This Helps For A Lot Of Things. Related Is Asking Someone Which Of Two Options You Should Pick, Not So

This helps for a lot of things. Related is asking someone which of two options you should pick, not so that they can choose for you, but to help you figure out how you feel about it once you're told which one to do. There have been plenty of times I've asked my husband, "A or B?" and he's told me "A," only for me to go, "Great, thanks, I'm choosing B!" It's not because I'm contrary, but because him making the choice for me helped me to realize that I actually wanted B more.

Writing Tips Pt. 8 - Show Don't Tell

Ah, the dreaded "Show, don't tell." The answer that gets trotted out in many a discussion when the question of "How do I improve my prose?" comes up. "Oh, but this is prose. Everything is telling!" some might cry (to which I say, "yes, buuuuut...that's not the point"). But none of that's helpful if you don't know what it means.

So let me show you.

First, for your consideration, an example:

Alice was scared. Bob was hunting her, and she feared for her life.

This is telling. We've told the reader that Alice is scared, that she's fearing for her life. That's as plain as the words on the screen. But it feels flat. There's no real depth to it. The reader can't really empathize with Alice, because while they know she's scared, they don't feel that she's scared.

We've told the reader, but we haven't shown the reader.

A brief diversion. The best example I've seen for how to write this actually comes from another Tumblr post, about how to write pain, though it can be applied to anything abstract.

Please go read because it's very good. I'll wait.

Done? Good.

The short of it is this: the post compares writing pain (or anything abstract, really) to drawing an egg, but you aren't given a white pencil, because we already know the egg is white. We need to see how the light hits it and the colors of the shadows and where the table reflects against the shell and the background behind it. Draw around the egg.

So with emotions, you need to write around them. Don't tell us Claire is happy. Show us, by writing the things that convey that happiness. Describe the bounce in her step, the brightness of the sunshine, the warmth in her chest. Show us Frank's heartache in his shortness of breath, the clenching of his heart, his narrowed focus, the muffled sounds around him. Set the mood rather than just telling us what the mood is.

Or consider a screenplay. In movies and television, characters don't just walk out onto the stage and announce, "I'm angry," and then deliver their lines. They stomp. They throw things. They slam doors. Their facial expressions contort. They flail their arms around in huge gestures and raise their voices. But they don't announce their feelings. You can use this in prose by describing the actions of a character to demonstrate how they feel, rather than just announcing their emotion to the reader.

Back to Alice.

Alice's shoulders quivered, skin dripping with sweat, breath coming in short, desperate gasps as she hid behind the couch. Bob's footsteps thundered through the silent house. The slap of the baseball bat in his hand tapped a tattoo against her eardrums. Louder. Closer. Beating in sync with the rapid flutter of her racing heart.

Now, instead of simply telling the reader that Alice is scared, we've pulled them into her world with description and metaphor to convey how being scared feels. The word "scared" doesn't even appear in the new example, but the reader still gets the message quite clearly.

This is how you show.

That's not to say you can never tell. Sometimes you need to. For instance, if your characters are going to have a long discussion about the intricate details of their preparations for a journey, you probably don't need to actually show us every last bit of that conversation. You can summarize it just fine. Or shorten a journey to a few lines if the destination is what matters more.

But for the most part, use your action words, flex your descriptive muscles, and show us what's going on rather than just telling us, especially when it comes to abstract things.

Writing Tips Pt. 12 - Purple Prose

Confession time: I like my prose to be a little purple. Poetic description is fun and evocative. So I'm not going to tell you to avoid purple prose entirely.

Unless you're purposely aiming for "minimalist." Then you should avoid it.

Purple prose is writing that is often distractingly ornate and unnecessary for a given writing piece. How much (if any) you should use generally depends on the purpose of the writing piece. Are you writing an academic paper, technical document, or speech? Probably best to avoid purple prose as much as possible.

But fiction is more forgiving. You can get away with some purple in fiction, and poetry is arguably nothing but purple writing.

The important thing is to make sure you're utilizing it correctly.

So here's my advice: don't turn every descriptive sentence into an exercise in just how flowery and ornate you can be. You're trying to tell a story, not show off the biggest words you can find in the thesaurus. By all means, be poetic in describing your setting, your characters, their emotions, etc. Add interest to otherwise routine moments of action. But make sure your writing is still helping to either draw the reader in or move the story along. If your reader is distracted from the point of a section because you were too busy describing every inconsequential tree, you've probably done too much. Use it to set the stage, then simplify.

This is especially important with characters. Descriptions should help your reader visualize your character better. Think of it as painting a portrait of your character. Poetic descriptions can help a reader get an idea of who a character is, but after that, you don't necessarily need to repeat their descriptive traits every time they show up. Trust your readers to remember what your characters look like.

And when you describe your characters, vary up what you describe so that everyone isn't reduced to the same short list of physical traits on repeat. Hair and eye color are important, but they aren't the only features on your character. Give the reader the shape of a jawline, the general build of a body, the angle of a nose, or the line of a neck. Does your character have freckles, blemishes, or a sunburn? Are they stocky and muscular or thin as a rail? Challenge yourself to think of three traits to describe for any given character that aren't hair or eyes.

Finally, be careful how you're describing certain features. If you aren't careful you can easily tread into the realm of silly with your figurative language, especially when you use words that aren't used often (or are used too often, but in amateur writing only) or don't fit the time period. "Tresses" and "locks" are not commonly used for hair, and are more distracting than just calling it "hair," and this is why so many tip lists will strongly advise against "orbs" and "gems" as alternatives for "eyes." It's not romantic or creative, it's distracting.

Unless you're writing Muppet fanfic, I guess. Then you can get away with "orbs."

I played the Cousland origin, where the dog is yours to begin with rather than a dying hound you meet later in the prologue. Does that mean my story was a dog and his ghost companions?

What I love about Origins specifically is that all of the main characters are dead.

Writing Tips Pt. 16 - Breaking the Rules

The most important writing tip of all:

Once you know the rules, you can break the rules.

I've seen arguments before asking why someone should even bother learning how to write grammatically "correctly," because "language is constantly evolving and changing." To that, first of all, I would point out that the whole reason we have standardized spelling and grammar to begin with is to make communication easier. It's far easier to understand what someone has written if they follow standard rules of writing so that you don't have to puzzle out what this creative spelling or that jumbled sentence structure is trying to say.

The same goes for standard writing rules, including the tips I've been posting for the past two weeks. Standardized writing styles make things clearer. This is very important with academic works, but is also helpful in literature.

But the thing with literature is that once you know the rules, you can break them for effect. I read a book when I was younger (much younger, not telling you how much, thanks) titled Sink or Swim, about a kid from the city who spent a summer out in a rural area. This book was written somewhat in the style of the kid's journal, and he was an inner-city kid with a distinct writing style based on that. It was...difficult to read at best. The whole thing was written in this kid's dialect, just like I said not to do regarding accents. But the author conveyed the character's voice well, and was consistent, and it really did lend a sense of life to the story, even if I hated it on an entertainment level. On a technical level, it was very well done and deserves credit for that alone.

You need to know the rules first before you can break them. That is why it's important to learn. Once you've learned? Have at it.

I'm just going to add this link to a Reddit post that gives more insight.

Here's a tip for any author/artist/creator who needs names for characters.

Instead of going to a baby name site for the hundredth time, pull up a movie, any movie, and watch the credits.

I promise, you will find some of the most fun and obscure names and surnames that you've ever seen (the post production teams are usually extra spicy for some reason)