The Difference Between Good Writing and Better Writing

By Julie Daines

As I've been reading many novels lately by a variety of writers--some established authors and some first-timers, I'm noticing some definite differences in the quality of writing. The one I want to mention today is about describing physical reactions and expressions.

This partly falls into the show don't tell category. We don't want to say someone is mad (because that's telling) so instead we think we are showing they are mad by clenched fists and a tight jaw. The problem is, that is also telling. You're telling us what the character is doing.

Let me demonstrate. In the first story I ever wrote, I sent the first chapter to an agent, and she had some great feedback, but this one particular comment really made me think.

I had written a great sentence along the lines of: "The corners of her mouth pushed up into a smile no matter how hard she tried to keep them down." Well, I thought I was doing this great job of showing and not telling, but the agent simply said, "Don't tell me WHAT her mouth is doing, tell me WHY."

As we writers try to steer away from telling, we often end up using physical descriptions as a substitute for real in-depth interiority. We tell WHAT our character is doing, not WHY. It's the WHY that makes all the difference.

Don't get me wrong. There is a time and place for physical description, but it should be used sparingly. Pay attention next time you read a really good book. Authors who win awards don't use hardly any physical descriptions. They get into the meat of the matter and focus on the WHY.

This is hard. Really hard. Here's a tip that might help. Don't stress about it as much on your first draft. But as you go through and revise, notice every physical description and see if you can simply delete it. Often we write the physical cliche as a transition when the words that follow the physical description are enough to answer the WHY.

EG:

Amy frowned and clenched her fists. George always treated her like a child, and no matter how hard she tried to please him, he never saw her as more than a spoiled little sister. If she was old enough to vote, she was old enough to make her own decisions. This time, even if it ruined her, she would do it her way.

This paragraph doesn't need the physical cliche sentence at the beginning Amy frowned and clenched her fists. It can simply be deleted. The rest of the paragraph carries the emotion and the interiority, no cliche needed.

Here is a list of cliches to avoid. This list comes from award winning author Martine Leavitt. (Her books are an amazing example of this concept.) I admit that I'm not a good enough writer yet to avoid all of these all the time, but I'm working on it.

heart pounding
throat constricting
fist/feet/stomach clenching
swallowing
widening eyes
gasping
all manner of breathing
tears

And I'd like to add biting of lip/cheek until tasting blood. So overused!

What physical descriptions are you inclined to overuse? What physical cliches have you noticed lately?

(I usually try to keep my posts here short, so I apologize for this long one. )

Related Post: Never Name Emotions

Why Is Everyone's Stomach Clenching?

By Julie Daines

I've been thinking about physical clichés a lot lately. And by thinking about I mean battling with.

There's this kind of evil Catch 22 thing with show don't tell. We don't want to say our character is mad, that's telling. (I was so mad = telling.) So we try to show it. But then we're stuck with a physical cliché. (I clenched my fists = physical cliché.)

So we swing back to the telling, only we try to make it sound better. (Red hot anger pulsed through my veins = fancy telling.) What's a writer to do?

I wish I had an easy answer. But writing is hard. And good writing is really hard.

We've got to figure out how to show our character's emotions in other ways that are subtle and yet get the point across.

Here are a few ways to accomplish that, but they are NOT the easy answer we're all hoping for.

• Well written dialogue can carry a lot of emotion. 

• Well written interiority will open the door to a ton of emotion--especially if that interiority includes motivation. If the character's motivations are clear, we will already know exactly how the character will react to any situation.

• Use an objective correlative. See my post here. If you don't know what that is, you really need to, so go read the article. But like most things, less is more, so don't overuse the objective correlative.

• Avoid naming emotions. See more tips about that here.

• Read. Read the good books that expertly accomplish the show don't tell rule. And look out for physical clichés and other forms of telling as you read.

• There is a place for some description of physical emotions. Just be sure to use it sparingly and judiciously. And avoid the really overused ones. (Stomach, jaw, or fists clenching, tears, all manner of breathing and heart pounding...) On the Bookshelf Muse blog, they have an Emotional Thesaurus. This can be useful for finding a less cliché way to show a physical reaction.

Those are a few I thought of off the top of my head. What are your suggestions for avoiding physical cliché? 

Julie Daines

A Blind Eye (Feb 2013)

Is Your Writing Too "Tell-y"?

By Julie Daines

Show don't tell. It's a phrase we hear over and over again. But how can you know if you have too much telling and not enough showing?

Here is a quick list of signs that indicate you are telling instead of showing:

* Using too many adverbs. A few well placed adverbs are great. Less is more.

* Using inactive verbs. Such as to be, including was, am, is, are etc. "She was running through the trees" is weaker than "She raced through the trees."

* Using look or feel. A sign that you're taking the easy way out. "Angie looked sad" or "Mark felt tired" are both weak and telling. See my post on never naming emotions and using an objective correlative instead of telling.

* Using cliches. "flashing a perfect set of white teeth" or "steely gray eyes" tell us what the teeth and eyes look like, but not anything deeper about the character. Find a better, more meaningful way to show it. A way that makes us care.

* Too many adjectives. Just like with adverbs, less is more. Find a better way to write description. When in doubt, limit description passages anyway.

This list is from author Deborah Perlberg's book Writing for Young Adults.

The 10 Commandments of Writing and When to Break Them

By Julie Daines

Writing Conferences. We go. We listen. We obey.

Maybe sometimes we obey too much.

My next few posts will be about when to break the writing commandments.

Commandment 1: Thou shalt never tell.

How often have we heard "Show Don't Tell"? Well believe it or not, there are times when it's better to tell.

• In an attempt to avoid telling, many writers resort to physical cliches. 

Tears sprung to her eyes as she thought about saying goodbye to Mark. At least they still had this one last moment together. Her heart pounded as he moved closer, and when he held her hand, a sizzle of electricity shot up her arm. He tilted his head to the side. When he looked at her like that, she felt the flush of heat in her cheeks.

This is showing, not telling. But it's so laden with physical cliches it's painful to read. The trick is to use inner dialogue to convey these feelings and not tell us what is happening to her physically, but tell us WHY. (Without sounding telly. Not so easy, but it can be done.)

• In the words of children's book editor Cheryl Klein: "Sometimes readers need the plain straightforward direction of telling to elucidate the point of all that showing."

Klein states, a great technique employed by J. K. Rowling is to have a sentence at the beginning of a paragraph that is a little more telly followed by a few awesome sentences of showing. 

These topic sentences point the reader's mind in the right direction, easing the transition from action to interiority, aiding in a place or time shift, or subtly suggesting a shift in the character's mood or focus.

When used at the end of the paragraph or section of showing, this good telling can act as a confirmation to the reader that the main character is indeed feeling or thinking what we think he/she is. 

Harry had the best morning he'd had in a long time. (telling) He was careful to walk a little way apart from the Dursleys so that Dudley and Piers, who were starting to get bored with the animals by lunchtime, wouldn't fall back on their favorite hobby of hitting him. ... (followed by a few more clever and poignant sentences of showing.)  -The Sorcerer's Stone, chapter 2

Can you think of other times when it's appropriate to use telling?

When History Repeats Itself--Too Much

By Julie Daines

Scott recently wrote a great post on including details in our writing that can help bring the characters and settings to life. In today's post, I want to take that one step further--or maybe a step to the side.

A large portion of one of my novels is set among the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest before they ever encountered "White Man." I had to do weeks of research. I learned an enormous amount of interesting and fascinating facts, and I wanted to find a way to put them all in my story. But, I couldn't. Waaay to boring. I can't expect all readers to have my same excitement level for how they smoked salmon and the hierarchy of the different clans.

Then I found this great quote by bestselling author Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I'll just let his words speak for themselves.

I think you have to be careful with research in fiction. I believe the best way to use it is to learn a lot yourself about what you're going to write, and then don't really use more than 1 percent of all the research you've done, at least visibly. 

But you need to know all about it, because the effective way to use research in fiction is to internalize it and embed its essence in the narrattive fabric of the tale. 

Information only works in fiction when it plays a dramatic role.

Often you read novels in which the author includes much of the research he's done on a subject or a period or a place. None of that stuff sticks to the reader's brain unless it is instrumental in terms of story.

It needs to work dramatically. In literature you need to find a way to incorporate it in the texture, the aesthetics, and the fabric of the world your building rather than a display or erudition. That way the readers absorb it without realizing they're doing it.

So, there you have it. Once again, less is so much more.


Find more on writing YA fiction at juliedaines.blogspot.com

A Better Way to Show

By Julie Daines


I've been reading about my favorite subject lately, imagery in literature, and I keep coming across the term objective correlative. As I delved deeper, I realized that was exactly what my current work in progress is missing.

Objective correlative is a term coined by T. S. Elliot. He said:

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.

What does that mean? Essentially, an objective correlative is a type of metaphor where certain symbols or objects are used to express or allow an understanding of usually incomprehensible emotions or feelings.

In our current world of show but don't ever upon penalty of death tell, it's easy to get bogged down in trying to describe the physical traits of sadness, regret, nostalgia, etc. Tears, a sinking feeling in the stomach, furrowed brow--these are all becoming cliche. So how do you show what your character is feeling without being cliche?

The answer: Objective correlative! 


Here are some examples:

I just saw the movie The Eagle wherein a young man wants to redeem his father's name and restore honor to his family. As a child, his father gave him a carved amulet of an eagle--symbolic of the great golden eagle standard of Rome and of his father's honor and love. When the audience is meant to feel the main character's desire to recover his family's honor, he fondles the amulet and immediately we know what he is thinking and feeling. The eagle amulet is an objective correlative.

In one of my earlier novels the main character feels tremendous guilt for causing the death of her boyfriend in a car accident. She has a scar from that accident, and when I want to show that she is feeling shame and guilt because of what she did, all she has to do is reach up and try to cover her scar. The act of covering her scar is an objective correlative.

In Lord of the Rings, Aragorn is conflicted about his place as king. He feels unworthy because of the treachery of his ancestor, Isildur, who kept the Ring for himself instead of destroying it when he had the chance. Aragorn worries he will also become weak and susceptible to corruption when faced with an opportunity for power. All the audience needs to see is a quick flashback of Isildur's treachery to know exactly how Aragorn feels. That quick glance to the past is an objective correlative.

So when my critique group told me my main character was too whiney in my last chapter. That's when it hit me, he doesn't have his objective correlative yet. He needs that symbol to show without telling exactly how he feels.

After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. In literature, an objective correlative is just a written picture.


Julie's Blog: After the Toilets

KISS

No, not the band. I honestly don't know if I could name one of their songs. (Makes me sound young, I know.) I'm using the KISS acronym here. Keep It Simple Stupid.

What can I possibly be referring to in reference to writing? A few months ago, I finally finished Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. I thought it was wonderfully written. I honestly praise Brandon for his smooth writing ability. However, there was one part in the entire book that I sat there thinking, "Really Brandon, it takes three pages to explain how he goes from one part of the city to another?"

Not to pick on Brandon (Seriously, he's published and I'm not), but my point with this is I got the idea of what was going on in a few paragraphs. I felt like I got the effect after the first page. I understood what he was attempting to do. He was showing us how cool this power is, just how powerful his main character was. I, however, was wondering why it takes this very powerful man three pages to simply cross the town.

Unfortunately, there's a thing about this word 'simple.' What I mean by that is, you do get to expound on it. Showing with your writing means that you're expanding the simple. The simplest thing would be to tell: "And he used magic to cross the city." But I think if you take pages to show us what everyone did during dinner, you may have a problem. However, if dinner is an important event: an argument, a discovery, or something else crucial, then it can take longer. But if nothing important to the story is happening, do what you can to show, but don't go into overdrawn description.

I love description. I'm guilty of being long-winded. During LDStorymakers' Boot Camp in April last year, the first thing that one of my group members said about my book was "Info dump". Yeah, wanted to give up writing and cry. (And then one of the other members of the boot camp group goes on to win awards for her writing. Thanks a lot Julie!) :) My point, however, is that you want to be careful. Keep things simple. Expound what's important. Shorten what isn't. Keep your strategy simple....stupid.

Alien abductions are involuntary, but probings are scheduled.

Never Name Emotions

By: Julie Daines

How many times have we heard, “Show don’t tell”? So many times that it goes in one ear and out the other? So often that we’ve stopped considering what that really means?

Here’s one quick and easy way to spot telling: Any time you use the name of an emotion to describe the emotion, it’s usually telling.

Examples of telling:

Anger burned inside me.

Relief flooded through her. (Any time an emotion moves through a character’s body, it’s telling.)

A melancholy sadness filled Amy’s soul like the last song of the whippoorwill. (Definitely better than the first two, but still telling.)

“I hate you,” John said angrily. (Avoid ly words--because it's telling!)

The goal instead, is to SHOW us how those emotions feel, what they look like, what they sound like…

So, when you find yourself writing the name of an emotion, ask yourself, Can I show this in a better way?

Let’s try again:

If he smirked at me one more time, he'd be going to the dance with a black eye.

She leaned back in her chair, her shoulders finally relaxing.

Amy sat on the back porch resting her chin on her knees. The last song of the whippoorwill carried across the frosty fields, empty now that the harvest was over. …

“I hate you!” John turned and slammed the door. Jane cringed with every footstep as he stomped down the stairs.

Take home lesson: Do not use the name of an emotion to describe an emotion.