Gawd (and the Muses) knows I write worlds filled with long histories, funky rules, and unique geography. Sure, my concepts are pretty awesome (if I do say so myself), but in practice, they’re beasts to communicate. Coupled with my attempts at complex characters and action-y scenes, I’m an incubator for my readership to go, “huh?”

In a week where the Muses have been dissecting What does THAT mean, why am I writing about confusion? After all, everyone knows confusion is a basic human condition (c’mon, don’t pretend it’s just mine). But the comment is often applied by critiquers with such broad brushstrokes that it leaves me just as befuddled as they are. When I hear such vagueness, I want to grab the reader by the shoulders and scream, “Where is it confusing? What was so confounding? DETAILS!”

Confusion can center around any aspect of a novel from plot to character motivation to world building to lengthy action sequences. In the end, the tools for combating confusion can be applied to any bucket. Unfortunately, the only surefire method I’ve found of identifying those areas of puzzlement is to find trusted readers and have them specifically mark where they were confused. Or, after they’ve read it, see if they can explain the rules back to you…or summarize the climatic scene…or describe the subtext of a character’s motivation.

Once you’ve identified problem parts, here are some things to keep in mind as you combat confusion:*

*Please note: I’m not claiming to be an expert at UN-fuddling or anything, but because this is an area that I struggle with, I’m hyper-aware of how others succeed.

Intriguing vs. Confusing

As storytellers, we’re supposed to generate questions in the reader’s mind. However, sometimes those questions are the very things that cause incomprehension. So, what’s the difference between intriguing and confusing? The rule of thumb that I’ve pieced together is that a question that comes BEFORE you’ve tried to explain it is intriguing. It’s only after you’ve unsuccessfully tried to get the answer across that things morph into confusing

C’mon, why not just some exposition?

Seriously, wouldn’t it just be easier for reader and author to just plop down a well-crafted prologue or info dump to get everybody up to speed quickly? Or a quick summary of the action and motivation? Yes, it would be easier. Unfortunately, easy and satisfying are at odds here. Readers love to work at figuring things out, being in the hero’s shoes, and experiencing other’s emotions. Of course, there are times for narratives, as Donna pointed out on Monday – but follow her advice and use it wisely.  

Just leave it out

Readers fill in an amazing number of blanks all by themselves. Often, they don’t need a play-by-play of the quidditch match or a detailed description of each stone in the castle. They assume your character takes bathroom breaks offstage. Stick to the things that provide significance in some way. After you get a good critique from a few people, you’ll notice certain questions arising at the same point – and that’s where you beef up the explanations.

Dumb sidekicks

The dumb sidekick is your character’s best friend, but he’s yours too. This lovable character is actually the voice of your reader. He’ll be asking the right questions at the right times at a pace everyone is able to follow. In reality, the dumb sidekick role doesn’t need to be a sidekick or dumb, but the reader’s questions do need to be represented.

So, what other clarification tools do you have?

*Grabs your shoulders*

Come on, tell me!

DETAILS!

This week, we're talking about commonly-used terms in writing critique.


Show, don't tell. Purple prose. Episodic.


I'm going back to Show, Don't Tell, which Donna blogged about on Monday, because for me, this was one of the hardest lessons to learn. And I'm going to try to SHOW you, not TELL you, what Show, Don't Tell really means.


Let's take, for example, a character--Francine--who is a writer, and under deadline pressure for her next writing assignment. Let's also say that she's going on book tour for the following month, leaving her family, her kids, and possibly fighting off a cold.


I am going to tell you now that this writer is stressed.


Francine is stressed.


Do you feel that? No. Why? Because "stressed" is a word that tells. We know what it means. We've all felt stress, and maybe we can marshal a little sympathy for old Francine, but I don't feel her stress, and thus, I don't really care.


How about this: Francine sat at her desk, her back and wrists sore from yesterday's twelve-hour writing session. She took a sip of weak, watered coffee and checked the time. 5 a.m. Only six hours until she had to hit send to her editor. Three more hours and she'd be on a plane across the country. She pulled up the file on her computer, scrolling quickly to the chapter she'd only just roughed in. She had to pack. She had to kennel the cat. Her head pounded with a pressure headache. She reached for the bottle of cold medicine under stacks of scribbled post-it notes. Could she afford to take it and be groggy?


OK. So I wrote that, like, super fast. It's no great display of writing, but you get the picture. We are IN Francine's stress with her. Right? We are shown her world, her concerns, so we feel her stress.


Novelist Michael Knight says this of showing emotion in writing in his book Naming the World:


How does a writer generate emotions? Imagery and action.... the reason we show rather than tell, the reason we dramatize in the first place--is that emotions are generally much more complicated than happy or sad. In a good story, the character's response, that original and particular individual reaction, is the way he feels. It's the only possible way to make clear something that's more intricate than adjectives and adverbs.


Knight recommends two exercises for those who want to practice Show, Don't Tell.


1: Describe the view from a window--bedroom, barroom, bus, wherever--as seen by a character who has just received some very good or some very bad news. Have some specific news in mind, but don't even hint at it in the exercise... The object is to give the reader a sense for a character's internal life by relying on meaningful imagery alone.


2: Write a scene, lots of dialogue, lots of body language, lots of concrete detail, and so on, in which one of the characters is keeping a big-time secret. She's pregnant. She's got cancer. Don't mention the secret in the scene. Instead, focus on how keeping such a secret affects your character's behavior, how he or she reacts to the environment and the other characters.


Photos can also be great prompts to practice showing. I posted the one above because it's a reminder to me that emotions are complicated. Moments are often layered with emotions. That photograph, aside from being dead sexy, is about much more than a simple whisper. There's a sensual nature to it--to her--but he's turned away. Why? Because he doesn't want to hear? It makes me want to write to show the feeling, rather than to just call it intimate, or sweet, or romantic.


Showing, or dramatizing a scene, an emotion, a place, should be done in only the most pivotal, critical parts of the story because, as Donna said, it is so space-consuming. If Francine's stress is not vital to your story, if she's not an important character, if her emotional state doesn't figure in significantly, then go ahead and call her stressed and move to the parts where you make us readers feel.


There. Didn't I tell you I'd show you?

My name is Talia and I am an overwriter.  

There.  That wasn’t so hard to admit.   

Chances are, all of us are guilty of overwriting at some point in a manuscript.   And it’s often our favorite part of the book. The phrase “kill your darlings” was created for overwriters. Especially in the current market, where readers have so many competing entertainment options and are looking for quick stories well told.  We have to be ruthless to purge the purple prose from our manuscripts.

But first, what does it mean to overwrite?  Think of it in terms of its sound-alike cousin, overwrought.  When an author tries to evoke a certain image or show their mastery over literary craft to such an extent that the reader notices.  And if the reader notices, it means that the reader has stopped being engaged in your characters and the story comes to a screeching halt.  

As a caveat, in the right hands, it can be a joy to stop and admire a well turned phrase that finds just the right image or uses words in ways both poetic and vivid.  But the reality is that most of us are not that writer.  We need readers to stay with our characters, to keep turning the pages and stay engaged in our stories.  And overwriting slows things down.  

Never fear.  There is hope for us overwriters.  A good editor or critique partner can rein us in.  But we can also learn to recognize when your prose has crossed a line from descriptive to distracting by cleaning out some excess verbiage.

Adverbs.  Stephen King said that when he reads his early novels, he cringes at his liberal use of adverbs.  I don’t know if it started with King, but there is no question that adverbs have fallen out of fashion in modern stories.  Use them sparingly.  Adverbs have been all but replaced by descriptive verbs in modern fiction.  Why say “he ran quickly” when you could say “he raced?” Other times, adverbs simply echo something that is already clear in the sentence.  If you see adverbs in your prose, ask yourself whether a more precise verb would be better,  or if the sentence still works with the adverb eliminated altogether.

Adjectives.  Adjectives don’t have quite the rap that adverbs do, but they’re getting there.  A well placed adjective can still work, but chances are you don’t need nearly as many as you think you do.  A perfect image can be lost when it’s surrounded by too many other, less important ones.  Look for sentences and paragraphs with multiple adjectives.  Then cut the ones that are repetitive or detract from the primary image.

Descriptive Passages.  Watch out for long paragraphs describing a place or long interior monologues that aren’t broken up with action or dialogue.  If paragraphs, sentences or descriptions are too long, readers will skim.  And then they’ll miss that one perfect image that you buried in the middle.  Leave that one.  You can have one or two others leading up to it, but that’s it.  

Repetition.  Readers are smart.  They get it.  Avoid saying the same thing multiple times.  You don't have to say the same thing twice.  See how I did that?  Don't.

Write your novel in as few words as possible.  Only the most vital, necessary words should stay.  Build your world, weave in your layers, show how your character grows, but do it a succinctly as possible.  Let the story be the focus, not your writing.  


Readers want to be immersed in the story.  Writing should look effortless, not effort-full. 

This week we’re talking about those terms that come up in critique and reviews that – until they are explained or are actually used to describe your own work – may seem like just a little be more industry white noise.

I’m here to talk about the term “episodic”.  The Collins Concise English Dictionary (the only one I have – forgive me for not having OED) defines episodic as

1.     of the nature of the episode; incidental

2.     made up of episodes, not well integrated; sporadic

Helpful?

Let’s dig a little deeper.  What’s an episode?

1.     any part of a novel or poem that is complete on its own.

2.     any installment of a serialized story or drama.

Now, if you’re me, hearing this for the first time, what you hear is “incidental” “not well integrated” and “sporadic”.  Because it is my nature to latch onto the very worst possible criticism in critique.

Then I start to cry.  “It’s nothing but a hash!” I blubber. “A jumble of disconnected nonsense!”

Cue loss of faith and long, drawn-out diatribe about the uselessness of my own meager talent. 

Fortunately, I didn’t hear the term used about my own work until I’d had a bit more experience with critique.  My editor used it in the revision letter for Book 2.

“Oh, no!” I cried. “It’s nothing but a hash!  A jumble of disconnected nonsense!”

However, I have two things going for me.  I have an editor who would never tell me outright that my work is insufferably irredeemable.  And occasionally – very occasionally – I have a little Yoda voice that refutes the inner critic.

“Gone to the dark side, you have,” it said to my hysterical hair-pulling. “Wrong, you are.  Hash, it isn’t.”

I stopped headdesking to listen.

“But disconnected it is.”

I looked at my manuscript and saw exactly that.  The events within each scene were important to character development, to arc.  They moved the story forward.

But every scene did not necessarily follow on from the one before it.  They were episodic.

Just as we all crave connection to the people and the world around us, so do our scenes crave connection to the rest of the novel.  “Episodic” is a call for revision.  Not revulsion.

“A lesson it is.  Use the Force you will.”

And I did.  And so will you.  But, of course, you would never write an episodic novel in the first place, would you?

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” Anton Chekhov

Fantastic week last week on the topic of blogging. Thanks to Lia for sharing a thought provoking post on an internet hiatus. I've continued thinking about this a lot this week and am seriously wondering if it's something I can do with my regular day job. Very scary, yet completely tantalizing. I know it would have a huge impact on my writing time for Book Two.

More good news from last week. SKINNY will be featured on the YA Book Buzz Panel for BEA. They only select five new releases, so it is an incredible honor. "There is no question that books featured on these panels are the ones that people will be talking about. Join the editors of these books as they share their excitement and passion for some of the Fall's biggest potential breakout releases." And, yes, I get to attend and sign ARCs! So, if you're at BEA, please come by and say hello.

Now, to this week's topic... Have you ever had a critique of something you've written, received the feedback (in writing or in person)... and returned to your desk all ready to dig in to the manuscript and thought... What does THAT mean? Well, this week the Muses try to decipher some commonly issued phrases from critique sessions.

My choice is the very basic (and often used): "SHOW, DON'T TELL."

The advice to "Show, don't tell" reminds me of those weird pictures from a few years ago where you were supposed to see something in the image if you stared at it long enough. Evidently some people (not me) saw hidden designs. Receiving a critique to "show, not tell" can sometimes feel just as obtuse. What does that mean? Is it ever okay to tell? When? HOW do I show?

The best place to begin might be from the negative side. If you get used to identifying a "telling" voice in a manuscript, then it's almost like a light bulb comes on when you see it. And, as is always the case, it's always easier to identify in other people's writing than in your own.

But you can't ALWAYS show. 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." According to Orson Scott Card and others, "showing" is so terribly time consuming that it is to be used only for dramatic scenes. The objective is to find the right balance of telling versus showing, action versus summarization. Factors like rhythm, pace, and tone come into play.

So, if "Show, Don't Tell" is something you hear from a critique, here are a few resources and exercises to help:

Show,Don't Tell worksheet

Figurative Language Examples