imluvings

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Writing Tips from an Editor (Who Also Writes)

People throw around the phrase “Show, don’t tell” all the time. But what does it mean? Really?

When I’m editing a client’s work, I always explain what I mean when I say “Show, don’t tell,” so I know we’re on the same page (pun intended). 

FYI: This advice is really 2nd or 3rd draft advice. Don’t tie yourself in knots trying to get this perfect on the first go. First drafts are for telling yourself the story. Revisions are for craft. 

Ruthlessly hunt down filter words (saw, heard, wondered, felt, seemed, etc.). Most filter words push the reader out of narrative immersion, especially if you’re writing in 1st person or a close 3rd person. “She [or I] heard the wind in the trees” is less compelling than “The wind rustled through the trees” or “The wind set the bare branches to clacking.” Obviously, the point of view character is the one doing the hearing; telling the reader who’s doing the hearing is redundant and creates an unnecessary distance between the character’s experience and the reader’s experience of that experience. Was/were is another thing to watch out for; sometimes, nothing but was will do, but in many instances—“There was a wind in the trees” “There were dogs barking”—“was” tells, whereas other phrasing might evoke—“The wind whispered/howled/screamed through the trees” “Dogs snarled/yipped/barked in the courtyard/outside my door/at my heels.” 

Assume your readers are smart. What does this mean? Don’t tell the reader what your characters are thinking or feeling: “Bob was sad.” How do we know? What does Bob’s sadness look like, sound like? What actions, expressions, words indicate Bob’s sadness? Does Bob’s sadness look different than Jane’s would?

It also means that you need not repeat information unless you have something new to add to it—even if it’s been several chapters since you first mentioned it. I think a lot of readers fall into this trap because writing often takes a long time. But what takes a writer days or weeks or months to write might take a reader fifteen minutes to read. So, if the writer keeps telling the reader about so-and-so’s flaming red hair or such-and-such’s distrust or Bob’s blue eyes or Jane’s job as a neurosurgeon, the reader gets annoyed. 

The last thing you want is your reader rolling their eyes and muttering, “OMG, I KNOW” at the story you’ve worked so hard to write. It certainly means you don’t need to have characters tell each other (and through them, the reader) what the story is about or what a plot point means.

Along these same lines, let the reader use their imagination. “Bob stood, turned around, walked across the room, reached up, and took the book from the shelf.” Holy stage directions, Batman! A far less wordy “Bob fetched the book from the shelf” implies all those irrelevant other details. However, if Bob has, say, been bedbound for ten years but stands up, turns around, and walks across the room to fetch the book, that’s a big deal. Those details are suddenly really important.

Write the action. Write the scene with the important information in it. Let the reader be present for the excitement, the drama, the passion, the grief. If you’re finding yourself writing a lot of after-the-fact recap or “he thought about the time he had seen Z” or “and then they had done X and so-and-so had said Y,” you’re not in the action. You’re not in the importance. Exceptions abound, of course; that’s true of all writing advice. But overuse of recapping is dull. Instead of the reader being present and experiencing the story, it’s like they’re stuck listening to someone’s imperfect retelling. Imagine getting only “Last week on…” and “Next week on…” but never getting to watch an episode. I’m editing a book right now with some egregious use of this. The author has a bad habit of setting up a scene in the narrative present—“The queen met the warrior in the garden.”—but then backtracking into a kind of flashback almost immediately. “Last night, when her lady-in-waiting had first suggested meeting the warrior, she had said, ‘Blah blah blah.’ The queen hadn’t considered meeting the warrior before, but as she dressed for bed, she decided they would meet in the garden the next day. Now, standing in the garden, she couldn’t remember why it had seemed like a good idea.”

That’s a really simplified and exaggerated example, but do you see what I’m getting at? If the queen’s conversation with the lady-in-waiting and the resulting indecision are important enough to be in the narrative, if they influence the narrative, let the reader be present for them instead of breaking the forward momentum of the story to “tell” what happened when the reader wasn’t there. Unless it’s narratively important for something to happen off-page (usually because of an unreliable narrator or to build suspense or to avoid giving away a mystery), show your readers the action. Let them experience it along with the characters. Invite them into the story instead of keeping them at a distance.

Finally, please, please don’t rely on suddenly or and then to do the heavy lifting of surprise or moving the story forward; English has so many excellent verbs. Generally speaking, writers could stand to use a larger variety of them. 

(But said is not dead, okay? SAID IS VERY, VERY ALIVE.)

[imluvings]

hi! this might be a bit random but what could be reasons why two people hate each other? i wanted to go for something like gut feeling cause i don’t want too much angst but i’m scared it might come off as too shallow

Not random at all!

Reasons For Your Characters To Hate Each Other

Bad first impression: When A and B meet, A is in a bad mood. They’re snappier than usual and make a rude remark / completely ignore B. B decides then and there that they hate A, causing A to hate B back.

Bad reputation: B has been told time and time again that A is bad news (e.g A is mean, shallow, manipulative, stuck up, etc.). When they meet A, they decide not to give A a chance and presume the worst of them.

Association: A associates B with a bad person / a bad time in their life. For example, B is friends/related to A’s worst enemy or B had something to do with a bad experience that A had. B isn’t directly responsible for anything bad in A’s life, A just associated them with bad things and therefore dislikes them.

Conflicting ideas: Even if they’re on the same side, they may both have different ideas/opinions that they’re unwilling to give up.

Misunderstanding: Very simple. A believes that B wronged them in some way or that B is a bad person when, in reality, B did nothing wrong.

One of them has something that the other one wants: Jealousy is a vicious force, whether it’s for something physical, something emotional, or anything else. Your character might be jealous that the other one has a relationship, opportunities, acceptance, etc.

They simply don’t mesh: They feel like their personalities don’t work together. They may see the other as boring, stuck up, too loud, too quiet, stubborn or a million other things.

Also see:

More reasons for your characters to hate each other

Leave requests for other oneliners and prompts!

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[imluvings]

changkyun for 1stlook

[imluvings]

chirp (chapter 1)

Rated: E, Im Changkyun x Yoo Kihyun, Im Changkyun & Lee Hoseok Explicit sexual content, Cam AU, oral sex

Kihyun watches Danny's live broadcasts on the Chirper app and gets distracted—majorly distracted.

Read on Ao3! (+18)

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Spring in the city!

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hello, this is my first time to ask a question. how to be a vivid, like when i want to describe a thing but it's just short and plain.

How to Make Your Description More Vivid

From an old post… :)There is a really wonderful book by Rebecca McClanahan called Word Painting, which I highly recommend to anyone wanting to make their writing sound more professional. Here’s some of my favorite advice from the book. Examples are my own:1) Use description to make the world of your book more real to the reader than the space they are currently inhabiting.2) Try not to describe things by labeling them. Instead, describe the attributes that lead you to the label. Instead of saying, “She was petting Max the cat.” You could say, “She put her hand in Max’s soft fur and felt the rhythm of his purring.”3) Describe a subject or object in motion, even if it isn’t in motion. A child who is running could have bouncing curls. A man who is sitting can be reading or smoking. Snow on the ground can be melting or glittering.

4) Be sure to use the right, most appropriate word for an object. Don’t call a coffee mug a “glass.” Don’t describe your female mercenary as having “porcelain” skin, because “porcelain” implies fragility. You could just say she’s “fair-skinned” or that “her skin was as pale as white marble.“ 

5) Sometimes, describing what isn’t there is more interesting than describing what is there. For example: You could say, “The rest stop was silent and the highway was abandoned.” But it sounds a little more interesting to say, “There was no sound coming from the highway now. No thundering semi-trucks, no rumbling motorcycles–not so much as an errant screech or piercing car horn.”6) Use active instead of passive prose. Passive: “The fence is being painted by the girls.”  Active: “The girls are painting the fence.”7) Don’t use filtering devices if you can help it. Words like “felt,” “saw,” “observed,” “noticed,” etc, take the focus away from what’s happening. “Her stomach clenched when the man drew his gun,” is much more effective than, “She felt her stomach clench when she saw the man draw his gun.”8) Avoid unnecessary suffixes, like -ful, -ment, -tion, -ance. For example, “Her tearful face was a demonstration of the candidness of her demeanor,” is really clunky. “Her tears demonstrated her candor,” sounds a lot better and is much more to the point.There is sooooooo much more in the book. That is really just the tip of the iceberg. So, if you can get it, do! Be sure you have sticky notes, a notepad, or a highlighter so you can mark the great information as you come to it.Go through your writing and see what you can change, then keep all of these tips in mind as you write in the future. Write as much as you can, because your writing will get better with practice.