365 Short Stories (Details)–Week Twenty-two

Vivid details do more to stir emotions than snappy dialogue or clever exposition. This week I’m tracing the emotions I feel when I read a story to their source, a vivid detail.

Week Twenty-two

“How Beautiful with Shoes”, by Wilbur Daniel Steele, 50 Great Short Stories, Edited by Milton Crane

She set the pail down on the ground beside her bare, barn-soiled feet.

…”if there was emotion in her it was the purely sensuous one of feeling the clods of the furrows breaking softly between her toes.”

The so...