Concrete details are an antidote to terrible [[cliché|clichés]] and generalities. (Concrete details [[concrete details rely on metonymy|rely on metonymy]].) ### Quotes [[Samuel R. Delany]]: > "The talented writer often uses specifics and avoids generalities—generalities that his or her specifics suggest. Because they are suggested, rather than stated, they may register with the reader far more forcefully than if they were articulated. Using specifics to imply generalities—whether they are general emotions we all know or ideas we have all vaguely sensed—is dramatic writing." ([[About Writing - Seven Essays, Four Letters, and Five Interviews (2015)|About Writing]]) [[Donald M. Murray]] > "Specifics give off meaning. They connect with each other in such a way that two plus two equals seven—or eleven. Writers treasure the informing detail, the revealing specific, the organizing fact; and their notebooks are filled with sentences, test paragraphs, diagrams, as they connect and disconnect, order and reorder, building potential significance from their abundant fragments" ([[Expecting the Unexpected - Teaching Myself – and Others – to Read and Write (1989)|31-33]])