The right descriptive detail can act as a powerful anchor for the reader, the hook on which they hang their memory of a particular character, place, or moment – often even a combination. That's incredibly useful when you want to remind the reader of a key scene from earlier on in the story. And it's essential if your story has lots of characters or storylines for the reader to keep track of.
To work as a memory hook, the detail needs to be…
- unusual
- emotion-provoking / richly sensory
- specific
For example, these are three of the descriptive details I’ve used as memory hooks in one of my novels:
- A giant spider under a trapdoor, between the water and the raised floor of a house: legit terrifying, and a very helpful reminder of a character and situation we don’t see often.
- Dried-up lemons: one character, for complicated past reasons, insists on always having a lemon, but can’t be parted from the old ones. So everywhere he goes, he carries the musty scent of dried-up lemons, and is usually visibly carrying a lemon.
- Sickly-sweet jasmine perfume: a complete overload of it, and also a handy signifier when the wearer is en-corpsed!
The first couple times your detail crops up, you want to describe it in full sensory richness as well as the character’s emotional / physical reaction to it, to really embed it in the reader’s memory. After that, you can often just reference it briefly, to trigger that memory. So, here’s what you’re going to do, to play with this technique.
If you have a story you're writing
- What’s a pivotal moment, character, or place that you want the reader to remember? Think especially of ones they have to hold onto in their memory for a while before it comes back into play.
- What pivotal detail can you add that’s unusual, emotive / sensory, and specific?
- Spend five minutes writing rich description of the detail for yourself, then five minutes looking at where you could weave it into that scene. (Feel free to spend longer on each half if you prefer.)
If you don’t have a story you're writing OR you want to try it out first
I’m going to give you the ultimate challenge for a reader’s memory – and for a writer’s writing: a CONVERSATION IN A ROOM. Little to do, little striking to see, often the bane of our writerly lives. So we need that descriptive detail to do some heavy lifting for us. (Both the jasmine perfume and the dried-up lemons were originally used for this.)
Here’s your situation: A and B are in the room together. A is telling B about a difficulty C is having – that could be romantic, financial, work-related, family, psychological, up to you. Spend five minutes first writing just their dialogue, to get a sense of the story and the context through writing to discover. If you’re writing by hand, draw a line vertically down the middle of the page and write the dialogue on the left-side only.
Next, think: What pivotal detail can you add that’s unusual, emotive / sensory, and specific? Write a rich paragraph of description at a key point in the discussion, as near the start as you can get it (this is where the space on the right-hand side comes in). Then look for other places in the dialogue where you can weave in further detail or references, jotting those in the right-hand column and using arrows to say where they go.
Either way
Find / imagine a point much further on in the story, where you want to remind the reader about important character / conversation / event. Drawing on your original scene, pick two or three of the most striking descriptive details to reference again, in a line of description.
Have fun!
Want to explore more nifty techniques to keep the reader clear on everything in your story? Orientating the Reader will give you heaps of tips for handling flashbacks and multiple characters, plot threads, or time streams, so the reader stays thrilled, never confused.
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