I found the meat of your article to be timely; as it happens I'm in the middle of editing a short story anthology and there is this one tale where the author has the character eat some sausages. The story is set in contemporary Germany, so I ask, "What kind of sausages are they?" I thought it might be good to work in a little local color, though the author had done a good job of that as things stood.
So she gave me the information I asked for but no matter how I looked at it, it didn't feel right. The "not feeling right," I realized, after reading your article, was me trying to shoehorn in unnecessary information for "color" rather than because it actually made the story better. So after reading your article we went back to "sausages" and we were able to get on with our lives. :)
Great article. Thanks for all the helpful information.
I found the meat of your article to be timely; as it happens I'm in the middle of editing a short story anthology and there is this one tale where the author has the character eat some sausages. The story is set in contemporary Germany, so I ask, "What kind of sausages are they?" I thought it might be good to work in a little local color, though the author had done a good job of that as things stood.
So she gave me the information I asked for but no matter how I looked at it, it didn't feel right. The "not feeling right," I realized, after reading your article, was me trying to shoehorn in unnecessary information for "color" rather than because it actually made the story better. So after reading your article we went back to "sausages" and we were able to get on with our lives. :)