Since we seem to be talking about details this week, let me throw another virtual tome in your lap.
A Dictionary of Military Architecture
Let me pluck a couple of interesting entries from it to display here:
Parapet: (1) The top of a wall of either a fortification or fieldwork, either plain or battlemented. Used to provide protection to the defenders behind the wall. See battlement, crenel, embrasure, merlon, reveal. (2) A breastwork or wall used to protect the defenders on the ramparts of a fortification, either plain or provided with embrasures.
Machicolation: A series of openings provided by: building the parapet out on consoles, projecting beyond the face of the wall, the space between the consoles providing the openings for the machicolations; or by leaving gaps between a recessed wall and the buttressed arch standing before it. Projectiles and liquids could be thrown onto the enemy at the base of the walls, thus reducing the dead ground.
Are you using building terms that you don’t really know what they mean, but you’ve seen them employed in other books to describe ancient houses or castles? Does your story have a manor under siege? A fortress that needs its merlons crenellated? Reference it all from this dictionary to make sure you at least sound like you know what you’re writing about. Details do enhance the story, and if you lay in a few specifics about the very stones beneath your characters’ feet, that can only ground the plot with a sense of realism, and maybe your readers will get a subtle sense of appreciation for a writer who does the fact-checking work for them.
The only thing I would say is most of the terms and definitions lack illustrations. Usually the explanation is clear enough that you can work it out without visual aids, but still, I think seeing the adornments and fortifications they’re talking about would enhance the research all the more. Aside from that, it’s a handy tool and educational spot.
I see that smile.