The Cardinal Rule of Good Writing

Pretty Basic Stuff

There's no mystery here. We all know what the cardinal rule of good writing is. Show, don't tell. It's the one everybody agrees on. Other "rules" can occasionally be ignored at the author's discretion, but this one isn't going to go away. Learning the rule is easy. The execution of it takes some practice.

What I Thought I Knew

I've always understood show, don't tell to a fair degree. Even as a kid. I wrote my first novel when I was twelve, and when I go back and look at it I realize I had a decent grasp of the rule back then. 

Here's what I knew:

Show a character's personality. Don't just say Aunt Roberta is annoyingly affectionate. Write a scene with Aunt Roberta that includes lots of hugging and cheek pinching. Give her a few favorite terms of endearment that she always uses when talking to certain characters. 

Show an emotional state. This one's tougher. Don't just say a character is sad. Give the reader a couple of paragraphs that show the character's sadness. For example, if you have an MC who's recently lost her husband, put her in a social situation where she's hanging out with all her married friends for the first time since the funeral. Show the other couples cuddling and smiling at each other. Show a frazzled mother struggling to corral her three kids until her husband comes up and offers to take them off her hands. Show the relief that other mother feels at this unexpected break from adulting. Relief our poor grieving MC will never experience again. 

Show a character's lifestyle. Let's go back to that grieving mother. Does she have kids? Is her home life chaotic? Has that gotten worse now that the father is not around to help her? Show that. Show the peanut butter smears on the kitchen counter, the urine on the bathroom floor from where the three-year-old son proudly used the potty all by himself, and the struggle to get the older kids out the door for school in the morning. And now that your character is widowed, show her performing chores that her husband typically did when he was alive. Show how having to do those chores just adds to the chaos of her life. 

This is all stuff I already understood. Stuff I've always understood. 

The First Thing I Learned

After I published my first book, I began reading books and articles on how to improve my writing. I learned a few things that I didn't realize, at first, are related to show, don't tell. 

First of all, I learned how to make my writing less wordy. This means getting rid of those pesky little filler words like that, of, just, etc. But it also means getting rid of what are called filter words. Words like thought, felt, wondered, realized, and so on. If you've constructed a good scene, there's a good chance you don't need those words. 

Then I started to read about what's called Deep POV. This takes getting rid of the filter words to a whole new level. It's all about learning how to write a scene so the reader feels what the character feels without the emotions ever being mentioned at all. This is the epitome of show, don't tell.

The Next Step

Deep POV was fiendishly difficult when I first started trying to use it. But by the time I wrote my third book, Road to Yesterday, I thought I'd pretty much mastered it. But just last week I decided to give the book another quick read-through to look for any lingering typos before creating the paperback edition. I've found that even then, even when I was writing my third book, I still had a lot to learn about show, don't tell.

Here are a couple of examples from Road to Yesterday:

“Really, Vi? Really?” I could almost see the anger surging through Kyle’s body. No, “almost” is not the right word. I could see it. His shoulders shook with a barely contained rage that frightened me.

Did I really need the sentence, "I could almost see the anger surging through Kyle's body"? It's in there because I wanted to make sure I was avoiding head-hopping. I didn't want to say Kyle was angry because how would the narrator know that? She's not Kyle. So I inserted a sentence beginning with "I could almost see" to make sure the reader knew we were still firmly in the narrator's head. But why include it at all? Why not just skip to Kyle's physical reaction.

“Really, Vi? Really?” Kyle's shoulders shook with a barely contained rage that was frightening.

Even the word "frightening" is problematic, but I can't think of a way to eliminate it and still get the point across without rewriting the whole scene. And since this is a book I've already published, I'm not going to be rewriting whole scenes. Not at this time, at least. 

Okay, here's another:

Alex stood by the bed, looking down at his older self. Vi, Kyle, and I hung back in an attempt to give him some space. But we watched him.

His reaction was subdued. I suppose he did not know how to react. That was to be expected. Who would know how to react to something like this?

He stood over the bed, jaw rigid and brow creased, and said nothing. He may have been trembling slightly. I couldn’t quite tell. It seemed he was valiantly attempting to hold it all in.

Looking at this passage again with my more learned eyes, I can see that most of the second paragraph is unnecessary, as well as a little bit of the third. I could write it like this and still get the point across:

Alex stood by the bed, looking down at his older self. Vi, Kyle, and I hung back in an attempt to give him some space. But we watched him.

His reaction was subdued. He stood over the bed, jaw rigid and brow creased, and said nothing. He may have been trembling slightly. I couldn’t quite tell. 

You see, the reader has already been on the journey with these characters and knows the impossible situation they are in. The reader, therefore, does not need to be told that no one would know how to react to the situation. That's something the reader already knows from having read the book up to this point. I also don't need to tell the reader that he's "valiantly trying to hold it all in" because the subdued reaction, the rigid jaw, and the creased brow have already shown that. 

Going Forward

The main thing I've learned in recent months is that show, don't tell doesn't just mean you need to do more showing in your writing. It also means you need to do less telling. Let's go back to that widow. If you've just written the death scene, then you have the wife collapse, sobbing, into her best friend's arms in the hallway outside the hospital room, you've already shown the audience what she's feeling. There is no need to follow up with any commentary on her emotional state at all. If you're tempted to write a sentence that contains words like hopelessness, helplessness, grief, pain, etc., stop first and ask yourself if that sentence is really necessary. There's a good chance it's not. There's a good chance the reader already understands that the character is feeling all those things. 

All right, a couple of news items before I go my merry way.

First, I'm involved a group giveaway on Instafreebie this week. Amelia's Children is available for free download, along with four other mystery/thriller books. If you'd like to pick up a few free books, you can get them here.

And second, remember that I've got a newsletter now, so if you want to get the latest updates on releases, sales, and freebies, sign up here.