When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.
Interpretation
Perfect details in a story may indicate a lack of authenticity or depth.
Charles Baxter suggests that when every detail in a narrative aligns flawlessly, it can signal an artificiality or contrived nature in the storytelling. Real stories often possess imperfections and contradictions that reflect the complexity of human experience, which makes them more relatable and genuine.
In practice
During a writing workshop, this quote could emphasize the importance of embracing imperfections in character development.
Say what you want about it, Hell is story-friendly... The mechanisms of hell are nicely attuned to the mechanisms of narrative. Not so the pleasures of Paradise. Paradise is not a story. It's about what happens when the stories are over.
There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, "Mistakes were made," you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel.
A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and unseen.
The problem with love and God, the two of them, is how to say anything about them that doesn’t annihilate them instantly with the wrong words, with untruth. . . . In this sense, love and God are equivalents. We feel both, but because we cannot speak clearly about them, we end up–wordless, inarticulate—by denying their existence altogether, and, pfffffft, they die.
You know, there's something heartsick about parties like this. Look at us. We're all pretending to be smart, as if intelligence were the cure for our anguish.
I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth.
But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying.
It is often in the name of cultural integrity as well as social stability and national security that democratic reforms based on human rights are resisted by authoritarian governments.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
We are convinced, then, that autistic people have their place in the organism of the social community. They fulfil their role well, perhaps better than anyone else could, and we are talking of people who as children had the greatest difficulties and caused untold worries to their care-givers.
If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.