![]() ![]() Subdued Emotions: Getting them Right in Your Story Storywriting showing not telling how to#How to Break Writing Rules Right: "Don't Use Adverbs, Adjectives" We don't need to know all the details about your character's bath, just tell us he took one. ![]() ![]() If we showed all the less important parts, the story would drag like crazy. Showing helps us relate to the story on an empathetic level instead of a sympathetic one ( see my post on writing empathetically instead of sympathetically and sentimentally), because showing creates emotion and tension in the reader.īUT again, remember, moments that aren't that important to experience firsthand but the reader just needs to know about, should be told. In contrast, take note that whenever you have an important moment or a highly emotional moment in your story, you (almost) always want to show it. It wasn't important to the story that we see, hear, and experience Katniss crying. After Katniss gets mad and shoots an arrow near the Gamemaker, we are told, that Katniss spent the afternoon crying (or something like that). Sometimes it's not important to show your characters seeing their friend's cats-it doesn't matter much what the cats look and sound like and nothing really important happens during the scene-but it's important for the reader to simply know the fact that they saw the cats.Ī good example of this comes from The Hunger Games. If you show absolutely everything in your novel (or probably even short story,) the pacing of your story is going to suffer. In my showing example above, you probably saw that it took much longer for me to show you Emily was tired than it was to tell you. Showing takes work.īut like any writing rule, if you treat this one like a commandment, it can actually hurt your writing and take the power out of your story. Most all beginning writers write stories this way, which is why learning to show, not tell, is preached just about everywhere. How much emotion do you feel from that? Do you feel like you are in the story? Does it have you on the edge of you seat? Probably not. Then they drew some pictures before watching t.v. It was cold out, so they went inside and got something warm to eat. When they got tired, they called their mom to pick them up, but their mom couldn't come for two hours. They went to their friend's house to see some cats. If telling still doesn't seem that "bad" to you, look at what bland telling looks like sentence after sentence in this example: When you "show" the story to the reader, you are allowing them to interpret and come to their own conclusions, rather then you telling them what to think and believe. If you "tell" them everything, you're (almost) never putting the emotions in the reader, so the story won't be as powerful. (In contrast, in my first example, I appealed to no senses.) It's important to immerse the reader, so that they are experiencing the emotions in the story. In my second example, I appealed to the senses of sight and touch. One of the ways to do this well is to appeal to the senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. It's like they are there in the house with Emily, or are Emily herself. Second, when you show instead of tell it immerses the reader into the story so that they feel like they are experiencing it instead of just reading about it. She doesn't even wash off her makeup or turn off the room's light. How sleepy-tired? Tired enough that she can't pick up and carry her backpack, so tired that her eyes droop shut and she doesn't bother to take off her shoes before "falling" into bed. Is Emily a bored kind of tired? Or physically tired from running a mile? Or sleepy-tired? But when I show it, it's clear she's sleepy-tired. First, if I simply say "Emily was tired," as an audience, we don't get a visual for what "tired" is, how tired Emily is, or what kind of tired she feels. In my second example, I don't just tell the reader Emily is tired, I show them. She rubbed her eyes-mascara gritted against her skin-then flung her arm over her face to block out the light. ![]() She fell into her bed and her shoes blackened the covers. Yawning, Emily dragged her backpack on the way to her bedroom. Here is how you would change that example into showing: Telling is easier, and if we don't know the difference, we just do what's natural and easy.īut what is the difference? And why does it matter which you use? This is because naturally, we are wired to "tell" a story rather than "show" one. When I was in college, this was like scripture. Honestly, almost any beginning writer who is getting into writing needs to hear this advice, and probably several times. ![]()
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