Don't Stop the Story to Introduce Each Character!

by Jodie Renner, editor & author

Want to write popular fiction that captivates your readers and sells well, with great reviews? It's all about fiction-writing techniques that will enthrall the reader, rather than turning them off.

Entice your readers, don’t bore them.

Imagine you’ve just met someone for the first time, and after saying hello, they corral you and go into a long monologue about their childhood, upbringing, education, careers, relationships, plans, etc. You keep nodding as you glance around furtively, trying to figure out how to extricate yourself from this self-centered boor. You don’t even know this person, so why would you care about all these details at this point?

Or have you ever had a friend go into great long detail about someone you don’t know, an acquaintance they recently ran into? Unless it’s a really fascinating story with a point, I zone out. Who cares? Give me a good reason to care, and feed me any relevant details in interesting tidbits, please!

In my editing of novels, I’ll often see a new character come on scene, then the author feels they need to stop the action to introduce that person to the readers. So they write paragraphs or even pages of background on the character, in one long expository lump. New writers often don’t realize they’ve just brought the story to a skidding halt to explain things the readers don’t necessarily need to know, certainly not to that detail, at that point. And it’s telling, not showing, which doesn’t engage readers. In fact, they’ll probably skim through it, and maybe even find something else to do instead.   

Don’t start with your character alone, musing or reminiscing.

Another related technique I find less than compelling is starting with the character on the way to something eventful, and as they’re traveling, they’re recollecting past or recent events in lengthy detail. It’s much more engaging to start with the protagonist interacting with others, with some tension and attitude involved. Then work in any necessary backstory info bit by bit as the story progresses, through dialogue, brief recollections or references, hints and innuendo, or short flashbacks in real time. And through reactions and observations by other characters.

Rein in Those Backstory Dumps!

Contrary to what a lot of aspiring authors seem to think, readers really don’t need a lot of detailed info right away on characters, even your protagonist. Instead, it’s best to introduce the character little by little, in a natural, organic way, as you would meet new people in real life. You might form an immediate physical impression, especially if you find them attractive or repugnant. You notice whether they’re tall or short, well-groomed or scruffy, timid or overbearing, friendly or cold, intelligent or dull, charismatic or shy.

If you’re interested in them, if you find them intriguing, you pay attention to them, ask them questions, and maybe ask others about them. You gather info on them gradually, forming and revising impressions as you go along, with lots of unanswered questions. Maybe you hear gossip and wonder how much of it is actually true. Through conversation and observation, you formulate impressions of them based on what they (or others) say, as well as their attitude, personality, gestures, expressions, body language, tone of voice, and actions.

Involve and engage the readers.

It’s also important to remember that readers like to be involved as active participants, not as passive receptors of dumps of information. Finding out about someone bit by bit, trying to figure out who they are and what makes them tick, what secrets they’re hiding, is a stimulating, fun challenge and adds to the intrigue.

Unlike nonfiction, where readers read for information, in fiction, readers want to be immersed in your story world, almost as if they’re a character there themselves. So be sure to entice readers to get actively engaged in trying to figure out the characters, their motivations and relationships, and whether they’re to be trusted or not.

Let the readers get to know your characters gradually, just like they would in real-life.

For ideas on how to approach introducing your characters to the reader in your fiction, think about a gathering where you’re just observing for a while, trying to get your bearings, maybe waiting for some friends to arrive. You look around at who’s there, listening in to snippets of conversation. A few people interest you, so you move closer to them, trying not to be obvious. You might pick up on glances, smiles, frowns, rolling of eyes, and other facial expressions. You read their body language and that of others interacting with them.

Perhaps you decide to strike up a conversation with one or two who look interesting. You find out about their personality and attitudes through their words, tone of voice, inflection, facial expressions, body language, and the topics they jump on and others they avoid. Then, if they interest you, you might start asking them or others about their job or personal situation and get filled in on a few details – colored of course by the attitudes and biases of the speaker. Maybe you hear a bit of gossip here and there.

That’s the best way to introduce your characters in your fiction, too. Not as the author intruding to present us with a pile of character history (backstory) in a lump, but as the characters interacting with each other, with questions and answers, allusions to past issues and secrets. Even having your character thinking about what they’ve been through isn’t that compelling, so keep it to small chunks at a time, and be sure to have some emotions involved with the reminiscing – regret, worry, guilt, etc.

So rather than stopping to give us the low-down on each character as he comes on the scene, just start with him interacting, and let tidbits of info about him come out little by little, like in real life. Let the readers be active participants, drawing their own conclusions, based on how the characters are acting and interacting.   

Reveal juicy details, little by little, to tantalize readers.

And don’t forget, the most interesting characters have secrets, and readers love juicy gossip and intrigue! Just drop little hints here and there – don’t spill too much at any one time. Give us an intriguing character in action, then reveal him little by little, layer by layer, just like in real life!

Readers and authors, do you have any observations or advice to offer on dealing with character backstory in fiction?

Click HERE for options to receive email alerts of new posts published on this blog.

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: WRITING A KILLER THRILLER, FIRE UP YOUR FICTION, and CAPTIVATE YOUR READERS, as well as two clickable time-saving e-resources, QUICK CLICKS: Spelling List and QUICKCLICKS: Word Usage. She has also organized two anthologies for charity: VOICES FROM THE VALLEYS – Stories and Poems about Life in BC’s Interior, and CHILDHOOD REGAINED – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers. You can find Jodie on her Amazon Author Page, at www.JodieRenner.com, and on Facebook. 

Concrete Tips & Examples for "Showing" Rather than "Telling"

by Jodie Renner, editor & author   

"SHOW, DON’T TELL" -- This phrase has been repeated to the point where you might feel it's hackneyed and you can dismiss it--NOT! No matter how many times you've heard it, this concept is still critical to creating fresh fiction that captivates readers and garners great reviews. It's also one of the most difficult concepts for new fiction writers to grasp, along with deep point of view. (The two concepts are inextricably entwined.) Understanding and mastering these two interrelated concepts will make a huge difference in the quality of your stories by engaging readers emotionally and keeping them turning the pages.

Showing instead of telling your story brings your characters and scenes to life. Using this technique will suck your reader into your story world and right inside your protagonist, experiencing her fear along with her, feeling the sweat on her brow and her adrenaline racing, pulse quickening right along with hers, muscles tensed, ready to leap into action.

~ Don’t tell us what happened – show us what happened.

To clarify what is meant by “show, don’t tell,” think of it this way: Which would you rather do -- go see an exciting movie in a theatre with a big screen and surround sound (“show”), or hear about the movie from someone else afterward (“tell”)? That’s the difference we’re talking about here.

A common mistake among aspiring fiction writers is to describe or narrate (or worse, summarize) important events as if they took place at some point in the past, instead of putting the reader right in the middle of the action and showing critical events as they occur, in real time, along with the characters’ actions, reactions, inner thoughts and feelings, and actual words (direct dialogue in quotations).

Bestselling author Janet Evanovich considers “show, don’t tell” to be one of the most important principles of fiction: “Instead of stating a situation flat out, you want to let the reader discover what you’re trying to say by watching a character in action and by listening to his dialogue. Showing brings your characters to life.”

~ Cut back on narration, description, and exposition.

Effective, engaging storytelling is definitely not about relating the events after the fact or interpreting for the readers. Keep the story moving and the characters interacting. The author stepping in to describe or explain things to the readers jolts us away from the characters and their plight and can be distracting, boring, and irritating for readers.

~ Don’t get in the way or interpret for us.

We like to experience things for ourselves, not hear about them from someone else. Think about being subjected to photo after photo, or even videos, about your neighbors’ vacation. Yawn. In the same way, readers of popular fiction don’t want to be kept at arm’s length, to be told what’s happening by an intermediary narrator. They want to experience the events firsthand, to see, hear and feel what’s happening. They want to sense the character’s fears, hopes, joys, and worries and draw their own conclusions.

As the late, great Jack Bickham said, “Not only does moment-by-moment development make the scene seem most lifelike, it’s in a scene [with dialogue and action and reaction] where your reader gets most of his excitement. If you summarize, your reader will feel cheated – short-changed of what he reads for – without quite knowing why.”

It’s through characters interacting that a scene comes alive, so be sure to put us right there with the characters, in the middle of the tension and conflict, using “live” action, dialogue, sensory details, thoughts, and emotions.

~ Use deep point of view.

Avoid omniscient point of view, which is distracting and distancing. Use close third-person (or first-person) POV  to put us right into your protagonist’s or other main character’s head and skin. Show us her thoughts, reactions, and plans, his inner fears, hopes, resentments, anger, confusion, tenderness, relief, and joy. Don’t keep the reader at arm’s length by describing your hero or heroine from the outside, using omniscient or distant third-person point of view.

~ Evoke all five senses.

Showing means presenting the story to the reader using sensory information. The reader wants to feel what the character is feeling, experience their fear, joy, anger, determination, and pain, know their inner hopes and thoughts, and also see what’s happening, hear the different voices of the characters and other sounds, smell the smells, feel the tactile sensations, and taste the food and drink along with them. Telling, on the other hand, is summarizing the story for the reader in a way that skips past the life-giving sensory information and just relates the basic actions and events that occurred.

~ Use powerful, evocative phrasing.

Instead of “the miner was tired” (telling), say “the miner trudged home, head bowed,” or “the miner plodded along, his boots like lead weights” or “the miner clomped over the gravel with heavy steps.” Or slogged or tramped or lumbered or dragged or shuffled (all showing).

Do a search for the word “was” – it’s often an indicator of telling instead of showing, as in “she was sad” or “he was angry.” Show their feelings instead by their thoughts, actions, words, tone, and body language.

~ Add in lots of tension and conflict.

Also, the bulk of the scene needs to be about a conflict of some kind between characters. No conflict = no scene. Tension and conflict are what drive fiction forward. As Jack M. Bickham said, the conflict part of the scene “draws readers out through a moment-by-moment drama, extending the scene suspense with pleasurable agony.” If you have a scene where everyone is getting along great, revise it to add more tension.

EXAMPLES OF SHOWING, RATHER THAN TELLING:

Telling: Jake’s words spooked me.

Showing: The hair on my arms rose when I thought about Jake’s words.

Telling: George was disgusted and angry.

Showing: George pounded his fist on the table and swore at her, his lips curling. “Don’t ever do that again.”

Telling: Janie was bored at her Grandma’s.

Showing: Janie wandered from room to room, trying to find something to do. She wished it wasn’t raining outside. She looked through Grandma’s old books but nothing interested her.

~ Also, no need to “tell” after you’ve “shown.”        

Don’t explain after the fact. The words and actions should convey what you're trying to show.

Before:

“You’re late!” the general said. He didn’t like to be kept waiting.

After:

“You’re late!” The general glared at him, hands on hips.

Other no-no examples of telling after showing:

In each case below, take out the unnecessary sentence at the end:

She moped around the house and wouldn’t answer the phone. Even TV didn’t interest her. She was depressed.

“You crack me up,” she said, laughing hysterically. Joel could be so funny.

RECAP – TIPS FOR SHOWING INSTEAD OF TELLING:

~ Show the characters’ actions as they’re occurring, in real time.

~ Use deep point of view to get right into the skin, head, and heart of your character.

~ Show us your viewpoint character’s reactions, feelings, emotions, and thoughts.

~ Add in sensory information. What are they seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, feeling?

~ Include lots of spirited, to-the-point dialogue. 

~ Look for “was” or “were” and rephrase the sentence, replacing the adjective with a compelling verb or verbal phrase.

~ Cut way back on narrative description, exposition, and lengthy explanations of the character’s past or motivations.

~ Keep flashbacks short, and show them in real time, with action and dialogue.

~ Throw in plenty of conflict and tension. 

~ Avoid telling after you’ve shown.

Of course, you can’t show everything, or your book would be way too long, and it would tire your readers out – or worse, end up boring them. You don’t want to show every move your characters make at down times, or when going from one place to the other. That’s where you summarize or “tell,” to get them to the next important scene quickly, without a lot of boring detail. 

The main thing to keep in mind is to never tell the reader, after the fact (or have a character telling another character), about a critical scene. Instead, dramatize it in the here and now, with dialogue, action, and lots of sensory details to bring it to life for the reader.

And check out these articles on Point of View on this blog:

POV 101 -- Get Into Your Protagonist's Head, 

POV 102 -- How to Avoid Head-Hopping, and 

POV 103 -- Engage Your Readers with Deep Point of View. 

Click HERE for options to receive email alerts of new posts published on this blog.

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: WRITING A KILLER THRILLER, FIRE UP YOUR FICTION, and CAPTIVATE YOUR READERS, as well as two clickable time-saving e-resources, QUICK CLICKS: Spelling List and QUICKCLICKS: Word Usage. She has also organized two anthologies for charity: VOICES FROM THE VALLEYS – Stories and Poems about Life in BC’s Interior, and CHILDHOOD REGAINED – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers. You can find Jodie on her Amazon Author Page, at www.JodieRenner.com, and on Facebook. 

Bring Your Characters to Life by Showing Their Reactions

by Jodie Renner, editor & author 

A novel won’t draw me in unless I start caring about the protagonist and worrying about what’s going to happen to her – in other words, until I get emotionally engaged in the story. And it’s the same for most readers, I think. For me to warm up to the protagonist, he has to have some warmth and vulnerability and determination, some hopes and insecurities and fears.

As readers, to identify with and bond with the protagonist – and other characters – we need to see and feel their emotions and reactions to people and events around them. When the character feels and reacts, then they come alive for us and we get emotionally invested and start to worry about them and cheer for their small victories. Once you have your readers fretting about your hero and rooting for him, they’re hooked.

As the late, great Jack M. Bickham said, “Fiction characters who only think are dead. It is in their feelings that the readers will understand them, sympathize with them, and care about their plight.”

Show those feelings.

So bring your characters to life by showing their deepest fears, worries, frustrations, hopes and jubilations. If readers see your hero pumped, scared, angry, or worried, they’ll feel that way, too. And a reader who is feeling strong emotions is a reader who is turning the pages.

And engage the readers’ senses, too, so they feel like they’re right there, by showing us not only what the character is seeing, but what they’re hearing, smelling, touching, sensing, and even tasting.

Show their physical reactions, too.

Besides showing us your character’s emotional reactions, show their physical reactions as well to what’s happening to them.

Show the stimulus before the response, and show the reactions in their natural order.

To avoid reader confusion and annoyance, be sure to state the cause before the effect, the stimulus before the response, the action before the reaction.

And to mirror reality, it’s important to show your character’s visceral reaction to a situation first, before an overt action or words. And show involuntary thought-reactions or word-reactions, like a quick “ouch” or swear word, before more reasoned thought processes and decision-making.

As Ingermanson & Economy put it, “Here’s a simple rule to use: Show first whatever happens fastest. Most often, this means you show interior emotion first, followed by various instinctive actions or dialogue, followed by the more rational kinds of action, dialogue, and interior monologue.”

And don’t skip those first steps! Remember, we’re inside that character’s head and body, so you deepen their character and draw us closer to them by showing us what they’re feeling immediately inside – those involuntary physical and thought reactions that come before controlled, civilized outward reactions.

As Bickham points out, it’s important to imitate reality by showing the reactions in the order they occur. You may not show all of these reactions, but whichever ones you choose, show them in this order.

First, show the stimulus that has caused them to react.  

Then show some or all of these responses, in this order:

1. The character’s visceral response
– adrenaline surging, pulse racing, stomach clenching, heart pounding, mouth drying, flushing, shivering, cold skin, tense muscles, sweating, blushing, shakiness, etc.

2. Their unconscious knee-jerk physical action – yelling, gasping, crying out, snatching hand or foot away from source of heat or pain, striking out, etc.

3. Their thought processes and decision to act

4. Their conscious action or verbal response

Showing your characters’ feelings and responses will bring them to life on the page for the readers and suck readers deeper into your story world, your fictive dream.

But don’t go overboard with it — you don’t want your protagonist to come across as gushing or hysterical or neurotic. It’s important to strike a balance so the readers want to relate to and empathize with your main character, not get annoyed or disgusted with her and quit reading.

So how do we strike that balance? How do we as writers find the emotions to bring our characters to life, but also find a happy medium between flat, emotionless characters that bore us and hysterical drama queens or raging bulls that make us cringe?

Bickham advises us to consider how we’ve felt in similar circumstances, then overwrite first, and revise down later. “I would much prefer to see you write too much of feeling in your first draft; you can always tone it down a bit later…. On the other hand, a sterile, chill, emotionless story, filled with robot people, will never be accepted by any reader.”

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: FIRE UP YOUR FICTION,  CAPTIVATE YOUR READERS, and WRITING A KILLER THRILLER, as well as two clickable time-saving e-resources, QUICK CLICKS: Spelling List and QUICK CLICKS: Word Usage. She has also organized two anthologies for charity: VOICES FROM THE VALLEYS – Stories and Poems about Life in BC’s Interior, and CHILDHOOD REGAINED – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers  Website: www.JodieRenner.com; Facebook. Amazon Author Page.

Show, Don't Tell

by Jodie Renner, editor & author   

"SHOW, DON’T TELL" is the most familiar mantra among advisors to fiction writers, and one of the most difficult concepts for new fiction writers to grasp. Mastering this concept will make a huge difference in the quality of your stories.

What does it mean? It’s about bringing the scene to life and putting the reader right there, inside your character, experiencing her fear along with her, feeling the sweat on her brow and her adrenaline racing, your pulse quickening right along with hers, muscles tensed, ready to leap into action.

~ Cut back on narration, description, and exposition.

Remember this: Story trumps all. Keep the story moving and the characters interacting. The author stepping in to describe or explain things to the readers brings the story to a screeching halt and can be distracting, boring, and irritating for readers.

~ Don’t tell us what happened – show us what happened.

A common mistake among aspiring fiction writers is to describe or narrate (tell) events as if they took place at some point in the past, instead of putting the reader right in the middle of the action and showing the events as they occur, in real time, along with the characters’ actions, reactions, inner thoughts and feelings, and actual words (direct dialogue in quotations). 

To clarify what is meant by “show, don’t tell,” think of it this way: Which would you rather do, go see an exciting movie in a theatre with a big screen and surround sound (“show”), or hear about the movie from someone else afterward (“tell”)? That’s the difference we’re talking about here.

Janet Evanovich considers “show, don’t tell” to be one of the most important principles of fiction: “Instead of stating a situation flat out, you want to let the reader discover what you’re trying to say by watching a character in action and by listening to his dialogue. Showing brings your characters to life.”

~ Don’t get in the way or interpret for us.

We like to experience things for ourselves, not hear about them from someone else. Think about watching those slide shows with narration, from your neighbors’ vacation. Yawn. In the same way, readers of popular fiction don’t want to be kept at arm’s length, to be told what’s happening by an intermediary narrator. They want to experience the events firsthand, to see, hear and feel what’s happening. They want to sense the character’s fears, hopes, joys and worries and draw their own conclusions.

As Jack Bickham says, “Not only does moment-by-moment development make the scene seem most lifelike, it’s in a scene [with dialogue and action and reaction] where your reader gets most of his excitement. If you summarize, your reader will feel cheated – short-changed of what he reads for – without quite knowing why.”

It’s through characters interacting that a scene comes alive, so be sure to put us right there with the characters, in the middle of the tension and conflict, using “live” action and dialogue.

~ Also, no need to “tell” after you’ve “shown.”        

Before:

“You’re late!” the general said. He didn’t like to be kept waiting.

Don’t explain after the fact. The words and actions should convey it.

After:

“You’re late!” The general glared at him, hands on hips.

Other no-no examples of telling after showing:

In each case, take out the unnecessary sentence at the end:

She moped around the house and wouldn’t answer the phone. Even TV didn’t interest her. She was depressed.

“You crack me up,” she said, laughing hysterically. Joel could be so funny.

~ Use deep point of view.

Use close third-person point of view (or first person) to put us right into your protagonist’s or other main character’s head and skin. Show us her thoughts, reactions, and plans, his inner fears, hopes, resentments, anger, confusion, tenderness, relief, and joy. Don’t keep the reader at arm’s length by describing your hero or heroine from the outside, using omniscient or distant third-person point of view.

~ Evoke all five senses.

Showing means presenting the story to the reader using sensory information. The reader wants to feel what the character is feeling, experience their fear, joy, anger, determination, and pain, know their inner hopes and thoughts, and also see what’s happening, hear the different voices of the characters and other sounds, smell the smells, feel the tactile sensations, and taste the food and drink along with them. Telling, on the other hand, is summarizing the story for the reader in a way that skips past the life-giving sensory information and just relates the basic actions and events that occurred.

~ Use powerful, evocative phrasing.

As Jessica Morrell says, “adjectives tell and verbs show. For example, instead of “It was a shiny necklace,” trade the adjective shiny for a verb: the necklace glinted or the necklace sparkled, gleamed, flashed, glimmered, shimmered, twinkled.” Instead of “the miner was tired” (telling), say “the miner trudged home, head bowed,” or “the miner plodded along, his boots feeling like lead weights” or “the miner clomped over the gravel with heavy steps.” Or slogged or tramped or lumbered or dragged or shuffled (all showing).

Do a search for the word “was” – it’s often an indicator of telling instead of showing, as in “she was sad” or “he was angry.” Show their feelings instead by their thoughts, actions, words, tone, and body language.

~ Add in lots of tension and conflict.

Also, the bulk of the scene needs to be about a conflict of some kind between characters. No conflict = no scene. As Jack M. Bickham says, the conflict part of the scene “draws readers out through a moment-by-moment drama, extending the scene suspense with pleasurable agony.” If you have a scene where everyone is getting along great, revise it to add more tension.

EXAMPLES OF SHOWING, RATHER THAN TELLING:

Telling: Jake’s words spooked me.

Showing: The hair on my arms rose when I thought about Jake’s words.

Telling: George was disgusted and angry.

Showing: George pounded his fist on the table and swore at her, his lips curling. “Don’t ever do that again.”

Telling: Janie was bored at her Grandma’s.

Showing: Janie wandered from room to room, trying to find something to do. She wished it wasn’t raining outside. She looked through Grandma’s old books but nothing interested her.


RECAP – TIPS FOR SHOWING INSTEAD OF TELLING:

~ Show the characters’ actions as they’re occurring, in real time.

~ Use deep point of view to get right into the skin, head, and heart of your character.

~ Show us your viewpoint character’s reactions, feelings, emotions, and thoughts.

~ Add in sensory information. What are they seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, feeling?

~ Include lots of spirited, to-the-point dialogue. 

~ Look for “was” or “were” and rephrase the sentence, replacing the adjective with a compelling verb or verbal phrase.

~ Cut way back on narrative description, exposition, and lengthy explanations of the character’s past or motivations.

~ Keep flashbacks short, and show them in real time, with action and dialogue.

~ Throw in plenty of conflict and tension. 

~ Avoid telling after you’ve shown.

~ But “tell” to summarize – or just skip right past – the boring bits.

Of course, you can’t show everything, or your book would be way too long, and it would tire your readers out – or worse, end up boring them. You don’t want to show every move your characters make at down times, or when going from one place to the other. That’s where you summarize or “tell,” to get them to the next important scene quickly, without a lot of boring detail. 

The main thing to keep in mind is to never tell the reader, after the fact (or have a character telling another character), about a critical scene. Instead, dramatize it in the here and now, with dialogue, action, and lots of sensory details to bring it to life for the reader.


Resources:
Jack M. Bickham, The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes 
Jessica Page Morrell, Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us
And Jodie’s editing of novels and critical reading of bestsellers

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: FIRE UP YOUR FICTION,  CAPTIVATE YOUR READERS, and WRITING A KILLER THRILLER, as well as two clickable time-saving e-resources, QUICK CLICKS: Spelling List and QUICK CLICKS: Word Usage. She has also organized two anthologies for charity: VOICES FROM THE VALLEYS – Stories and Poems about Life in BC’s Interior, and CHILDHOOD REGAINED – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers  Website: www.JodieRenner.com; Facebook. Amazon Author Page.

Info with Attitude

Info with Attitude - The Kill Zone

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

 

Here's an excerpt from an article of mine that appeared recently on the excellent blog, The Kill Zone. For the rest of the article, click on the link at the end.

As a freelance fiction editor, I find that military personnel, professionals, academics, police officers, and others who are used to imparting factual information in objective, detached, bias-free ways often need a lot of coaching in loosening up their language and adding attitude and emotions to create a captivating story world.

Today I welcome back to TKZ my friend and editor, Jodie Renner, to share tips on imparting factual information without it coming off like the dreaded “info dump”. Her craft-of-writing book, Style That Sizzles & Pacing for Power, recently came out in paperback. Enjoy!
-------------------
by Jodie Renner, editor and craft writer

Strategies for Turning Impersonal Info Dumps into Compelling Copy


Really need those facts in there? Rewrite with attitude!

Say you want to write a fast-paced novel and your background is in a specialized field, so you decide to set your story in that milieu you know so well. Maybe you want to write a legal thriller or a medical suspense, or a mystery involving scientific research or stolen artifacts. Or maybe you’d like to use your military, police, or forensics experience, but your writing experience to date has mainly been confined to producing terse, objective, factual reports.

As you’re writing your story, you decide at various points that you need to interrupt the story to explain something the readers may not understand. And you want to get it right, both to lend credibility to your story and because you’re concerned about criticism from other professionals in your field. Your first impulse might be to copy and paste sections on that topic from a journal or online search, then tweak them a bit. Or just stop to explain the technical points in your own words, factually, as you would in a report or research paper, then go back to your storyline. Big mistake. You’ve just interrupted an exciting (we hope!) story to give a mini-lecture. Remember that the main purpose of fiction is to entertain your readers with an engaging tale. To do that, it’s critical to stay in the story and in the viewpoint and voice of your compelling, charismatic (we hope!) characters.

How to keep your credibility but write with passion and tension

Want to keep your readers turning the pages? ...

For the rest of this article, click HERE.

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor who specializes in thrillers, mysteries, and other fast-paced fiction. For more info on Jodie’s editing services and her books, please visit her website. Jodie has published two books to date in her series, An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: Writing and Killer Thriller, a short e-book, and Style That Sizzles & Pacing for Power, which is available in paperback, as an e-book on Kindle, and in other e-book formats. And you don’t need to own an e-reader to purchase and enjoy e-books. You can download them to your computer, tablet, or smartphone.

SHOW, DON’T TELL!

by Jodie Renner, editor & author  

“Show, don’t tell” is one of the most important concepts for aspiring fiction writers to grasp, and often one of the most difficult to master. It’s about showing a scene in real time, with actions and dialogue, instead of telling your readers what happened after the fact. Done well, this technique brings the scene alive and puts the readers right there, inside your character, experiencing his fear along with him, feeling the sweat on his brow and his adrenaline racing, their pulse quickening right along with his, muscles tensed, ready to leap into action.

Until this concept is pointed out to them, a common mistake among newbie fiction writers is to describe or narrate (tell) events as if they took place at some point in the past, instead of putting the reader right in the middle of the action and showing the events as they occur, along with the characters’ actions, reactions, feelings, and actual words (direct dialogue). 

To clarify what is meant by “show, don’t tell,” think of it this way: Which would you rather do, go see a great movie in a theatre with a big screen and surround sound (“show”), or hear about the movie from someone else afterward (“tell”)? That’s the difference we’re talking about here.

According to Ingermanson and Economy, “Showing means presenting the story to the reader using sensory information. The reader wants to see the story, hear it, smell it, feel it, and taste it, all the while experiencing the thoughts and feelings of a living, breathing character. Telling means summarizing the story for the reader in a way that skips past the sensory information and goes straight to the facts.”

Janet Evanovich considers “show, don’t tell” to be one of the most important principles of fiction: “Instead of stating a situation flat out, you want to let the reader discover what you're trying to say by watching a character in action and by listening to his dialogue. Showing brings your characters to life.” 

As Jack Bickham says, “Not only does moment-by-moment development make the scene seem most lifelike, it’s in a scene [with dialogue and action and reaction] where your reader gets most of his excitement. If you summarize, your reader will feel cheated – short-changed of what he reads for – without quite knowing why.”

Shelly Thacker points out, “Readers of popular fiction don’t want to experience the events of your novel at a distance; they want to FEEL what’s happening. They want to laugh, cry, hope, worry.” Shelly advises, “Strive for more dialogue than narrative. … Narrative tends to slow things down and usually leads to telling instead of showing…. Showing with action and dialogue creates vivid characters and a fast pace; telling only bogs down your story.”

Also, the bulk of the scene needs to be about a conflict of some kind between characters. No conflict = no scene. According to Jack Bickham, the conflict part of the scene “draws readers out through a moment-by-moment drama, extending the scene suspense with pleasurable agony.”

Of course, you can’t show everything, or your book would be way too long, and it would tire your readers out – or worse, end up boring them. According to James Scott Bell, “Sometimes a writer tells as a shortcut, to move quickly to the meaty part of the story or scene. Showing is essentially about making scenes vivid. If you try to do it constantly, the parts that are supposed to stand out won’t, and your readers will get exhausted.” 

The rule, says Bell, is “the more intense the moment, the more showing you do.” That’s the difference between scene and summary. You don’t want to describe every move your characters make at down times, or when going from one place to the other. That’s where you summarize or “tell,” to get them to the next important scene quickly, without a lot of boring detail.  

The main thing to keep in mind is to never to tell the reader, after the fact (or have a character telling another character), about a critical scene. Instead, dramatize it in the here and now, with dialogue, action, and lots of sensory details to bring it to life for the reader.

Copyright © Jodie Renner, 2012

Resources:
James Scott Bell, Revision and Self-Editing
Jack M. Bickham, The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (And How To Avoid Them)
Randy Ingermanson and Peter Economy, Writing Fiction for Dummies
Shelly Thacker (www.ShellyThacker.com), “10 Tips for a Top-Notch Novel”  

 Bio updated 2015:
Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: Captivate Your Readers, Fire up Your Fiction, and Writing a Killer Thriller. She has also published two clickable time-saving e-resources to date: Quick Clicks: Spelling List and Quick Clicks: Word Usage. You can find Jodie at www.JodieRenner.com, www.JodieRennerEditing.com, at The Kill Zone blog alternate Mondays, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.