5/20/2019 Day 20 - Show or TellTo Show or To Tell, That is the Question There is a lot of discourse out there about whether or not you should show or tell when you write. Popular opinion seems to fall to the side of a preference for showing instead of telling in order to draw the reader into the story, but it is my opinion that there are appropriate times for each. Telling is when the words used in the moment tell us exactly what a character is feeling or what mood is supposed to be set. For example, the following sentence is "telling." She was embarrassed. Showing is when a description of an action or event allows the reader to decipher on their own a mood or feeling. For example, the following sentence is "showing." His cheeks flushed a crimson shade of red and his eyes would not meet mine. Rather than tell you that you should never use "telling" language or dialog and always using "showing" descriptions, I think it's better to consider when it's appropriate for each. I even believe there are instances where it is perfectly appropriate to use both in one paragraph. When to Show Methods of showing work well when you want to convey an emotional aspect of a character in a way the reader can relate or when you want to paint a more memorable picture of a character, scene, or action. It would be very appropriate to have a lot of showing moments in the beginning of the story when you are introducing a character and setting the ground work for the world(s) in which they operate. When to Tell Methods of telling work well when you are in an action sequence and do not want to interrupt the pace with flowery text or when a character has to take several steps that are non-consequential and you need move the plot forward. For instance, the reader does not need to know every step taken from the moment a character woke up, did their morning constitutional, and ate breakfast. Instead, jump right to, "After breakfast..." More telling will likely occur as you get closer and closer to the climactic moment of your story. In those moments when the action is gearing up and the pace of the story is becoming quicker, paragraphs and long sentences will pull the reader out of the action sequence where as a quick telling of what is going on will keep the activity in motion. In other words, I don't care what the debutante is wearing the moment she begins having an argument with person who brought her. Keep me engaged with the moment of stress. When to Show AND Tell High action sequences sometimes require both showing and telling in the same paragraph or scene. Consider a sword fight in a comedic scene. Telling might be used to set forth the thrusts, parries, and footwork to get us through the bulk of the scene, but the comedic moment when the soldier's belt is sliced apart and his pants to his great horror fall to his knees might be better served with a bit of showing. It would also be appropriate to use both showing and telling if you have a narrator who interrupts scenes. Again, this is sometimes used as a comedic style, but I've seen it used in other dramatic novels as well. For example, a dramatic action scene is just coming to life when the narrator cuts in to give a bit of backstory or a character pauses, looks out at the audience and speaks directly to them. If you have seen The Never Ending Story or The Princess Bride, you've seen this style of show and tell occurring. It's very effective, but it won't necessarily work if you haven't already presented the narrator or the character as someone who will be interrupting in that way unless you show they are like that during your initial introduction. Exercise: Create a Show v Tell Worksheet
Since the tendency is to tell when you should show, we will use this exercise to seek out and correct instances of telling, but be aware that you should also be cognizant of situations where you are showing but would be better served by telling.
Parameters Telling Words - List all the possible feeling words that you suspect you may have used in your manuscript. For example, some of the feelings your characters may go through might include: happy, sad, angry, nervous, cautious, embarrassed Next, add all the synonyms that you can think of (or check on webster.com or another site that lists synonyms). Showing Replacement - Write ways to show the emotion instead of telling. For instance, if you used the word "happy," what are the ways you could express happy with descriptions of body language? What does happy look like on someone's face? What does a person do with their hands or their feet when they are happy? If you need assistance with how to demonstrate different emotions, look at the cheat sheets on Writers Write(https://writerswrite.co.za/cheat-sheets-for-writing-body-language/) or Jeni Chappelle's helpful post 9 Simple and Powerful Ways to Write Body Language (http://www.jenichappelle.com/2014/09/body-language/). WritersHelpingWriters.com has also published a book called the Emotion Thesaurus worth considering if you need even more help with writing how people express emotions. Instructions
DOWNLOAD: Show v Tell Worksheet Template Instructions Return to the Table of Contents Go to Day 21 - First Act 5/19/2019 Day 19 Eliminate Info DumpsWhat's an Info Dump? An info dump is an over-explaining of information related to your story that takes the reader out of an active scene. It is "dumping" a lot of information all at once and leaving it to your reader to figure out how it relates to your story or the scene and why its important to your main character. New writers will sometimes do info dumps near the beginning of a story when they are providing backstory, explaining magic elements, scientific facts, or historical events when instead they should be introducing the reader to the main character in their current environment and situation. Is all info dumping bad? No. Very specific and intentional Info dumping can be used as a gimmick. The best example of this is when a narrator telling the story is a specific character and they “take a moment” from their story telling to explain a character’s motivation. Comedic writing can also use it to great effect as they ramp up for a punchline. Science fiction and fantasy writers will also spend more time world building than say a romance writer simply because they are creating a whole new place filled with different rules and elements than what we normally experience. The first quarter of the book Dune by Frank Herbert was painfully slow for me the first time I read it because it goes into painstakingly long descriptions of the spice planet. Some might criticize that, but without the information, the reader would be left wondering why people were behaving and reacting they way they did throughout the story. Even lighter works can use info dumping to great effect. Many teen mysteries and cozies info dump at the end of the story. If you have ever watched any episode of Scooby Doo, you'll have seen this. It's when Fred or Velma explain away the mystery. This sort of info dumping is perfectly accepted. And it's because it's at the end of the story. It's fun because they are walking us through how they used the clues they were given to solve the mystery. The clues are what is sprinkled through the beginning of the story, not the an info dump. We are faced with two questions when examining our own stories for info dumps. First, How do we spot the bad ones? And second, how do we fix them? How Do We Find Info Dumps? One of the easy ways to spot an info dump in your work is to look for long paragraphs. You can skim your chapters for very long paragraphs and then zoom in on them to see if you have dumped a chunk of information on the reader. Another way you can find your info dumps is to think about the places in your story where you know you added backstory or flashbacks, or spent time describing abilities (magical or otherwise), technology, rules of law, fantasy creatures/races, etc. Once you find a paragraph that you think might be questionable, here's what to ask yourself:
Exercise: Find and Fix Info Dumps Info dumping done poorly is often associated with lazy writing by "the people in the know" and boring by readers who don't see it for what it is but sense that it's there, so it's worth the time spent in fixing it. So, how do we do a sufficient bit of world building without dumping all the exposition all at once? "All at once" might give you the biggest clue. The goal should be to roll out large chunks of information in smaller bits throughout the story.
Methods for fixing Info Dumps
Return to the Table of Contents Go to Day 20 - Show or Tell 5/18/2019 Day 18 - Analyze DialogCadence of Dialog Dialog has a pattern unto itself. In fact, it has many patterns, each one depending on the character who is speaking. Depending on where your characters were brought up (city vs country, north vs south, US vs Canada, eastside vs westside) plays a major role in the types of slang that is used and how the words roll of the tongue. Some readers will revolt if your whole story is written in the vernacular (writing the dialog as it sounds to the ear), so a consideration should be made about how much of the vernacular you need to use to get your point across. Is it enough to tell the reader that the character spoke in a slow, Southern drawl, or does it need to be reinforced every time the character opens their mouth with a "y'all" thrown in for good measure? Most readers are probably going to tell you that it gets old quick when you are using language that reveals your personal bias of what you think southerners sound like. It can be come transparent very quickly if you have only a short list of "southern" slang that you use. However, using the vernacular can be very effective when used to demonstrate a comparison between two different characters. Writing good dialog means capturing the cadence of how people really speak. It is getting to the essence of what is being said without understating or overstating the content of the discussion between character. People rarely talk in complete sentences. When people know each other well enough, thoughts can be left unsaid because one knows the other so well, sentences are being completed in their heads. Being able to capture this in a way that doesn't leave the reader wondering what your characters are talking about is important if you want to keep your reader engaged in the story. One aspect of cadence to consider is what is going on in the scene in which the dialog occurs. A casual scene like you might find during the beginning of a story or at the beginning of the rising action will also have casual dialog. Likewise, in a high action sequence, dialog should be sharp and quick. There won't be time for a long diatribe in the middle of a sword fight. Any repartee will need to be short and to the point. Amount of Dialog Besides capturing the dialog in a realistic way, it's also important to consider how much dialog is used and when. It's not always necessary or even appropriate to use dialog. It really should be used to enhance the story. Like exposition, if the dialog isn't moving the story forward or being used in a way to reveal information about a character or the character's inner thoughts or feelings, the setting, or the scene, it should be revised or removed. There may also be times when not enough dialog is used. Writing dialog can be hard and some writers may shy away from writing it, but not including dialog can be detrimental to the success of an otherwise great story. Readers have come to expect a certain amount of dialog and will only accept a story without it in special circumstances. Later this month, I will cover methods of tagging dialog (the "he said" portions of dialog), so for now, focus on the pattern and work out the grammatical corrections later. Exercise: Review Your Dialog
Today's exercise includes reading through your dialog to see if you have any bad habits that need correcting. You may find only patches of dialog that need work, or you may discover you need to pay a little more attention to all your dialog everywhere. If the latter is your situation, take your time and review each conversation in your story with an eye on the following questions.
Tips for working offline or by hand: If you want to work off-line, copy and paste the questions from this page into a new page called "Dialog Analysis" in the Developmental Edit section of your notebook. If you need help creating a new page in Microsoft OneNote, check here. Notice how content pasted from the Internet includes a hyperlink to the source webpage so you can return to the page in the future if you need more information. DOWNLOAD: Dialog Analysis Worksheet Template Instructions Return to the Table of Contents Go to Day 19 - Eliminate Info Dumps 5/16/2019 Day 16 - Setting as a CharacterHow Setting Can Be A Character Most novels have several different settings within them. Each setting will have its own characteristics, from a bustling, noisy café, to a sleepy quiet waiting room, to a dark forbidding forest. Those characteristics can cause our characters to act or react in very specific ways that have to do with their hopes, fears, and aspirations. Consider for a moment, Black Beauty. One scene that comes to mind is at the track during a downpour. The rain is making the track slippery with mud. Our characters have to make a choice about racing Black Beauty in the rain or forfeiting. When they decide it will be worth it to test Black Beauty, they find out he's a mudder (a horse that runs very well under these weather conditions). Settings that have an effect on our characters should be developed as characters themselves, at least for the scenes in which they take place. They can be used as foils for increasing tension or providing relief as a breather after moments of high action. On the one hand, a walk in the forest can be scary if the forest is dark and foreboding, but it can also be a moment where a character regroups their thoughts or finds peace in the dappling sunlight as it comes through the gently rustling leaves. The setting characteristics outlining exercise from Day 4 was very similar to today's exercise, but here we will go one step deeper and focus on presenting our setting as a character. This exercise is about enhancing your settings by adding more detail in a very deliberate way. Therefore, you could start from the worksheet from Day 4, but consider creating a whole new worksheet in order to take that closer look. Exercise: Setting Characters worksheet
Setting Characteristic Parameters Setting - Write in the chapter number and scene number o the scene. I like to use a shorthand notation of C1S1 which represents Chapter 1 Scene 1. Optionally, you can use a short description. Five Senses - Define the ways you have used each of the five senses to evoke the mood of the setting. Mood depends on how you want the character to react. If this is an action sequence, the mood should amp up the character's behavior, but if this is a breather, the mood should be restful. Action - The mood of the setting may be the "action" of the setting, but our environments can be more than mood. Take for instance, an earthquake. The mood of the setting might be carefree or the normal day-to-day apathy we all experience as we go about our daily routines, but the sense of the ground rolling beneath our feet and the low rumble complemented by the tinkling of glass from the vibrations of an earthquake would also be an "action" in our setting. Character Reaction - Describe the way the character(s) react(s) to the setting. Analysis of the Worksheet
DOWNLOAD: Setting Characters Worksheet Template Instructions Tips for working by hand If you'd like to work on notepaper or set up your own table in your favorite application, include the columns listed above for each table. The percentage listed is approximately the size you should make each column. Add rows as you work down through your chapters. Leave a little extra space between scenes as you work in case you want to add more details as you work further into your story. Return to the Table of Contents Go to Day 17 - Head Hopping 5/14/2019 Day 14 - Build TensionBuild More Tension in Your Story While tension in a story can be tested by reviewing pace (see Overall Chapter Pacing), you can also make sure your story doesn't lag in the middle due to tension not ramping up. If action rises and falls along a flat plane rather than rising and falling with incremental increases, the center of the story can feel repetitious and as if nothing is really moving forward. The way to correct this is to make sure the tension is building with each conflict. For example, in a romance novel, tension may build between the main character as the love interest in the following ways:
In the example above, a "first fight" is often disregarded in a relationship, especially if it's a new relationship as a minor tiff or lover's quarrel indicative of nothing in the bigger scheme of love. When friends bring evidence to the table, though, doubts may be sewn in the main character's mind but then also rationalized as if the friends are jealous. But when the best friend gives hard evidence, the main character now has to make some decision that is going to bring the conflict to the cusp of the climax. Each conflict ramps up the discord in the main character's heart. For this exercise, you will need to think about all the ways you are causing discord between your main character and one of the following: their self, a secondary character(s), the antagonist, or the reader. You will be able to use your Chapter Summary for this exercise, but will also be creating another worksheet. For this worksheet, you will be moving to the Developmental Edit section of the notebook because we are starting to crystallize the story. Exercise: Create a Tension Worksheet
Analysis of your conflict After you have ranked all your scenes with conflict, you can ask yourself the following questions to see if you need to make repairs.
Methods you can consider for fixing or adding more tension
DOWNLOAD: Tension From Conflict Worksheet Template Instructions Tips for working by hand If you created the Conflict worksheet earlier, you can use highlighters to either highlight the items indicated in the instructions or eliminate them. (Do whichever offers the least amount of work and color on the page.) Add a rank column wherever you can squeeze it in. Maybe at the front of the columns you first created or the end. If you don't have much room, consider using a different colored pen or pencil for marking the rank. Return to the Table of Contents Go to Day 15 - Character Arcs 5/13/2019 Day 13 - Improve Transitions and HooksOnce you have confirmed each scene has purpose (Day 11) and reviewed chapter pacing to root out overly long or excessively short breathers, you can look to improve your transitions and chapter hooks. What are Transitions ? Transitions are what take us from one event or scene to another in a story. Good transitions between scenes flow smoothly even when the time or location has changed. Bad transitions are confusing. They make a reader wonder, “How did I get here?” For example, the main character is walking into an empty house. The scene feels tense and foreboding. The chapter ends with the main character's hand on the doorknob, the wind whistling through the broken glass above his hand, and a shadow crossing over the full moon. End scene. The next chapter opens with the main character at lunch the next day. Wait. What? What happened at the house? Did he go in? Did he change his mind and go home? Bad transitions like this disappoint the readers and will even lead some to throwing the book in frustration, or worse, not reading the rest of the story. What are Hooks? Hooks are what keep us reading past midnight. They are often that “dun dun dunnnn” moment or that scene that ends with the reader exclaiming, “OMG! What happens next?!” In the example above, the scene ends nicely with a good hook. As a reader, I want to know what happens when he opens that door. I'm going to turn the page to find out. I would be hard-pressed to put the book down in that moment. Not every chapter needs to end with a highly dramatic hook like the example above. In fact, overuse of this technique can feel gimmicky or childish. The goal should be to keep the reader reading so it's worthwhile to consider how our chapters all end and start. Effective use of transitions and hooks between chapters will have a lot to do with where you are in the book. Remember, we want to be ramping up tension through the rising action in the second act. As we approach the climax, it can be very effective to end a chapter on a cliffhanger because this keeps the reader highly engaged. On the other hand, it's quite okay to casually meander into the next chapter when you are in the beginning of the book where we tend to have longer descriptions for character introductions and world building. However, you still want to keep that reader reading, so its worth the time to look at how and where you transition in new settings or new characters at the front end of the book, or how you leave a character hanging as you get close to the climax. Exercise: Review Hooks and Transitions Specifically read and review the end and the beginning of each chapter in your story. You should be confirming you are ending the chapter on the best hook possible, and also starting the next chapter with a transition that hasn't lost the reader from the hook on the end of the last chapter. Consider the following while reading through your chapters:
DOWNLOAD: Hooks and Transitions Worksheet Template Instructions Return to the Table of Contents Go to Day 14 - Build Tension 5/12/2019 Day 12 - Overall Chapter PacingPacing From Chapter Length Hopefully by this point, you are feeling pretty good about the foundation of your story because if you had any big plot holes, character inconsistencies, or scenes missing purpose, you've fixed them. The next step is going to be working on the intermediary issues between plot holes and common grammar or spelling mistakes. This will be where we crystallize your characters, setting, and scene. Exercises will include making sure the pacing of you story feels right, that dialog makes sense, and that you have eliminated exposition that doesn't drive your story forward just like you did with scenes that had no purpose. Tension should ebb and flow in a story, so there may be high and low spots throughout your chapters. The low spots should only exist as short "breathers" after moments of high stress, either for the characters or the reader. Keep in mind the action should continue to rise over the course of all the scenes until the final battle. Therefore, longer breathers at the beginning of a story are perfectly fine, but as we ramp up through the rising action, the breathers should become shorter. The shorter breathers will build in that sense of urgency. So, a good test of tension is a review of pacing. One of the easiest ways to check the pace of your story is to look at the length of your chapters. There is no right or wrong word count for a chapter size, but you should find that your chapters tend to a "usual size" near the front half of your story, then get a bit shorter as you near the climax. This reflects the early stages of world building, where you will spend more time introducing characters and setting, but then as you enter the stages of rising action, the pace of the story gets faster. (See Day 9 - Map Your Chapter Summary to a Story Arc for a discussion about the stages of a traditional story arc.) Exercise: Review Chapter Pacing For this exercise, return to your Chapter Summary page in the Structural Edit section of your Novel Editing notebook and follow these steps:
Excessively long chapters may be of too much exposition. Review those chapters again to check for spots where you have over-explained something or written too much backstory. Strategies or correcting these can include:
Excessively short chapters, especially early in a story, may indicate that something is missing. Review the chapters and ask your self the following questions. Revise chapters as needed.
Tips for working by hand If you have been completing the assignments by hand, you can still use your Chapter Summary spreadsheet. You may not have room to add a new column, but you can still use a pencil or colored pen to write in the word counts. If you are someone who doesn't type your story into an application, you can do word counts based on an average. For instance, count all the words on a "typical" written page, then use that as your estimate for the average number of words on a page. For a page only half-filled, use half the count. Only count the words on pages that are less than half a page. Return to the Table of Contents Go to Day 13 - Improve Transitions and Hooks Every Scene Should Count Every scene should drive your novel forward. If a scene doesn't, it should be removed or revised. Today's exercise will help you focus on each scene to ensure the scene has a purpose and that it moves your story forward. Said another way, each scene should have a mini-arc to be effective. The arc will be made up of an Action, a Reaction, and a New Action. An action, whether it is external or internal to your main character, will cause your character to react, and then a new action will carry the character (and your reader) forward. Let's think for a moment what kinds of actions make our characters react.
In each case above, the main character is going to need to react to the situation that has been placed before them, and after they react, they will need to formulate a new plan to move forward. Any scene which is missing one of these three parts is lacking its purpose within the story. Today's Task You could look back at your Chapter Summary (see Day 5) but I like to do this step independently of that analysis simply because, by this point, I know my story so well inside and out that I'm looking for any way that helps me see the scenes with fresh eyes. Also, this analysis may have more rows in the table than the Chapter Summary if your chapters are made up of more than one scene. You should do this exercise by using both your memory of what you wanted or thought you needed to accomplish in each scene plus a review to confirm you did what you set out to do. Exercise: Complete the Purposeful Scenes Worksheet
If you are creating your notes in your OneNote Novel Editing notebook, follow these steps to complete the exercise:
Setting Characteristic Parameters From memory, complete the information in the columns from SCENE to READER RESPONSE. Scene - Write in the chapter number and scene number o the scene. I like to use a shorthand notation of C1S1 which represents Chapter 1 Scene 1. Optionally, you can use a short description. Purpose - In the most concise possible way, note the purpose of the scene. The most common include:
Focal Character - Not every scene will necessarily focus around your character, so note in the Focal Character column who is the character being changed or challenged. (Think about a Darth Vader scene. He's the main character in the scene who's being challenged by the rebels.) It's important to know, a setting can also be a character, so if you have a setting that is going through a change, put the name of the setting here. (More about setting as a character is coming soon.) Element of Change - Write in what about the focal character is meant to change. The list here is a short list, but it should give you an idea of how you should be thinking about the element of change.
Reader Response - Think about how the change should affect the reader. What is the emotional or empathetic response you are hoping to evoke? Again, this is a short list only meant to set you thinking on the right path.
The last three columns should be completed by re-reading your scenes as a fact-finding mission as you did earlier with the outlining worksheets in Days 3 - 7. Don't do these from memory because the goal should be to make sure you haven't forgotten or accidentally missed anything while writing. Action - Write in the internal or external action that prompts the focal character in the scene to act. In the scene mentioned above with Darth Vader, it might be one of his lieutenants telling him the rebels are moving forward. Reaction - Write in the character's reaction to the action with which they have been presented. New Action - Note the new course of action that the character is taking. The action plus the reaction should lead the character down a new path or reinforce the previous path with new determination. Analysis of your Purposeful Scene worksheet As you work through your scenes, you may start to see weak spots that are easily fixed or you may get a sense that something is wrong but still be unsure what that something is exactly. The following questions can help you analyze what you filled in and provide some clues about repairing a scene without much purpose. In some cases, you may realize you don't need the scene after all.
DOWNLOAD: Purposeful Scene Worksheet Template Instructions Tips for working by hand If you'd like to work on notepaper or set up your own table in your favorite application, include the columns listed above for each table. It will work best if you set the page up in the landscape orientation. The percentage listed is approximately the size you should make each column. You may even want to set the table up across two sheets of paper to give yourself enough room for each column. Return to the Table of Contents Go to Day 12 - Overall Chapter Pacing |