Good morning!  I hope everyone had a happy holiday yesterday, and if you don't celebrate, I hope you were able to enjoy some time off on a Federal Holiday!

Show don't tell -- we are preached that as beginning authors.  But what is the elusive meaning of that phrase?

Well, there's a very simple way to look at it, and I hope you'll walk away from this discussion today understanding a little more.  Mind you, again this is one of those topics that could go on for days.  I'm discussing one aspect of it, and one means of addressing it.

Do you remember the last camping trip you went on?  The last time you sat with friends and told a story?

"It was five years ago, and Julie and John went driving up Mount Skell to camp at the old cabin where it was rumored a man had been hanged to death.  Little did Jim know it would be the last time he went camping.  They lay down in their beds, the night wind blew through the closed windows, forming eerie moans in the silence.  Footsteps sounded on the floor.  Jim felt something crawl across his face.  He opened his eyes to find the man leering over him, his eyes swollen as if they were bulging out of his face, his lips cracked and dried.  He whispered one word.  "Revenge""

Yeah -- that kind of story telling.  Note... story telling.  Not story showing.

It's very easy for us writers to hear voices in our head and transpose the story that's being narrated subconsciously into actual words.  We hear it, we write it.  And we forget the translation to showing.

If a passage, a chapter, or even the whole book can give a reader the feeling they are sitting at a campfire listening to a ghost story, the writing is indeed telling.  You are narrating the story to the reader, not putting the reader in the thick of the plot and allowing them to hear, see, feel the same thing the characters are feeling.

Showing is putting more than the simple event on the page.  In the above, a simple event would be "They lay down in their beds."  Making it more than that requires some description, the feel of what is going on. Something like:

"John set a knee on the lumpy mattress. Dust puffed up from the mouse-infested stuffing, filling his nose.  He sneezed.  At his side, Julie laughed.  The light melody of her voice soothed the chills that crept down his back.  Chills he couldn't understand.  Like someone, or something watched them from the shadows beyond the trees.  This place was certainly spooky enough to pass as haunted.  No wonder the kids in town were afraid to come up here.  He was twenty-eight, and he couldn't wait to get out of the rickety old cabin."

Showing usually means breaking out portions of time into longer, more detailed events.  Summary is avoided.      Details are key to the experience.  I hit his sense of smell, his hearing, and sense of touch.  And I gave him a visceral reaction to those elements.

If you can remember to slow down, particularly in key places where you want to build some sort of tension, you are moving closer to showing the story take place.

Quick Tip:

When you've finished a chapter, pass it off to a reader -- can be even a family reader, but someone not close to you is better -- and ask them this one simple question:  "Did you feel like you were experiencing events along with him?  Or did you feel like you were experiencing his events second-hand?"  If second-hand is the answer, go back through, break it down into smaller pieces, and add in some details to make the passage come alive.





~Claire
www.claireashgrove.com
www.toristclaire.com

Labels: Passive Writing , Show Don't Tell , Writer Wednesday , Writing Craft

The editor is back this week!

Last week we talked a little about passive writing.  Today I want to expand on that with intruders, or intruder words.

Intruders do exactly what they imply -- they intrude on the reader.  This can also be classified as author intrusion, in some respects, though I tend to group that separately.

Let's start out with some intruder examples:

"He wondered what color her hair would be if she freed it from that floppy hat."

"He handed her the dress, and he knew she didn't like it by the way her face scrunched."

"He saw the dog run down the street, chasing the calico cat."

Other than they are a bit simplistic, these are perfectly correct sentences -- grammatically   Not so much when it comes to fiction writing.  All of them intrude on the author.

There's a whole bunch more than this, but the following words are common typical intruders:
knew
thought
wondered
felt
saw
pondered

Any word that resembles any in that list is most likely an intruder.  They weaken writing and turn it passive.

So how to fix?  Well, the reason these intrude is because nine times out of ten they occur when we are in the narrating characters point of view.  If the character knows, then we don't need to be told he knows.  Simply stating it in a descriptive manner makes the writing more effective.  So let's look at fixing those three sentences:

"He wondered what color her hair would be if she freed it from that floppy hat."

Assuming we are in his point of view, this is written more actively by just stating the question:

"What color would her hair be if she freed it from that floppy hat?"  

If we are in his point of view, that becomes an internal thought that most likely would be italicized as well.

Next!

"He knew she didn't like the dress by the way her face scrunched."

This is a little more difficult to fix, but can be achieved by adding just a little more detail and dropping the 'he knew'.  The detail specifies the way her face scrunched.

"He handed her the dress, and her face scrunched like she'd eaten a rotten egg."

Last!

"He saw the dog run down the street, chasing the calico cat."

Again, we're in his point of view and we are seeing what he is seeing.  We don't need to be told he sees something... just show us what we're seeing.  Case in point:

"The dog ran down down the street, chasing the calico cat."

In Sum:

By omitting intruders writing becomes more active and often more engaging.  In some cases it can become more descriptive as well, which further improves story-telling.

See you next week!





Publishing a book?  Check out Finish The Story for quality editing!



~Claire
www.claireashgrove.com
www.toristclaire.com

Labels: Editing Tip , Finish the Story , Intruder Words , Passive Writing , Writer Wednesday

Good morning, everyone!  A while back, I mentioned I'd be starting a Writer Wednesday topic, and deadlines delayed that progress.  Today we're going to kick it off with a quick and easy way to detect passive writing.

I gave a presentation on editing at my local RWA chapter this weekend, and from some of the remarks in the room, I gather there's a lot of people who hear "Writing is passive", but they don't exactly know how to identify it or how to fix the problem.  This is, coincidentally, one of the things that I see predominantly in the work I freelance edit for Finish The Story.

Let me also add in that there are numerous ways writing can be passive.  This is one format, and one tip to fixing.  I'll address some others over my weekly topics.

So let's look:

"The moon was rising on the horizon, it's pale light a silver blanket on the field of wheat."

"The foxes were grouped together beneath the rock, and the eldest was sticking his tongue out at the youngest."

What's wrong with these sentences?  If you know, skip the lesson and go write some more words in that work in progress!

On the surface, they appear vivid, they're descriptive, and the grammatical structure is correct.  But both of these sentences are passive.  How so?

The "was" + "ing" combination.

Authors are told to stay away from was.  Yes, this is true, but it's impossible to write was.  The bigger issue comes with 'was' + 'ing' -- when it comes to passive writing.  (There are other ways 'was' negatively impacts writing.)

When you link was with an 'ing' verb, it automatically becomes passive.  The best fix for this is to replace that combination with the past tense.  Your sentence instantly becomes more active.

"The moon was rising rose on the horizon, it's pale light a silver blanket on the field of wheat."

"The foxes were grouped grouped together beneath the rock, and the eldest was sticking stuck his tongue out at the youngest."

~Claire
www.claireashgrove.com
www.toristclaire.com

Labels: Editing Tip , Finish the Story , Passive Writing , Writer Wednesday