On today’s Raw Reading, Alida Winternheimer reads from her current work-in-progress, working title, Playing with the Wind.

In this emotionally tough scene, Alida uses unique specific detail to capture an emotion.

Playing with the Wind is a historical novel set in 1920s and 1930s Minnesota. After watching the video clip, read the author’s reflections on this particular text.

Raw Reading

Reflection

To bring an intense moment like this to life, it’s critical to make it unique to the perspective of the point of view character and also unique within the story. Edie has worked as a seamstress, so she knows clothing and textiles. She also understands how clothing makes the man, or how clothing is an indicator of class. Nowhere else in the story does Edie have a close encounter with a pair of men’s trousers.

As Edie crouches over a body on the floor of a diner, this stranger’s freshly shined black Oxfords flash before her. She notices not only the shoes, but his trouser legs, down to the turned cuff. The man is wearing a youthful style of the era, something Edie would know and notice. The culmination of these details adds insult to injury when he jumps over the body, instead of skirting it with everyone else. 

While drafting this scene, I did not think to myself, “I need a unique specific detail to bring this moment to life.” And I did not plan for the man to jump across the body before it happened.  

When writing, the author has to be in two places at once. I have to be in Edie’s perspective in the moment. And I have to be in the narrator’s perspective, aware of the setting and action around the character. The blending of those two perspectives is what makes a scene like that come together, allowing for the fullness of the moment to birth the unique specific detail that will (hopefully) stick with the reader long after the story is over. 

This is a first draft. To what extent these words will need revision later remains to be seen. All material herein is copyrighted. © Alida Winternheimer 2021