Tag: show don’t tell

Should you write for yourself, or for other people?

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Image by AntToeKnee. Check out his profile to read his hilarious bio.

When you sit down to write, who are you writing for? Are you writing only for your own amusement (or catharsis?), or to entertain other people? And which is right?

If you write only to please yourself, you’re in danger of contracting Ugly Baby Syndrome—thinking your creation is perfect no matter what anyone else says. If they don’t like it, you are personally offended. If they say pages full of poetic scenic description are boring, you say they are uncultured swine. You throw a little pity party because nobody understands your unique method of expression.

Well, you’re right. Nobody understands you because you’re not explaining yourself well.

Here’s the tough truth: being unique doesn’t make you good. You may be expressing yourself, but you are refusing to express yourself in a language anyone else understands. You are being selfish. If you want to be understood, you have to speak to them in their language first. Start where you have common ground. That means putting the story—its integrity, pace, and structure—above your pretty-words ego.

If you write only to please people, well, you’ll become a people-pleaser. A sellout.The irony is that this is another form of selfishness. You’re really writing for the attention, the prestige, the money. As soon as you find something most people seem to like, you’ll just keep writing that same story over and over again—change the names and the settings, but the same plot every time. You don’t dare to be different. You don’t dare to write the truth about your own life and struggles and the hard things you’ve learned. You turn into a formula fiction factory. On your new book cover, your name is larger than the title because people already know what’s in any story you write. You’ve stopped being an artist. You have ceased to express yourself. You are not telling the world anything it doesn’t already know.

So what’s the answer?

Write for yourself. Edit for your audience.

Maggie pointed this out in the comments of this post.

When you pour out that first and second draft, write what you enjoy. Write the kind of story you love to read. Write who you are in the grittiest, nakedest way. Write what you want to say to the world.

The ironic result is that a lot of other people probably love what you love. A lot of them have felt what you have felt. What you write could appeal to them on a deep level.

When you move on into the rewriting and editing stages, have them first in mind. You expressed yourself. Now, translate that expression. Help your audience understand you, and help them have a good time of it. Put the story above your ego. That means showing truth, not preaching it. It means cutting out extraneous drabble; letting go of your sentimental attachments if they don’t support the story. If you are in love with an unnecessary character, or you adore a setting that hinders the plot, or you’re attached to a line of dialogue a character would never say, cut it out!

Your writing ability should serve the story, not the other way around. First the truth-telling. Then the truth-translating.

That’s how to create something both you and your audience will love.

 

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 What sentimental attachments do you have to detrimental elements of your work? What truths are you afraid might offend people?

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8 cool ways to get close to your characters

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Image by Okko Pyykko.

People who aren’t writers don’t know the extent of background work that goes into writing a novel—how much plot, setting and character development we write that never appears on the published page.

This is a list of a few of those things.

If you find you have a flat, boring, predictable character—or possibly an unpredictable one, whom you can’t force to do anything he is supposed to do—you probably just don’t know him well enough. Here are some icebreaker exercises to get you two acquainted.

  1. Outline a short history of his (or her) life. Born in this type of neighborhood, went to this type of school, had these types of friends, had this first job, was obsessed with this brand of beef jerky, etc. Include all the major emotional events—moving to another town, death in the family, spelling bee won, heart broken, etc. Check every scene in your novel against this history. Does the character’s emotional reaction match his background? (I recently realized that, in my novel, I had recreated the most traumatic event of one character’s childhood, but he endured it with no signs of inner turmoil: not even a flashback. Don’t let this happen to you! Don’t waste a good chance to add drama!)
  1. Write a traumatic scene from his childhood. Pick one part of that history and actually write it out. It can be as traumatic as his parents’ violent deaths or just losing his mom in the grocery store for five minutes, or seeing a scary movie. This’ll help you figure out his deepest fears and how he reacts to them as an adult.
  1. Describe his “emotional acre.” This tip from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. She says we are each born with a sort of imaginary acre of land we can do whatever we want with. Plant vegetables or hold an eternal garage sale, that sort of thing. Based on what you now know about your character’s life, figure out what’s in his emotional acre. What does he nurture, hoard, or leave to ruin? With that in mind, ask what he carries in his pockets (or her purse), or keeps in his sock drawer.
  1. Write a stream of consciousness piece from his point of view. Even if you’re not writing in first person (or if you are, but this character isn’t the narrator), step into his head for half an hour and look through his eyes and read his thoughts. Write down what you discover.
  1. Write what people say about him behind his back. How others see him will reveal a lot about him—even is it isn’t all true. How does he stand? How does he sit? How does his posture change when he is bored or nervous? Do people misinterpret his body language? What are the worst rumors about him? How much of it is true?
  1. Write his eulogy—as written by some of your other characters. What people say about him after his death can be even more revealing. Are they afraid to speak ill of him, or was he such a jerk that no one cares? Do they remember nice things about him they had long forgotten? Do they wonder how they’ll go on without him?
  1. Take the Meyers-Briggs personality test for him. Now that you’ve got a feel for him, answer this series of yes or no questions on his behalf. At the end, they’ll tell you his personality type, give you some essays about that type, and a list of fictional and real characters who have/had the same personality. Read it all!
  1. Give him breathing space. You may go through several drafts of your novel, the character shifting with each draft. His actions and speech will change as you learn more about him, and you may discover things about him that force you to alter your plot. Go with it. Don’t try to force him into a box. In a strange twist that parallels Judeo/Christian theology, if you don’t give your characters free will, they will be boring, soulless robots.

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What Meyers-Briggs personality type is your character? Tell me in the comments! (I’ve got an INTJ and an INSJ.)

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Begin your story at the beginning – but when is that?

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This decision could be the difference between readers turning the pages and shutting the cover:

Where in the timeline does the “once upon a time” fall?

Here’s a little guide to help you decide.

Beginning at the beginning

Take the Chronicles of Narnia as an example. Lewis first wrote The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (LWW), in which a little girl finds her way into a magical land through a wardrobe.

Huh?

We need a bit more background to give us our bearings. Where is the wardrobe? In a large, mysterious house. Why is the little girl in the house? She traveled there with her brothers and sister to escape theLondonair-raids during the war.

Oh, so the story really starts with “Hitler invaded Poland.” But if you’re going back that far, why not go back to the little girl’s birth, or even to God created the heavens and the earth?

Because it would take forever.

Choose a beginning somewhere in between. Lewis briefly summarizes the children’s reason for being at the house. Dialogue begins on page 2, and we step through the wardrobe by page 5.

The takeaway: start early enough to give your readers a bit of orientation, but don’t start so far back that you have to give whole paragraphs of background exposition.

Beginning at the middle

What’s that? Your story’s more complicated than that? There’s far more background to explain?

Well, LWW is more complicated than it sounds. Where did the magical land come from, and how does an old wardrobe grant access to it? But Lewis doesn’t explain this in this book, and he doesn’t have to. The mystery gets pushed back in the face of more pressing matters. Evil witch. Captive brother. Etc.

Review all the information you think your readers need. Cut out anything they don’t need right away and save it for later in the story. Readers can typically suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy the wonder of the current story by itself—a wardrobe opening up to a snowy wood, a faun in a red scarf carrying an umbrella—without asking too many questions about How It All Got There. They will trust you to answer such things in time (hang a lantern on it if necessary).

Is there anything readers truly need to know right away? Work that in gradually, showing, not telling, like this.

Back to the stuff you set aside for later. Possibly a whole book’s worth of background information. You have two choices:

1. Work it into the current story at intervals (Louis Sachar does this brilliantly in Holes)

2. Write a prequel later—which is what Lewis did with The Magician’s Nephew.

In either sense, you’re starting in the middle of the story. The advantage: When you finally do explain How It All Got There, readers get double the amusement in putting all the pieces together—how the magical world came into being and how the wardrobe is connected to it—as if they’ve just solved a clever riddle. It’s an advantage you lose if you start with The Magician’s Nephew.

The takeaway: don’t let oodles of background force you to start too early. Work it in gradually, or save it for later.

Beginning at the end

There’s an episode of Firefly that opens with the ship’s captain sitting alone in the desert, naked.

“That went well,” he says to himself.

Cut to opening theme.

Meanwhile, we’re all dying to know how he got there.

You probably won’t really be starting at the end—just at the climax. At your hero’s lowest point. Show your readers just enough to make them go “huh?” then before they get confused enough to be frustrated, pause, rewind, and spend the rest of the book showing them how your hero got there.

The takeaway: if you start by showing your readers an intriguing glimpse of the future, you can create enough curiosity to propel them through the rest of the story.

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What type of beginning makes you keep reading?

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Show Don’t Tell: prove it

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Telling is claiming. Showing is proving.

Even acknowledging what I said in my last post on Show, Don’t Tell, the fact remains: when it comes to character development, “show don’t tell” translates to “actions speak louder than words.” And it’s especially important with our main characters.

For instance, I can tell you that my hero is brave and kind, but humble—but you have no reason to believe me.

I can tell you that my villain is brilliant but evil and unspeakably cruel—but you have no reason to believe me.

I can tell you that my heroine is gentle and naïve yet strong—but you have absolutely no reason to believe me.

I have made several claims, but they are nothing but opinion at best, hearsay at second best, and outright lies at the worst. I haven’t given you any proof.

The actions are the proof.

Prove bravery by making that hero scared out of his mind as he rides into battle or stands up to the bully. Prove his kindness and humility as he pretends to prefer to stand on the subway when he’s really giving up his seat to an elderly man. Show the growth of his character by upping the stakes and changing his behavior as the story progresses. What he runs from in the first chapter, make him charge at in the final chapter. What he hides from the people closest to him early on, make him bare to the world at the climax.

Prove the intelligence of your villain by making him a chess champion or a con artist or a troubled child whose parents locked him in the library to punish him. If he is a business man destroying the competing mom-and-pop store, he shouldn’t just outsell them; he should soil their reputation and win the loyalty of their customers, and know all the legal loopholes to get himself off scot-free. He should outsmart both your readers and your hero throughout the story, and when he is defeated in the end it shouldn’t be because he made a stupid mistake. Prove evil and cruelty by making him abuse an old man, a little girl, his wife. Have him murder his best friend or his brother.

Prove the gentleness of your heroine by making her go out of her way to set a mouse free instead of killing it. Prove her naivety by having her trust the villain when he says he’s trying to turn his life around. And prove her strength by making her fight her own battle; she’s the one digging up legal proof of the villain’s guilt while the hero is out sparring with his lackeys in alley ways. Or she’s the queen trying to stifle a political coup while the king is away at war.

If there is any character trait you want to convey, give that character something that tests that area. Give them a chance to show who they are. Make a patient man wait years for his girlfriend to say yes to a ring. Make a determined woman who has just escaped slavery face poverty and discrimination and sickness before she finds her happiness.

Then, your readers will not only believe that your hero is brave, your villain is evil, and your heroine is strong—they will argue with you if you try to tell them otherwise. That is the power of Show, Don’t Tell.

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Read more!

How to get rid of background exposition

How to “show” in description

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Show Don’t Tell: If you must tell, have something to show for it

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Continuing the series on Show, Don’t Tell.

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I have this awful habit of writing little narrative “character sketches” devoid of dialogue or action; simply summarizing the personalities of my heroes. I was all set to write a post about how to avoid this—with the “actions speak louder than words” approach I touched on in this post—but Wednesday morning, Mark Twain changed my mind.

I had settled in to read a little Huck Finn for twenty minutes while I ate breakfast. And there—yes, really—was a character sketch.

This naturally gave me second thoughts on the contents of this blog post. But as I kept reading, I realized my initial thoughts weren’t wrong—just a bit simplistic. Because here’s the thing: to show, you have to tell.

After all, we’re not making picture books here. All we have are words. What can you do with words besides tell? The trick is to figure out what you want to show, and then use telling to do it.

Example!

Here’s a little of what Huck, our first person narrator, says in his character sketch:

Col. Grangerfield was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over; and so was his family. He was well born, as the saying is, and that’s worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town; and pap he always said it, too, although he warn’t no more quality than a mud-cat, himself…

…There warn’t no frivolishness about him, not a bit, and he warn’t ever loud. He was as kind as he could be—you could feel that, you know, and so you had confidence. Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see, but when he straightened himself up like a liberty-pole, and the lightning began to flicker out from under his eyebrows you wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was afterwards. He didn’t ever have to tell anybody to mind their manners—everybody was always good mannered where he was.

All telling. Telling in a perfectly charming way, but telling nonetheless. Note, however, that he’s not telling us anything important. This character doesn’t last more than a chapter or two. So why the time spent on him?

Because by telling about Grangerfield, Twain is showing much more:

Society of the time: Huck’s mention of “well born,” and of the opinions of his father and the Widow Douglas—characters on completely opposite ends of the personality and status spectrum—shows us something about the beliefs of the time.

Huck’s character: we learn what a kind, decent person Huck thinks Grangerfield is. We later discover the family is feuding (pointlessly, as you’d expect) with a neighbor family. When a Grangerfield girl runs away to marry a boy from the rival family, the feud escalates into a bloody battle. Rather than changing his mind about the family, Huck blames himself for their deaths, as he had unwittingly helped deliver a message between the two lovers.

So this little bit of telling about a minor character actually serves to show us a lot about our main character.

The takeaway? If you find you must “tell” something, stop and ask yourself what that telling shows. What are your words indirectly illustrating? If it shows only what it tells, rewrite.

But if by telling a little, you show a lot—you’re good!

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