If Writers Wrote Every Scene Like A Sex Scene...

She shut the washing machine door with a gentle click, then extended her slender arm to the shelf where the detergent awaited. For two days now she’d hungered to tackle the clothes heap in the closet, her days filled with a longing to cast them into the laundry. 

The linen-scented blue liquid only just filled the base of the screw-cap, but this would be enough. Wasn’t this after all a high-efficiency front-loader? But she didn’t need an instruction manual to tell her what her heart knew, unlike years past when in her youth she would splash out a whole cup of detergent. 

Its glistening glory dripped into the detergent compartment, and she shut it with a gentle push of her fingertips. Then with determination, she turned the dial to “Normal Load.” At that point there was no return. 

With a soul filled with anticipation, she pushed the button marked “Start.”
 -- 

Okay, so now you're ready to go do your laundry, but I'd rather you get ready to go write. So let's talk about details and at what point your reader stops reading and starts noticing that you're cramming every sentence with far too many of them. 

Sensory experience is vital for your story. When your character eats a hamburger, he should get a couple of sesame seeds stuck to his fingers from the bun, and the pickle should taste salty. 

But too much of that will garner comments for you like my agent left on one of my manuscripts: "BORING!" "Zzz… I'm going to sleep." And finally, just in case I was especially dense, "Why is this here?"

Let's start with hair. Your main character probably has hair, and you've probably described it.

Detail should be used in support of character. Have your character fiddle with her long black hair to show the reader she's nervous, in other words, but don't stop the story to say "Jasmine had long, black hair that she kept pinned back in a bun at the top of her slender neck." Fold the detail into the moment. Instead of saying, "It was windy. Jasmine had long black hair," then show that hair whipping into her face and her getting it out of her eyes so she can see again. 

Also, lean on your reader's imagination. Most of us know what hair looks like and how it behaves. If you start telling us how it glistens in the sun, and what color highlights it has, and how her delicate fingertips fondle the ends -- we actually see it less well than if you say she could have her own L'oreal ad. (I don't recommend you actually do that, by the way, unless you want to see your work footnoted in fifty years. "L'oreal was a brand of hair products with an easily-recognizable ad series involving long, glistening hair. -ed")

Details used in the "wrong" way can function as the brakes to your story. But you know what? Brakes are good things. Brakes are necessary things. 

Sometimes you want a lot of detail in there to slow down your character's train of thought. One of the above comments on my manuscript was in response to a character having gotten rejected in a really nasty way, and she was getting herself calm by very deliberately filling up a coffee maker, getting out mugs, getting out sugar, and so on. In this case, I'm building up tension in the reader by delaying the character's reaction to something you know she has to react to, only it's so huge she can't deal with it right now. It's easier to make coffee than to deal with having your heart broken, so guess what she's doing? And yeah, you can make heartbroken coffee. Just add a character who won't cry.

Moreover, what your character notices is going to give us cues to her state of mind. She may notice the coffee beans, sitting in the grinder, waiting to get crushed into an unrecognizable grit and then get boiling water poured through them to take out any value they may once have had, before they get tossed into the trash. Contrast to the character who counts out scoops of beans, thinking, "And you grew all that time and traveled from Sount America for me, just for me!"

The key is to give as much detail as the reader expects. The reader of a literary novel will expect a slower pace and more lavish detail; the middle of a combat scene is not the time to describe the way the eagle engraved on the main character's cuff links is gripping a snake in its left talon and that the snake is hissing; a character throwing laundry into the machine should not take 500 words to do so unless you're trying to make the audience giggle. And always, when you can, make the details functionally invisible. Don't bother telling us that the keys click on the blogger's laptop -- no one cares about that, and we know keyboards make sounds -- but tell the readers the keyboard chattered as the blogger pounded through a paragraph at a hundred ten words a minute.

Right now I'm rewriting a story that desperately needed a rewrite. A helpful critique partner pointed out that I have a one-page description of how a river meanders. We do not need a one-page description of how a river meanders. I mean, we need to know it because it's important, but we do not need one whole lovely, detailed, scientifically-described page of it. It's vital to the plot, and because it's vital to the plot, I need to get it in there without the reader feeling as if she's traveling every bend of a river in order to get there.

Oh, and now go do your laundry.

 ---

Jane Lebak is the author of The Wrong Enemy. She has four kids, three cats, two books in print, and one husband. She lives in the Swamp and spends her time either writing books or whacking ice off the driveway with an ice breaker. At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four kids. If you want to make her rich and famous, please contact the riveting Roseanne Wells of the Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency. 

This is all great, but why am I reading this?

I'm critiquing a manuscript right now that's very good from a technical perspective. The writer knows her stuff, isn't making a lot of mistakes in terms of character or description, could marginally improve on some aspects, and has a firm command of sentence structure and language usage. We've had some exciting passages and characters struggling for their lives. But I have no idea why I'm reading this story.

Authors sometimes develop tunnel vision. To take a shot at an easy target (sigh) one of my critique partners asked me straight up, "What's the relationship between the main character and her mother supposed to be?" What kind of question is that? To me it was beyond obvious how the mother felt about the daughter and how the daughter felt about the mother. To me. It's not properly evoked in the manuscript, and so to everyone else, it was an unsettling bit of vagueness, and my critique partner is correct. It needs to be remedied (do you love my use of the passive voice there? Can you tell I'm reluctant to go back and edit?)

I couldn't see it myself because I knew what I meant. I suspect it's the same for the writer I'm critiquing now, and in case it's the same for you, here are some questions to ask yourself.

Is the main conflict of the story reflected in the first thirty pages? I'm not talking about jumping right in with all the juicy stuff you're rightly holding back until the proper time to reveal, but your actual story question. Let's go back to Star Wars (the first film) where our introduction to Luke shows us someone who feels oppressed by his circumstances, feels restless, feels he could do better, and is being held back by the constraints of the man serving as his father figure. We've already seen the Empire in action. Even without Lucas stopping the film to say "Wouldn't it be great if this restless, ambitious spirit could be put to use helping the Rebellion?" we feel that's the direction the story has to take.

Imagine if you just started with Luke going to town with his friends and drinking a beer, getting into a bar fight, tossing a quarter to an intergallactic beggar, repairing a broken droid he finds by the side of the road, chatting with a space trader... All the while he could be dropping hints that he's restless and his uncle is holding him back, and maybe we'd know there are Stormtroopers around. It could be exciting and well-written, but without the larger context of why any of this matters, we won't have a sense of where Luke is headed, and therefore where the story is headed.

You may think it's obvious what shape the story is going to take, or that your characters are pawns of the oppressive Evil Empire, or that your main character needs to develop self-confidence, but make sure it actually is. Go back into the text and actually highlight for yourself that the clues are there. 

You have to telegraph the main conflict of the story in your opening. Keep it understated, but include it. Your young magician is going to need to overcome his past? Fine. In the opening chapters, show a way in which that unspecified past is holding him back. 

Let's say you're reading a novel that opens with a mom and her seven-year-old child over dinner. There's no father or husband at dinner, and this appears to be their norm. Okay. Well, you can look at the cover or the category and figure out it's a romance, so probably the woman is going to meet someone and fall in love. But you're a bit directionless unless something happens during the dinner to tell us what is the obstacle to meeting someone and falling in love.

Child: "Oh, I forgot. We had a substitute for the afternoon. Mr. Miller got called out all of a sudden."
Mom: "Yeah. Probably fooling around with the school secretary."
Child: "What?"
Mom: "Nothing. Did you like the sub?"

Gee, she's bitter. Is that her past speaking? Was it the child's father who cheated, maybe her own father? Also, she doesn't mind talking right over her child's level of understanding -- was she treated with lack of respect as a child? Or is she just starved for adult conversation?

These are the tidbits we need in order to form a coherent world view within the story. We're also going to need to know how this woman fits into her society, how her situation compares to  those around her, how being single impacts her life and her child's life. Maybe it's beneficial to her to remain single because she's getting a barrel of money every month in alimony -- but show all this. Let us know what's holding her back and what's propelling her forward.

In Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need, Blake Snyder goes one further, and suggests you state the story's theme in the opening scene. We need a signpost so we know where we're headed. And yes, this works with my general aversion to opening a story with an explosion of action. We need to care, and before we can care, we need to know why we care. 

If you're on the road and you pass a sign that says Boston - 60 you have your direction, your time, your expectations. It does the same to telegraph the protagonist's hidden need and give a hint at the general problems of the world he's in. Once we know where your story is taking us, we're happy to come along for the ride.

---

Jane Lebak is the author of The Wrong Enemy. She has four kids, three cats, two books in print, and one husband. She lives in the Swamp and spends her time either writing books or knitting socks. At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four kids. If you want to make her rich and famous, please contact the riveting Roseanne Wells of the Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency. 

Drawing the Reader in through Character Emotion

All successful novels, no matter what genre, have one thing in common: emotion. It lies at the core of every character’s decision, action, and word, all of which drive the story. Without emotion, a character’s personal journey is pointless. Stakes cease to exist. The plot line becomes a dry riverbed of meaningless events that no reader will take time to read. Why? Because above all else, readers pick up a book to have an emotional experience. They read to connect with characters who provide entertainment and whose trials may add meaning to their own life journeys.

It is easy to see the power of emotion and how it connects a reader to the story and characters. The difficulty comes in writing it well. Each scene must achieve a balance between showing too little feeling and showing too much. Above all, the emotional description needs to be fresh and engaging. This is a tall order for writers who tend to reuse the same emotional indicators over and over. 

This is why Angela and I wrote The Emotion Thesaurus. We were tired of our characters always shifting their feet to show nervousness and narrowing their eyes when angry. And when we started talking with other writers, it became clear that many of them also struggled in this area.

Because clichéd and overused emotional descriptions seem to be a near-universal problem in the writing community, I was thrilled when Carolyn asked if I could talk a bit about character emotion. I’d like to tackle this area of difficulty by sharing an excerpt from The Emotion Thesaurus and giving some ideas on how it can be used to clarify your character’s feelings and freshen up your descriptive writing. 

Let’s say you’re working on a scene about sibling rivalry, and you need to express Sam’s frustration over his younger brother’s insistence on paying for lunch. The first draft might go something like this:

     I gestured for the bill, felt my face getting hot. “Absolutely not.”
     “Too late.” David didn’t even look up. He was already reaching for his money clip.
     My hands clenched into fists. He always did this—it’s why I’d made him promise on the phone to let me pay, for once. Why did he always have to throw his money in my face? It was so frustrating.

While this passage clearly conveys Sam’s frustration, it’s a clunky read. First off, there’s a lot of telling, which is hardly ever a good idea. Another sign of trouble is when the emotion is named (It was so frustrating) because readers don’t want to be told how Sam feels; they want to feel the frustration along with him. The best way to do this is by giving emotional cues that the reader can relate to.

Unfortunately, the cues used here are fairly weak. The flushed face, the clenched fists—we’ve seen them a million times. To show Sam’s frustration in a way that will really connect with the reader, we need some cues that are fresh and unique to Sam’s character. Enter the The Emotion Thesaurus. Here’s an excerpt from the Frustration entry:

FRUSTRATION

DEFINITION: vexation caused by unresolved problems or unmet needs; the feeling of being hindered
PHYSICAL SIGNALS:
Pacing in short spans
Stiff posture, rigid muscles, a corded neck
Clenching the jaw
Speaking through the teeth with forced restraint
Scratching or rubbing the back of the neck
Splaying hands out wide to stretch, then relaxing them
Throwing hands up in an “I give up” gesture
Stalking away from someone, leaving in a huff
A strained voice
INTERNAL SENSATIONS:
Throat closing up
Hardening of the stomach
Tightness in the chest
MENTAL RESPONSES:
Self-talking to calm down, to think straight
A need to ask questions and rehash information
Reining in one’s emotions before damaging relationships
CUES OF ACUTE OR LONG-TERM FRUSTRATION:
Using more force than necessary (stomping feet, throwing instead of handing off)
A display of violence (kicking, grabbing, shaking, or destroying something in release)
A tantrum (screaming, body flung down on the floor, crying)
MAY ESCALATE TO: Contempt, Anger, Impatience
CUES OF SUPPRESSED FRUSTRATION:
Gritted teeth
Swiping at tears, trying to hide them
Silence or minimal responses
Briefly closing one’s eyes

Looking at this list, I see some cues that could work, but I want to make them specific to my character. I can imagine Sam rubbing the back of his neck, but that gesture is kind of overused, too. Instead, I’ll have him rub his jaw—a stubbly one, to further emphasize the difference between the two brothers. The fact that Sam tried to arrange all of this beforehand also shows that he’s a thinker and a planner. Under Mental Responses, I see a need to rehash information; it seems fitting that he would argue his point, try to remind his brother of their conversation in an effort to change his mind.

I’m going to replace the weak cues from my first draft with some stronger ones from above—cues that are a little more unique to Sam.

    I wiped my mouth and gestured for the bill. “Absolutely not.”
    “Too late.” David didn’t even look up. He was already pulling out his money clip.
    “Hey, we talked about this. You paid the last three times.” My voice sounded pinched, like it was squeezing through a straw. I cleared my throat. “I know I don’t make as much money as you, but I can cover lunch.”
    David slipped a gold card into the envelope and waved the server over. “It’s not a problem. Don’t make a thing out of it.”
    I stared at him. “A thing?”
    He nodded—him in his pressed suit with every hair shellacked into place. Like he was the reasonable one and I was overreacting.
    Sucking in breath, I scrubbed a hand over my unshaved jaw, then dropped it to the table hard enough to rattle the dishes. This whole thing was a set up. Knowing David, he’d picked the time for lunch on purpose so I’d have to come between shifts. Everything was intentional with him, and he always knew how to put me off my game.

It needs more revision, but this scene’s already a big improvement over the original. Sam’s emotional state is clear, most of the telling has been replaced with showing, and the cues are stronger and say something about both Sam’s and David’s character. The added characterization also serves to increase reader empathy and strengthen the reader-character bond, which is a good thing.

So the next time your scene needs a little more emotional oomph, remember these tips:

1. Whenever possible, show the emotion instead of naming it outright.
2. To show emotion, choose physical, internal, and mental responses for your character that are fresh and not overused.
3. Choose cues that are specific to your character and make sense for him or her.

Thanks so much for hosting me, Carolyn. Best of luck to all of us!

Becca Puglisi is one half of The Bookshelf Muse blogging duo, and co-author of The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression. Listing the body language, visceral reactions, and thoughts associated with 75 different emotions, this brainstorming guide is a valuable tool for showing, not telling, emotion. The Emotion Thesaurus is available for purchase through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and Smashwords, and the PDF can be purchased directly from her blog.

Overtelling, Overshowing, Overselling

What if the most poignant parts of your story are the parts you don't say?

Beginning writers hear it dozens of times: show, don't tell. We cross out "Ted was mad" and say, "Show us how angry Ted is so we can feel it," and the intermediate writers dutifully show Ted punching walls, clenching his teeth, and stomping up the steps.

The next step is to show all your characters' feelings, not just your POV character's, so that when Jill watches Ted stomp up the steps, she knows he's feeling mad without having to tell the reader, "Wow, Ted was furious."

I've worked recently with a few newish writers on their first novels, and I'm picking up a trend from them: the need to reinforce their stories. It's not technically wrong, but it's giving their stories a feel I have to call amateurish, and I want to call attention to it, because it's standing in the way of otherwise good fiction. I'm going to call this overshowing and overtelling.

When we first start telling stories, it's difficult to prioritize what needs to be in and what needs to be left out. Back when I was in college, one of my best mentors read one of my early novels (I owe the poor woman a case of hard liquor for that service) and she told me to back off the reader. "Don't keep reminding us of things," she said. "Every time this character showed up, he had green eyes. Every time. I thought, maybe they change? No, they're always green, and eventually, whenever he showed up, I'd find myself waiting for the green eyes."

We do this because as writers we're afraid the readers are going to forget, or are going to miss something. Or, it's a more insidious problem: it's not the readers we doubt.

She continued, "You can trust us. I see you showing us something, like that he's angry, and then you tell us he's angry. But you can trust us: trust your reader that we'll get what you're doing. And more than that, trust yourself that you did it right the first time."

(When you get a chance, check out the TED talk on designing a book cover. At 3:03, take special note of what Kidd says about the word 'apple' and the picture of an apple, how you may have one but not both.)

If Jill insults Ted, we know it's an insult because we're paying attention, and we're smart. When a writer follows it up by saying, "Jill smiled at the cleverness of her insult," we as readers feel talked-down to. No doubt what the writer wanted was to make us think Jill's insult was pretty funny, but telling us twice has the opposite effect: we back away because it reminds us we're reading a book and for that second, we're no longer experiencing it.

To be really extreme, take something like this:
Ted picked up the pottery jug, glared at Jill, and smashed it against the wall. Ceramic shattered against the concrete. "That's what I'd like to do to your head!"

Quick: what's he feeling? What's the tone of his voice?

Now imagine it if I do it this way:
Ted angrily picked up the pottery jug, glared at Jill with fury, and in a fit of wrath smashed it against the wall. Ceramic shattered against the concrete while Jill stared, wide-eyed in terror. "That's what I'd like to do to your head!" he thundered.

By the time you get to the end of that, you're pretty much snorting with laughter, like okay, I get it, he's pissed. But when a writer does that over and over, it's as if the writer is holding the reader's hand and trying to guide her toward the emotions she should be feeling in the scene, rather than relating the scene and allowing the reader to do her job and really feel it.

Okay, so now you know not to overtell and overshow. But what if you take it one step further and deliberately undershow and undertell? How would it work? I'll tell you, done right, it works beautifully.

Try framing it the way Ivy Reisner did to me: partner with your reader. Give two parts and let the reader fill in the third. Ted picks up that pottery jug and cocks his arm, and in the next moment, ceramic shatters against the concrete. Your reader will know he threw it at the wall without your saying so. If Jill takes a pregnancy test and shrieks when reading the result, the reader will probably know what it was.

I call this 'elision.' And it's a lot of fun: how much can you remove without losing the reader?

I didn't invent this literary technique, although as far as I know I'm the only one who applies a linguistic term to it. If you've read Pride and Prejudice (if you haven't, go do it now) the moment of the proposal is rendered obliquely: Mr. Darcy makes it known to Elizabeth, and she gives him to understand her acceptance. We don't truly witness it, and yet we know it happened. In Sula, Toni Morrison shows Sula swinging Chicken Little by the arms, and even though it's a pivotal moment in the novel, his slipping from her hands is rendered in a dependent clause such that we never see it happen; we never know whether it was accidental or intentional.

It's a game of Jenga with your story, only the structure gets stronger when you remove the unnecessary bracing. Readers instinctively engage when they're hungry to know and you're giving them just enough at just the right times...but not too much.

Does this require your reader to pay attention? Yes. Does it require you to place a great deal of faith in both your skills and your reader? Yes. Will some people miss a point until they've read the story twice, and therefore many will never get some of your finer details? Yes.

Is it worth it anyhow? Absolutely yes.

Sometimes the writer's most important job is to get out of the way of the story.

---

Jane Lebak is the author of The Wrong Enemy, to be released by MuseItUp this coming September. She is also author of The Guardian (Thomas Nelson, 1994), Seven Archangels: Annihilation (Double-Edged Publishing, 2008) and The Boys Upstairs (MuseItUp, 2010). At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four children. She is represented by the riveting Roseanne Wells of the Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency. 

Showing vs. Telling

“Show, don’t tell” is one of the most oft-repeated pieces of advice writers receive. But what exactly does that mean? And when is it better to tell than show?

Last week during Open Mic Monday, Lady Glamis asked, Can you think of instances where it is appropriate to "tell" instead of "show"? Yes, we can, and I'll share some of them toward the end of this post, but since a lot of writers struggle with showing vs. telling, first I want to tackle how to show rather than tell.

When you give someone the Rorschach inkblot test, you go through 12 cards with ambiguous inkblots — twice. The first time, you ask the person to tell you what she sees. The second time, you ask her to show you how she sees it, so you can see it just the way she does. Was it the texture of the inkblot that made her see what she did? The shading? The color? The shape?

When you show your readers what’s happening, you’re doing the same thing — helping them see your story just the way you do. And your goal is not to show them a grainy youtube clip that gives them vague impressions — you want to show them your story in big-screen high-def, complete with a killer 7.1 speaker sound system, tastes, and smells. You want them to be there.

Tip 1: Be a connoisseur.

For me, showing is a sensual experience. I close my eyes and imagine what I would smell, hear, taste, see, and feel in my characters’ situation. Then I do my best to capture the most important of those impressions as vividly — and uniquely — as possible. I want the scene to have immediacy for my reader. When writers tell, they are usually looking at the scene but not listening or touching or smelling or tasting. They’re not slowing down long enough to capture the most outstanding details or pick the most exciting verb.

Here’s a lifeless telling sentence: The bad guys suddenly shot out the tires on the good guys’ SUV.

Time to stop and ask questions about all five senses, using the most descriptive verbs you can find.

* What do your characters see? Does the SUV spin out of control, making the scenery whirl by as if the good guys were on a carousel? If your character is a racecar driver who’s lost control of a speeding car on multiple occasions, his impressions are going to be different from those of someone who just learned to drive.
* What do your characters feel? Does the SUV jolt to a halt? Does the SUV drop closer to the ground? Does the SUV slam into a curb? Do the airbags marshmallow out of the dash, crushing your characters into their seats?
* What do your characters smell and taste? Can they smell rubber burning as it’s dragged across the asphalt? Can they taste their own fear? What does that taste like?
* What do your characters hear? Having blown a tire, I can tell you that the explosion of one bursting is as loud and startling as gunfire. But what else do your characters hear? Other cars screeching to a halt around them?

If this all seems like a lot of work for one sentence, it is, but as you get used to asking questions like this, you’ll start to do it automatically, and the showing will come quicker and easier.

Here is how I rewrote the line for my story. Note two things. First, that there are almost no adjectives — both sentences are carried by strong verbs. Second, I didn’t go on and on about all the different details. This is happening fast, so I have to emphasize only the sensory information that is most important.

More gunfire, and both of the front tires burst, dropping the SUV onto its axle. Metal screamed against asphalt, and a shower of sparks hissed past my open door.

Tip 2: Use active verbs, not adjectives and adverbs.

Adjectives and adverbs tell; verbs show. Strong verbs make your writing vivid and real.

Adjectives and adverbs don’t move the action forward. Nothing is happening with an adjective or adverb; it just sits there on the page and tries to look pretty. For example, if I tell you about an escalator that is tall and silver but standing still, there is absolutely no movement in the sentence. If, on the other hand, I tell you the escalator looms over my character, mocking her with its steely teeth, you have a whole different feel for the escalator. It’s doing things. Scary things.

It’s not very interesting if I tell you that Raven was a clutz. You have to make up the details for yourself. That’s not the case if I add a more information so you can see the scene for yourself: The bell rang, startling Raven, and she bumped her textbook and sent a sheaf of papers tumbling to the floor. She had to wait until her classmates had clambered over her to clean up the mess. Her face hot, she stuffed the pages into her bag, jammed her pen into her purse, and stood so fast she nearly knocked over the man who stood there.

Tip 3: Pick something unique to emphasize about your main characters.

This is going to sound harsh, but nobody cares if your main character has dark hair and hazel eyes. So do millions of other people. You need to pick one or two extraordinary characteristics and emphasize them well enough that your readers could pick your character out of a lineup.

Over time, personality becomes etched into the lines of the face and body, so try to emphasize a physical characteristic that reveals character. Maybe your heroine hunches her shoulders as if she’s fighting a strong wind; maybe her black hair is braided so tight it looks like a licorice stick. I find that when I exaggerate a characteristic, that can help. So rather than just saying your character has flowing black hair, you say her black hair gushes over her shoulders and eddies into the small of her back.

Example: The angular planes of his face turned the soft light into a study in contrasts, and in that context, what might have been a sensual mouth merely looked hard. His cheekbones were high, angry slashes, a sentiment echoed by the frown between his brows.

And rather than telling you that my hero is insouciant but intense and that my heroine finds him attractive, I can show you:

He sprawled against the far wall, the exposed flesh of his chest bronzed and glistening in the heat. A gold piece lay at the end of the chain around his neck.

Had she been forced to describe him without using licentious language, she would have said that the lines of his face were aristocratic. In the uneven light, his eyes appeared black, but their intensity, not their color, was what fascinated her.

Telling vs. Showing

In spite of the magic of showing, sometimes it’s better to tell. Here are a few of those times.
* During transitions. When you just need to get from one day to the next, don’t worry about the evening sunset, the darkness of night, and the morning mist. Just say something like “The next day…”
* When you’re summarizing something that happened during a transition. Let’s say your character had a fight with her boyfriend before she left for work in the morning, and you want to convey that she has an okay rest of the day. You can write something like, “She made it through class and the rest of the afternoon without incident” and let it go at that.
* When you’re talking about a minor character who isn’t important to the story.

Your Job

Go through every sentence of your manuscript and make sure three things are true:
1. Every single sentence and word furthers the story. It moves us forward. It shows us something crucial. This is why it’s important to just choose a few details, not overload the reader with every. single. one.
2. You have used vivid verbs, not just-sitting-there adjectives, to show your readers what is happening.
3. You have closed your eyes and thought about the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches in each scene. That you have shown your reader enough of that sensory information that they are experiencing the scene the same way you are.

Need some practice?

Try rewriting one or more of these sentences as showing rather than telling in the comments section below. Have fun with it!

* She was furious.
* It was a beautiful day.
* He was stressed out.
* Her bedroom was girly.
* His car was a mess.
* It was a dark and stormy night.
Want some help?


Need some help with showing vs. telling in your manuscript?

We’ve created a forum over at RallyStorm.com called QTBlog Activities. Inside the forum is a board called Showing vs Telling. Post an excerpt from your own story for others to critique with regards to showing vs. telling; then, critique and help others with their excerpts!

If you’re not a RallyStorm member, no worries -- you can join for free! We look forward to seeing you over there!

Dr. Carolyn Kaufman is a clinical psychologist and professor residing in Columbus, Ohio. A published writer, she runs Archetype Writing: Psychology for Fiction Writers and an associated blog. Visitors will find not only articles about psychology tailored to their needs, but they can ask Dr. K their writing/psychology questions. She is often quoted by the media as an expert resource.