What Job Is This Detail Doing?

Every Tuesday, The Productive Disruptive delivers storytelling science, message makeovers, cultural commentary, and a little rebellious hope for anyone still stubborn enough to believe communication can change the world.

Author

Dorian Johnson
March 31, 2026

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Some writing advice sounds like it was invented by somebody who thinks the curtains are never just curtains.

Chekhov’s gun used to feel like that to me.

Like here we go with the English teacher special...

Every bird means freedom.

His room is blue because he’s sad.

A broken fence means the decline of the American family.

Sometimes I just wanna say: what if there’s a chair in the kitchen because it’s a kitchen? Like, where people sit down, typically to eat meals…

Got a little ranty, but that was my previous interpretation of this principle.

It’s incredibly useful to guide your storytelling. The basic idea is simple:

If you spotlight something, it needs a job.

It’s about attention.

It’s about what happens when you point at something in a story and quietly tell the reader, “Keep your eye on this.”

Because once you do that, the reader starts tracking it.

It should matter.

It should go somewhere.

Which is to then say, don’t waste the reader’s attention. It’s already hard enough to capture it.

And it ain’t free.

If you slow down to mention the scar on their forehead(a la Harry Potter), or

that a character is commonly seen with a blanket(Linus from the Peanuts strip),

you are doing more than simply describing something.

You are assigning importance. Building expectation. And you need to make it pay off.

Not every detail needs to be bursting at the seams with symbolism, though; it could.

But a good rule of thumb for storytelling is that adding an object should do something.

Don't force a random employee to clock in with no task to do.

That matters in public health storytelling, too.

Because when you spotlight a detail in a health story, you are helping shape what people think the story is about.

What gets highlighted starts to feel causal.
What gets repeated starts to feel central.
What gets ignored disappears.

🧠 Story Science Side Note: When you draw attention to something, people start storing it as important. That means your story is training the reader’s brain about what to track. If the detail goes nowhere, the story can feel off. If it pays off, the story feels satisfying.

📝 Message Makeover:

Before: Add details to make the story more interesting.

After: Only spotlight details that build tension, reveal character, or pay off later.

🛠️ The PHacilitator’s Corner:

Open something you’ve written. Find one object, image, or detail you emphasized. Write this sentence underneath it:


This matters because…
If you get stuck, the detail may not be doing enough yet.