A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a quick paragraph showing a table full of food. The food was all of the normal variety, though. There were  no killer details to make the setting stand out in the reader’s mind.

It seems to me that killer details aren’t ones that stand up and shout, “Look at me, I’m strange and quirky.”

No, I think the killer detail is the one detail that the narrator wouldn’t know unless he was actually in the room, smelling the roast, and seeing the candle-light flicker on the walls. He would see that one gravy stain, perhaps, on the snowy table cloth. Or maybe the killer detail is one your narrator notices, because of who he is, when others wouldn’t see it.

So let’s look at the paragraph I wrote last week and see if we can come up with some killer details:

The table was filled to overflowing with dishes—some steaming, some chilled in basins of ice. John, starting at one end, counted five varieties of soups. The soups gave way to meats, which yielded to salads, and finally, at the far end, were the desserts. And there, in the middle of the cookies and pies and fruity iced treats, was the one thing he’d been looking for. His birthday cake, a five layered affair which stood three feet tall.

What are the common details in the above paragraph? Common nouns?

1. table
2. dishes
3. soups
4. meats
5. salads
6. desserts
7. cookies
8. pies
9. fruity iced treats
10. a tall birthday cake

I don’t think it’s a good idea to give a bunch of strange names to common items. But what if the character is a kid who hates beans and he notices that all of the soups have beans in them?

Or, what if the character is young man who is about to get drunk for the first time? What would he notice on the table? The flasks of wine and the pitchers of beer?

What if the character is a child three feet tall? He sees things from a different angle than a taller person would see.

So here’s a new description of the table. How does this work to paint a character and give some interesting texture to the scenery? What I’m trying to do here is make the scenery work to highlight character and to move plot forward. I don’t want to write static descriptive passages if I can help it. I want the reader to see the table but I also want him to know the character better by seeing how the character reacts to the table.

The table, Janice noticed right away, was not nearly as full as it had been at her sister’s birthday party the year before. No big surprise there. She lifted the lid on the tureen. Tomato soup. Red and velvety. “That’ll do pig,” she whispered. The cook had apparently decided to make up for the lack in number of dishes by making her favorites. Take that father dearest!

Janice looked next at the vegetables. Spears of asparagus surrounded artichoke hearts, which lay lifeless in a pool of beet gravy that had congealed into a reddish-gray mess.

At last she let her gaze rest on the dessert. White birthday cake slathered in ripe, red, strawberries and a sugary sauce. She plucked one fat berry from the top of the cake. A crimson drip fell, splashed onto the snowy table cloth, and jiggled a memory. The stain looked an awful lot like blood on crisp white sheets after a man’s been stabbed in his bed.

Hmm. When I titled this post, I wasn’t really meaning killer in the literal sense of the word. But as soon as I saw the red tomato soup, I knew I was going to see blood everywhere on this table. I gave the character a dad she had issues with and put on the table some veggies that added to the dark setting that was forming in my mind. I could just as easily have painted a table that was all sunshine and flowers. The point is to paint the scenery to support your story and reach for the details that are not just filler but are actually doing some of the work of character development and plot acceleration.

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