Show Don't Tell /Nonsense

 What's it mean?

What does my sheepdog mean when he puts his head in my lap and stares up at me? He might mean he loves me—really, really, really. He might mean he wants me to pet him. Please. Please. Please. He might mean that he’s feeling a little low and he would like to be told how good he is, preferably for the rest of his waking life. Good dog. Good dog. Good dog. Maybe he means something else I haven’t thought about. He could, for all I know, be telling me that he’s sorry for eating my tennis shoe, which by the way wasn’t nearly as good as he thought it would be. Do I always have to buy Converse?

SHOW DON’T TELL. Yes, but

 Some gestures aren’t clear. They need context to make showing them add to the story. And sometimes they need more than that. Sometimes it’s more important to tell and violate the rule (this one is definitely made to be broken on numerous occasions) and be more specific. Expressing with precision the experience of the character—how they’re affected by what’s happening or how they affect another and the way it fits with the rest of the story—is vital. The reader has to be in on what’s going on in order to share the character’s experience. Show. Tell. It doesn’t matter how you do that. It just matters that you do

Write A Good Story and They Will Come

 Write A Good Story And They Will Come

 

In Austin, Texas, it gets hot in the summer. You can fry an egg on the pavement. You can cook a whole five-course meal. If you stand in one place too long, you start smoking. 

How do you get that heat in writing? Everything has to be working in your writing and that includes the oft maligned element, plot or story. 

Story isn’t easy. People realize it’s hard to use language well. hard to develop character, create an interesting setting, etc.. But story /plot doesn’t really get its due. It lives in the worst fictional neighborhood and isn’t invited to the fictional elements’ parties. Its job is undesirable. Too many writers think of it as an afterthought.

Story is, in fact, seriously undervalued, particularly in MFA programs (at least that was my experience when I got my MFA). A lot of writers who write beautifully fail miserably because they have no story to tell or what faint story they do have to tell isn’t told well. They expect readers to read their work because they write pretty sentences.

I’m here to tell you—pretty sentences aren’t enough ( even though I love good sentences). The truth is most readers will forgive some language issues if you can tell a good story but if you have no story, great language isn’t going to keep them reading. They get bored.

 

Ideally you write well AND tell a good story, but story is as important as writing well. And forget that crap about writing what you know. What you need to do is write about what you can imagine. You don’t have to know your story when you start a first draft but by the time you write THE END you should have a pretty good idea of the major moves in your plot. Discover in your first draft those major moves and what happens in between them isn't so hard to fill in when you write your second.

 

Good luck and Write well.