Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

I like a change of pace now and again, don’t you? For all the action, horror, mystery, and adventure I’ll see in movies or read in books, I occasionally dabble in a bit of regency drama—not “spicy,” mind, just…Austenian.

People slowly learn to become better people than whom they were before, and just maybe, find love in the process. It’s a great reminder that compelling stories don’t require stabbings or spells or explosions (though those are always welcome on my bookshelf), but good old fashioned human natures undergoing change.

And it is one of these occasional dabbles that lead me to Seeking Persephone by Sarah M. Eden. I’d seen a bunch of posts and reviews about the miniseries recently released on streaming, and thought a bit of regency would do me good after trips through Discworld and Jack Reacher’s dark America. I read it in a sitting. It was fine.

No, I’m not demanding you all read the book. We’re here because of a review I read about the book. Folks are a bit mixed, see, and I get it. It’s not as compelling as Austen, nor is it spicy like that Bridgerton show. One person in particular vented the following in their review on Reddit:

What does Persephone even do with her time until she gets to go meet with people a couple of times a week? Does she have hobbies? Does she help run the estate? Does she read books? I know she was learning to ride but that’s what, an hour of her day? I thought the story would explore the soul-destroying experience of having nothing meaningful to do, something a woman in her situation might well experience… but it didn’t.

I considered this “soul-destroying experience of having nothing meaningful to do.”

Apart from this not really being the goal of the story, the reviewer raised an interesting point about narrative and time. In a typical Jack Reacher book, the plot runs its course over a matter of days, and those books average 300-400 pages. Most days are chock full of interactions with other characters, uncovering clues, fighting baddies, etc. Occasionally hours are skirted over for sleep or stakeouts, but otherwise, every day is literally action-packed.

On the flipside, Pride and Prejudice covers a little over a year in roughly the same amount of pages. Imagine, for a second, that Austen felt the need to expand upon Elizabeth’s daily activities for even a week’s worth out of that timeline. It’d be like the show 24–only Austenized!

If we wrote novels that were hyperaccurate to the “real lives” of our characters—even those that populate fantasy and science fiction novels—they would be thousands of pages long and span a series too big to fit on any single shelf. Reality is full of uneventful, unremarkable, lackluster moments that, on the page, are about as tense and exciting as a slab of gray Play-Doh. –Jordan Rosenfeld, How to Write a Page Turner

Is there a crafting reason to explore the minutiae of a character? Sure! As writers, we ought to know the different layers of our people so we can ensure their actions and interactions with others fit their makeup and make sense to readers. Canadian writer Bonnie Randall adds that such minutiae can make for great help when a story gets stuck; revisit the character’s innards and see if what makes them tick can help the story tick along, too. She also shares a quote from Barbara Poelle, one that shifts us from minutiae to momentum:

If you’re struggling with writing a character, write 20 things that the reader will never know about your character. These will naturally bleed into your writing and provide a richness even though you don’t share the detail.

While all details matter to writers, they do not all matter to the story, nor to the readers: “Creating tension is as much a function of what you leave out as it is what you put in, but often we can’t see those extraneous parts until someone points them out to us or expresses boredom with parts of the story” (Rosenfeld, 2019, p.171). Too many details will muck up your momentum. And no one likes a mucked-up momentum.

Here are some examples of minutiae-muck to watch for in your storytelling, courtesy of How to Write a Page Turner:

Excruciating Detail (about people). Going overboard on detail or grinding things down to finely typically slows the pace and kills tension. Shoehorning that detail into dialogue won’t work, either. Realism is the goal, not an academic literature review. (p.172)

Over-describing Scenery. If you ramble on for too long about the history of a place, no matter how interesting, worthy, or notable to the story-world, the reader will get bored. Instead, always be sure that setting is revealed in relationship to your characters. If it isn’t needed, cut it out and at the very least save it in case it becomes useful later.

Dreary Dialogue. How many “um’s,” “yeah’s,” and “How’s it going?’s” can one say in a day? A lot. Plenty of the pleasantries and chit-chat we use in everyday life is filler. It might get us to the true conversation at some point, but do readers need to go through all that? Hardly.  Dialogue should always reveal something about the characters who are speaking, and further the plot. Look for dull lines of dialogue and mercilessly cut them free.

Stage Directions. I am notorious for this. I love sharing all the little actions that get folks from A to B so that readers can visualize every step. Buuuuut is that all truly necessary? Nope. Sometimes, you just need to sum it up in a single action to keep the momentum of your narrative. For example, a character with the goal of exiting a room does not need to be shown rising from a chair, looking about, striding across the carpet, grasping the doorknob and turning it before opening it, and then finally exiting. “he bolted from the room,” might suffice. Where are you over-articulating the action into more steps than needed for the reader’s understanding?

Explaining instead of demonstrating. If you have the urge to explain to the reader about backstory, character motivations, intentions, plot discoveries, and the myriad other reasons why characters are doing things and what’s happening in the plot, stop.

Any one of these “tension takeaways,” as Rosenfeld puts it, could happen if a story decides to spend more time on how a character spends her time when it doesn’t mean anything to the story. If the story is about the relationship, then the events in the story should pertain to the relationship. Could Eden have made that “soul-destroying experience” a part of the narrative? Sure. Perhaps the lack of activity spurred more conflict. Perhaps the character developed a love of history for the other’s massive castle, and that shared hobby drew the other character out of his shell. Eden could have done that, but she didn’t. She went another route with her story, and because of that, “action-packed days” didn’t fit her narrative arc.

It boils down to what defines “minutiae” in your story-world. When you know the beats, you know the climax and resolution. Thus, you can reason out what is unnecessary and/or distracting and trim’em away. You may love those little side bits, but as far as the narrative goes, they do more to muck up the tension and pacing of your story than anything else. Every minute in a story should count, not every minute in the characters’ lives.

Immerse readers in the moments that matter. That will truly make every moment of your story memorable.

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