One Little Detail

My wife sat beside me in worship, and she did it again. She repeated the same thing that first drew my attention to her so many years ago.

It was a little thing. Her roommate and my roommate were going out. They invited the two of us to join them on a trip to the Mall of America, about an hour and a half away. I actually wasn’t supposed to go with; another friend had dropped out at the last moment and they didn’t want their friend to be a third wheel. (In fact, when my wife and I first started dating, our roommates weren’t exactly pleased!)

As we drove, the other three people in the car belted out songs I didn’t know. Whatever the CD player sang, they joined in.

But as I sat in the back seat with this young woman I’d just met, I noticed her fingers. As she sang, she tapped her leg as if it was a piano. Her fingers moved with the melody she sang.

That’s how I knew she was a piano player. Later I struck up a conversation with her about playing piano. We connected on that level. And one thing led to another, and now we’ve been married nineteen years.

And this last week, as we sat in church together, I noticed her doing it again. She played the piano on her leg as she sang.

I fell in love all over again.

I share this not to present some sort of nifty romance. I love my wife, but I don’t expect you to! But when it comes to writing, it can be so, so good to pick out one detail. Just one. Focus the reader’s attention on it, and that one thing will make the entire rest of the scene come alive. It will help your reader connect, just like that one detail connected me to the woman who would become my wife.

Tell me the smell. By the river, the scent was somehow both fresher and more rotten than anywhere else in the city.

What did the air feel like? The cool breeze prickled your arms?

When she giggled, she hiccupped.

That one little detail can add so much to a scene. Please describe what’s going on and who is present. Don’t overwhelm the reader. The point usually isn’t to tell about every single element of every single person present.

But one detail. One detail can be enough.