MOWMT: Spicing Up Your Manuscript with Specifics by Beth Anderson

March 20, 2025

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Adding “specifics” to a narrative manuscript is like adding spices when cooking. They create flavor, make a dish distinctive, less bland. In writing terms, specifics add voice, characterization, interest, and make scenes come alive as a valuable “show-don’t-tell” tool. They’re important in creating a shared experience between author and reader.

Details describe and provide information, but “specific details” are special in how they impact a reader. Cheryl Klein calls this idea specificity and defines it as  “details that root your characters in a particular time and place, and show the texture of your protagonist’s unique life and mind.”  Specificity shows the depth of the author’s imagining and investment and helps create a “reality." As with any details, specifics must be relevant and add value. It’s all about choices. And like spices, a sprinkle enhances, but too much overwhelms. Looking at mentor texts makes it clear that specifics can serve different aspects of story. Here are some from my bookshelves, where I collect “mentors.”

In FICTION the writer has ultimate power and can make up specifics. 

TRUMAN by Jean Reidy, illustrated by Lucy Ruth Cummins 

This book really stood out to me with amazing use of specifics. Reidy uses a number of size words to emphasize how tiny the tortoise is, but specifics go further…

Think about how these underlined words carry meaning, implications, and enhance character and story. 

Character: “Truman was small, the size of a donut—a small donut—and every bit as sweet.”

Tone/anticipation: Sarah ate a big banana with her breakfast, clipped a blue bow in her hair, and buttoned up a brand new sweater.” Here big and blue describe, but with the brand new sweater, you get a sense of specialness, preparing for a big event.

Voice: Specific numbers throughout—“number 11 bus” appears several times, “She strapped on a backpack SOOOOOO big, thirty-two small tortoises could ride along in it—but zero tortoises did.”  “seven green beans”

Specifics are a vital part of main character’s solution: “The arm of the couch, and the pillow propped just right, and that tall, tall boot.”  The universe has aligned!

WATERCRESS by Andrea Wang, illustrated by Jason Chin 

Check out how Wang’s use of specificity enhances tone and brings the reader inside her experience. 

THE LORAX by Dr. Seuss 

Recognizable proper nouns add spice, but in this classic the author makes up specifics like “Whisper-ma-phone,” “Swomee-Swans,” and “Gluppity-glupp,” one of his trademarks. 

THE FRANK SHOW by David Mackintosh 

This story is actually about the power of details to engage and spark interest. With an assignment to bring a family member to class for show-and-tell, a boy’s only option is his cranky, boring grandfather. But when his grandfather starts sharing quirky specifics about his life, he’s suddenly fascinating! Look at the difference between the generalities in the first part of the book, a few more specifics when the boy elaborates a bit, and then the intensity of Grandpa. 

Middle grade fiction: Kate DiCamillo is a master so take a look at her books for lots of examples. 

NONFICTION doesn’t allow you to make up specifics—you have to dig them out—and that’s often the difference between engaging and meh. Well-chosen specifics are essential for readers to connect to historical characters, settings, and conflicts. 

BIRD GIRL: GENE STRATTON-PORTER SHARES HER LOVE OF NATURE WITH THE WORLD by Jill Esbaum, illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon

Esbaum’s specifics show rather than tell to build character, conflict, and reader connection. 

Characterization: “Who cares if her apron tears or her face and hands get scraped up?” “Shows” setting and a carefree character.

Conflict: “Into the brook she tosses the bones of rabbits, ground squirrels, and …uh-oh, chickens.” If the author had just said “bones,” conflict would be lost. 

Connection: “For fourteen days in a row, she sloshes through murky, hip-deep swamp water, holding high her forty-pound camera…”  Though some of these details are seen in illustrations, specifics like these intensify and invite readers to “feel” the experience. 

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT: KATE WARNE AND THE RACE TO SAVE ABRAHAM LINCOLN by Beth Anderson, illustrated by Sally Wern Comport

I’m slipping in my newest title here to show how I put what I learned to work. During editorial revisions I had to dig deeper for details to amp up urgency and bring readers into the experience. 

Stakes/urgency: Instead of “later, the next day,” etc., I counted down with numbers of hours or days. 

Sensory: “When the night train’s whistle wailed with no word from her boss, Kate knew… their plan had failed.” Readers “hear” it. 

Setting: “She pleaded with the conductor and slipped him a silver coin.”

DOROTHEA’S EYES by Barb Rosenstock, illustrated by Gérard DuBois 

This story focuses on how Dorothea Lange notices and sees the world differently than others. Specificity enhances that idea. One example of many:

“Dorothea focuses on that one man, a battered cup in his hand.”

Rosenstock also uses specifics about a camera and printing photographs as that is vital to the story. 

SIX DOTS: A STORY OF YOUNG LOUIS BRAILLE by Jen Bryant, illustrated by Boris

Kulikov Bryant laces the text with sensory specifics that enhance the story. Here’s one example that serves characterization, too: 

“Grrrrr, grrrrr, ruff, rrrrruff! GRRRRRR—the neighbor’s angry dog, chained too tight. Alone in the dark…I knew just how he felt!” 

As you read, pause to consider how specifics, or lack of them, impact the story.

How do they affect 

characterization?

setting?

conflict, risk, stakes?

clarity?

tone?

voice?

throughline, takeaway, or “frame” of the story?

reader connection and experience?

Specificity is one aspect of word choice, a special use of details that creates the reality of story. These books are just a few to get you started as you consider mentor texts for this powerful craft tool. If you have a favorite mentor text for specificity, please share the title in a comment. 

Klein, Cheryl B. The Magic Words. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009.

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BIO: Beth Anderson has always been fascinated with words and language—from sound and meaning, to figurative language and point of view, to cultural and scientific aspects of language. After earning a B.A. in linguistics and a M.Ed. in reading, she taught English language learners for more than 20 years. That classroom community taught her valuable lessons as she advocated for students and encouraged them to share their voices. Surrounded by young people from all over the world, with literature as her favorite tool, Beth used the power of story to teach, connect, and inspire.

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