Hello, Elissa.
Thanks for posting the link.
The Bragg excerpts offer good examples of showing over telling, as Darrelyn Saloom pointed out. They also serve as examples of using detail. Notice that Bragg uses the general "trash-strewn," and "a wore-out car," and then the more specific "Chevrolet pickup." He doesn't get bogged down in every detail; he picks which elements get the closeup lens. For whatever reason, that his brother drove a Chevy pickup was important to Bragg and probably the piece. It could be that part of his brother's identity was tied to driving that truck. The make of the cars Bragg drove didn't matter to him, and that says something about him. The details of the type of trash at the side of road would have stalled the story unless those details worked for the story by conveying setting, atmosphere, or something else.
We've discussed, as Tricia said, the
Judicious use of details. (see:
http://forums.personalessays.org/index.php?topic=182.0 )
I love the Gabriel Garcia Marquez quote you posted there.
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Rick Bragg excerpts from Darrelyn Saloom's guest blog post at Writer's Digest
http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/2010/02/05/AWordsmithAmongKingfish.aspx A hundred times, it seemed, I slouched at the shoulder of some trash-strewn highway in northeastern Alabama, the hood up on a wore-out car, waiting for him to come and get me going again. I was always on my way to some writing job, some frivolous work, something you could do all day and not even get any grease under your nails.
He would pull up in his old Chevrolet pickup, hand me a flashlight—it always seemed I broke down in the dark—and go to work. He would pull wrenches and yank on alternators and water pumps till he peeled the skin off his knuckles, blood mixing with grime until I flipped my clip-on tie over one shoulder and reached in with my free hand, to help. “Quit,” he would hiss. “You’ll get dirty.”
Steve
