Confessions

My name is Aaron, and I'm a tellaholic.

That is my confession. You probably saw the title Confessions and were hoping to find a link to a video of me singing Confessions by Usher and doing cool dance moves, so I'm sorry to disappoint.

This week on the blog we've been talking about showing vs. telling, which leads me to...

Next confession: I started a post about showing and not telling and it sucked monkey butt. I sent it to my trusted CP and BFF (Best Farting Friend) and she was like, "Uhhh, what is the actual purpose of this post?"

So, I think showing is really freaking hard. There I said it. 

Telling is easy. Showing is hard.  

I admit, when I first started reading up on showing vs. telling I became really confused, really fast. Because c'mon...how many awesome books have you read that have had TONS of telling in them? I've read quite a few (and they had lots of adverbs, too). So when you read, "NEVER TELL. ONLY SHOW. IF YOU TELL, YOU ARE A LOSER AND A HORRIBLE WRITER," and then you see your favorite authors telling like crazeballs in your favorite books...it's confusing.

This is my advice: Do everything you can to UNDERSTAND showing vs. telling. Read as many articles on the subject as you can. Find as many examples as you can. Pull a book off of your shelf and start looking for instances when the author decided it was appropriate to tell, or when they decided to show. Think about it. Write something similar (a sentence or two) just for practice. And then keep practicing, because practice might not make perfect, but it will make you a better writer. 

And now, a not-so-brilliant telling sentence from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling:

"Madam Hooch spoke angrily to Flint..."

Just saying...

(But just so there's no confusion, I included a picture of me hugging Harry Potter books in public to prove I'm not a Rowling hater.)