

I feel that was the case for my second novel, The Jewelry of Grace. It takes place now in the region where I grew up and where most of my readers live. I can afford to streamline out cultural details and spend more of my time with the details of the actual narrative.

But my first novel, The Pride of Central, had to be a mix between these two approaches. It is also contemporary and local, but the driving force behind the plot is a baseball season. I had to be ready for readers of any level of baseball knowledge, which meant I had to put in enough detail to make someone with just a hint of exposure to the sport understand what the players were doing during their games and practices. I also had to make it clear that the team was caught up in an athletic culture that told them their wins defined their value. These things would not be obvious to all my readers without getting the characters to express them in some way. Nevertheless, I did not have to explain when the boys on the team were flirting with the girls who showed up at every game. Our dating rituals would be obvious to my readers without any comment.

I have not yet written a fiction story that would require the extensive detail on many areas of life, though I have toyed with a story that takes place in the American West of the late 1800s but is symbolic of England's Tudor Dynasty from the 1500s (and some days I hope someone talks me out of that idea). If I follow through on that, I will have to make sure I convey the cultural expectations and mores of the eras involved.

Ultimately, anyway of writing can succeed. Some readers love pages upon pages of detail of every locale and each tidbit of cultural background. Others want a quicker, streamlined story that sticks mostly to the big events and issues. Authors need not stick to one of these approaches every story, but use whichever one will work best for the manuscripts they are working on now.

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