Specific details are your super power

When I worked as a journalist, one of the greatest treasures of successful reporting was a thing called "specific detail." These are the kinds of observations that make a piece really pop and stand out, that make a story memorable, that give it resonance.

It’s the difference between:

“I met Mr. Jones for breakfast at a local café. He sat down and ordered his usual breakfast.”

And:

“I met Mr. Jones while waiting in a red, nylon-lined chair at Lucy’s Diner. Decked in his standard uniform of jeans and a red plaid shirt, Mr. Jones pulled out the chair across from me, the smell of farm life drifting off his shoulders: hay, chickens, cow manure. He ordered his usual: three eggs over medium, toast and extra bacon with black coffee. The waiter greeted him by name; he comes here so often she did not bring her notepad, just the pot of steaming, bitter black coffee and a cheerful good morning.”

One makes you yawn, the other makes you lean in. You feel like you're at the scene.

The same is true about taking time to notice your place.

Imagine attending a neighborhood meeting or a council meeting and saying something like, “I would love for this city to be more pedestrian friendly. It's so hard to walk."

Compare that to: “Yesterday when I tried taking a walk to the post office, I noticed 4 desire paths, 2 missing sidewalks, an intersection with no striping and a missing beg button at the intersection of 10th and Smith St.”

This kind of specific detail has two effects. First, it makes you powerful –no one is going to question someone actually taking time to walk their city and collect these kinds of observations.

Second, it grounds the conversation. You’re not just asking about the broad concept of walkability to arrive in your town, you’re pointing out specific obstacles to achieving that vision and making the conversation rooted in a real place. Let's not talk about walkability, let's talk about the specific desire paths, the specific missing pedestrian striping. Those specifics changes the conversation.

In journalism, one hack for remembering to do this was to write down ridiculous details: the color of the wall, the scent of the room, unique details from a person’s appearance…things you think are silly, that you won’t use.

But then you do. And it gives your piece soul.

• The wall is not merely painted blue, it’s painted cornflower blue...
• The room doesn’t just have a “musty” smell, it smells like the inside of a shoe
• The lady across from you isn't just sad, she can't stop wiping her red-shot eyes, streaked with ruined mascara

This is why I call noticing a super power. Through specific detail, you make people pay attention, you humanize a story, a place, a person.

If you can develop a formidable ability to collect these kinds of powerful, grounded, evocative details, if you can push yourself the extra mile to write down the colors of the wall (so to speak) you will take your work as a Citizen Urbanist much further.

Not only will you notice better but your stories, your advocacy, your conversations will become much richer as a result of your effort.