Don't Insult Your Readers by Overexplaining

by Jodie Renner, editor, author, speaker
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If you want to write compelling fiction that sells (and who doesn’t?), when you’re revising, keep an eye (and ear) out for any repetitive sentences and passages and delete them. Resist the urge to explain a point to your readers or say the same thing several different ways, just to be sure they got it.

And if you “show” a character’s feelings (as is most powerful and immediate), no need to follow that up by “telling” readers how they felt, too. That’s overkill and comes across as patronizing. Today’s readers are sophisticated and savvy, so make your point, then move on.

Sure, go ahead and write more leisurely the first time through, exploring different ways to express various ideas or to show character reactions or motivations. But then later, save the doc in a new file and get out your red pen or hover your finger over your “Delete” key and start taking out all those “supporting phrases” that pile up and actually dilute the power of a single phrase or image that stands alone.

Repetition is redundant.

Whether you’re trying to set a mood with imagery, deepen characterization, or advance the plot with action or dialogue, it’s best to just say/show/describe it once—twice maximum—not three or four times.

You may think you’re emphasizing something by repeating it, but even if you say it in different words, the overall impact is diminished. A lot of my editing consists of flagging repetitions of ideas, words, or imagery. And I’m guilty of it myself in my own writing – even editors need editors!

Here’s an example, well-disguised from my editing, of saying basically the same thing three or four or five times within a paragraph.

Before:

Enraged by the CEO’s false accusations, Cheryl struggled to regain control of her emotions. She didn’t often lose her temper but when it happened, she found it difficult to calm down. She had never been so angry at any time in her professional career. Mr. Johnson had pushed her too far when he suggested that she could possibly be involved in stealing those confidential documents. Just thinking about what he said made her blood boil.

After:

Enraged by the CEO’s false accusations, Cheryl struggled to regain control of her emotions. How dare he suggest that she could be involved in stealing those confidential documents? Just thinking about it made her blood boil.

Paring the ideas in the “Before” paragraph down to the essentials increases the power of the message. Repeating it several times actually detracts from the message and dilutes it.

Often less is more, in the sense of having more impact.

RUE: Resist the Urge to Explain

“Resist the Urge to Explain” was coined by Renni Browne and Dave King in their book, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. Basically, it’s about honing your fiction-writing skills so your dialogue, actions, and evocation of characters’ inner feelings and reactions come to life on the page. Resist the urge to add some clarifications afterward to explain what you meant.

Show, don’t tell:

Show us how the character is feeling or reacting. Then resist the urge to explain (tell) it afterward, just to be sure the reader got it:

Example:

“We will find out who you are. We have eyes and ears everywhere. You are not safe from us.” The click of the line disconnecting underlined the obvious menace of the cold tone and intimidating words of the caller.

What follows the quoted words is overexplaining. Don’t explain to the readers something they already know from reading it themselves. They’ll feel that you’re talking down to them.

This tendency to overexplain can show up in minor ways, like the examples below, where the last sentence in each is superfluous and should be taken out.
 

“You idiot!” she yelled, throwing the picture across the room. She was furious.
 

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

She threw herself down on the bed and sobbed into the pillow. She felt miserable.
 

In each instance, the second sentence is not only unnecessary, it detracts from the message of the first. Also, the first sentence shows and the second sentence tells. When you explain emotions and reactions to the reader, it’s as if you’re covering your tracks, in case your initial description or dialogue didn’t show it well enough.
 

So resist the urge to describe (tell) how your character feels. Instead, dramatize (show) it for the reader with precise words and strong imagery.

Same thing with phrases like, “He banged loudly on the door,” or “She whispered softly,” or almost any other “he/she (verb) (-ly adverb). What they say plus their actions or inner reactions should make it clear how they’re feeling, so no need to add the -ly adverb.
 

Subtle is more sophisticated

Rather than stating the obvious, it’s more powerful to hint at it. Often best not to spell it out, especially if it has to do with a character’s inner thoughts or suppressed feelings. Subtext leaves the readers with more satisfaction that they’re successfully reading between the lines.

Don’t patronize your reader.

Readers and writers, do you have any ideas or examples to add?

To share this craft-of-writing article, please click on the buttons in the gray box below. 

See my award-winning book Fire up Your Fiction (formerly Style That Sizzles & Pacing for Power) for lots of concrete ideas on paring down your fiction to reveal the powerful core.

Jodie has published two books to date in her series, An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: Writing a Killer Thriller and Fire up Your Fiction (Style That Sizzles & Pacing for Power), which has won two book awards so far. Look for the third book in the series, out soon. For more info, please visit Jodie’s author website or editor website, her other blogs, Resources for Writers and The Kill Zone, or find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. And sign up for her newsletter.

 
 

Bring Your Characters to Life by Showing Their Reactions

by Jodie Renner, editor, author, speaker 

 
Readers want to escape into your story world. They want to immerse themselves in your story and vicariously experience what your protagonist is experiencing. Your character’s reactions to what’s going on around them are what make the situation seem real and the character more charismatic, vulnerable and multi-dimensional. If your character’s reactions feel natural and believable to the reader, they will quickly suspend disbelief and become emotionally invested. They’ll be turning the pages with satisfaction.

So in order to bring your POV characters to life on the page and make the readers start to worry about them, it’s critical to constantly show their reactions to what’s happening to and around them. If you just describe events and skip over or minimize characters’ reactions to what’s going on, the characters will seem flat, boring, emotionless – or worse, cold and unfeeling.

Be sure to show your characters’ reactions.

As Jack M. Bickham says, “Readers want to know how your characters feel about what’s happening to them, and want to see their response to the words and actions of others and events unfolding around them.”

Here’s a scene I just made up quickly where a father needs to react more:

He just got into his office when the phone rang. It was his wife. “Hi, hon. What’s up?”

“David, I’ve been trying to reach you for hours. Cassie’s missing! She didn’t show up at school today and her bed hasn’t been slept in! She’s not answering her cell phone and none of her friends have seen her today. You’ve gotta come home.”

“All right, I’ll be there soon.” He grabbed his coat and told the receptionist he’d be gone for the rest of the day.

On the way home, he tried to convince himself there was a good reason for his 14-year-old daughter’s absence.

Not only does this guy not seem to care much about his daughter or be all that concerned that she’s missing, which unintentionally paints him in a bad light, his lack of reaction makes for boring reading, too.

But don't overdo it.

But do make sure the reaction actually fits the situation and is in keeping with the character’s personality and motivations. Cold, stoic, unfeeling characters won’t draw your reader in (unless it’s the villain), but neither will constant emoting, gushing, wailing, raging, or gnashing of teeth.

And have them react immediately, as they would in real life.

To bring your character to life on the page, have him or her react right away to exciting, frustrating, shocking, frightening, or stressful events. Don’t delay the reaction. Immediately following the stressful stimulus, show your POV character's visceral reaction and/or a short, vehement thought-reaction, like No way! Or You’re kidding. Or Oh my god. Or Idiot! Or What the hell? or You wish. Or What a hunk! Or Damn. (Or other swear word.) Or by some other quick emotional or physical reaction.

Two sisters are jogging in the park, deep in conversation when a loud horn behind them makes them jump. Show them jumping (automatic reflex) with maybe a verbal expletive, then looking back and laughing or whatever, before the cyclist passes with a wave or a laugh or a curse, and then they shake their heads and resume their conversation. The visceral reaction of your POV character and her immediate thought-reaction or surprised cry or swear word will make the scene more real to the readers. This is also "show, don't tell." Telling would be "The horn surprised them and made them jump. Then they continued talking." Show their reactions in a more compelling, right-there way.

Show the reactions in their natural order.

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 before more reasoned thought processes and decision-making, which lead to more considered, thoughtful words and conscious actions.

As Ingermanson and 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.

Jack Bickham points out that credibility results from understanding the stages of response. Character reaction, like human reaction in general, has four individual parts. As writers, we don't necessarily have to put all four on the page at any given point in time, but any reactions we do show should be stated in the order they occur.

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

If we violate that order, we’re depriving the reader of an opportunity to get further into the head and skin of that character, to feel what they’re feeling, to feel part of the story. And the reader may subconsciously feel disappointed that we didn’t give them a more complete picture, or they’ll wonder how the character really felt, how the event really affected them inside.

We also risk creating a tiny, niggling disquiet in the mind of our readers, a sense that there is something wrong, and that disconnect can bump them out of the story.

Readers and writers – any thoughts on this topic?

See my related articles, “The Emotion Thesaurus,” “Show Visceral Reactions First” and “Expressing Thought-Reactions in Fiction.”

A great resource for character reactions is The Emotion Thesaurus, by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi.

Copyright © Jodie Renner, September 2012

Resources:

Jack M. Bickham, The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)

Randy Ingermanson and Peter Economy, Writing Fiction for Dummies 

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, 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, incl. Childhood Regained – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers. You can find Jodie at www.JodieRenner.com, www.JodieRennerEditing.com, her blog, http://jodierennerediting.blogspot.com/, and on Facebook and Twitter.  

Beginning of Book 3

Hi, folks,

Below is the very beginning of my third Skeeter Hughes Mystery, yet to be titled. I'm taking a huge risk throwing it out there for you all to see this early draft, but I figure all of publishing is risk-taking, ya know? And, well, the mantra of what we do is "show, don't tell" so I figure this is about as telling as I can get.

All opinions gratefully accepted. 

By Judith Yates Borger

Rachel Rand James left happy hour a little early and headed home on the light rail. She was up for reelection and didn’t need headlines that she’d been arrested for drinking and driving. Besides, she needed to be seen on public transportation, which had been one of her campaign issues.

She’d been downtown with her best friend, Skeeter Hughes, and their buddy Buzzy Brewster. Skeeter, Rachel and Buzzy had started working at the newspaper within a month of each other, and soon began going out drinking after deadline. Over several pitchers of beer they’d argue about everything, politics, body image and men. Skeeter always took positions on the left and Rachel on the right. Buzzy usually landed somewhere in the middle, always the arbiter. By last call they were still best friends even if neither had convinced the others of anything. Now, Skeeter was a newspaper reporter,  Buzzy was a copy editor and Rachel,who had always had higher ambitions, was mayor of Minneapolis. 

The mayor liked to document how taxpayer money was spent. She pulled out her iPhone and snapped a couple pictures of the scene on the train: Office workers heading home. Moms shushing babies. Young folks dressed in the black-pants-and-white-shirts uniform of the evening shift at the hotels. Travelers on their way to the airport, tugging wheeled suit cases. The Hiawatha Light Rail, which the mayor had championed, was packed. Maybe one of the shots would be good enough to use in her new campaign literature, she thought. 

As the train pulled into the Cedar Riverside stop Rachel glanced at the platform as people disembarked. A guy in a gold and marroon  University of Minnesota hoody and jeans, a couple of giggling Somali girls covered head to toe  in jeweled-colored hajibs, an older white man in a blazer and tie talking to a young Somali man in black pants and a tan zipped jacket. A picture of diversity, she thought, and  snapped another shot. Then she sent an email to Skeeter and Buzzy.

“Love ya,” she wrote in the subject line, and, “Had a great time tonight” in the body of the email. 

They were her last words. 

Chapter 1

Rachel had called it quits on her third beer and headed home. I was nursing my second and swapping newspaper gossip with Buzzy, my all-time favorite copy editor who, like me, had the night off. We were talking about ordering a pizza when our cell phones sounded simultaneously.

“Uh Oh,” Buzzy said. “This can’t  be good.”

The messages went to all staff: “Light rail bombed. Everyone to newsroom.”

“I’m heading in,” Buzzy said. 

“I’m not,” I said. “If I go to the newsroom they’re just going to send me right out. I’m closer to the tracks now anyway.”

We had been slogging down the beers at the Loon, a zillion-year-old watering hole kitty corner from the First Avenue light rail stop in downtown Minneapolis. Buzzy stood, gave me a quick nod, threw money on the table and left. I did the same.

 I ran to my little red Honda Civic del Sol, which I had parked at a meter, and roared away until I was within a half mile of the Hiawatha Light Rail line. Road construction had traffic backed up, so I ditched my car in a no-parking zone. I grabbed my personal iPhone, the newspaper’s piece-of-crap issued cell phone and my notebook and took off running. I ran up a pile of dirt then did a face plant running down the other side. Damn, I wish I were in better shape, I thought as I wiped grit from my eyes, nose and mouth.  Nearby construction workers were so busy watching the smoke billowing to the sky that no one noticed as I pulled myself up, brushed off, and kept running. 

The smell of the disaster hung in the air. Acrid. Electrical. Like a hair dryer that’s been working too hard. Then the overpowering stench of burning oil. Fire engines wailed as flames shot to the sky. I figured it would be minutes before the police set up a perimeter impervious to everyone, especially reporters. I had to get as close a possible to see what was going on before the boundary went up. 

Half a dozen pickup trucks were parked on a residential street  a block away and well within sight of the disaster scene. They probably belong to the construction workers, I thought. Figuring no one would notice me, I climbed into the bed of the black, mud-spattered Ford Ranger and kneeled on top of a blue tarp that covered something hard and lumpy. 

The heat from the explosion hit me like an ocean wave. Even though smoke obscured the scene I could see that both cars on the light rail had been destroyed. I needed to get word to the newsroom.

Barely catching my breath, I whipped out my iPhone and hit the speed dial for what the newsroom calls “the Bat Phone,” a dedicated line that the editors monitor twenty-four/seven. Circuits must have been overloaded because l kept getting a busy signal. Same with the piece-of-crap phone. I tried to text. That didn’t work either. I sent an email to content@Citizen.com, a general address monitored by many editors. But emails can be slow. That left Twitter. 

The tweet needed to be worded carefully. I didn’t want to tip off the TV stations. I knew they monitored Twitter to keep tabs on the competition because we did the same to keep an eye on them.

“I’m here. Talk to Buzzy.” I tweeted directly to my editor, knowing Buzzy would tell her I had taken off toward the train.

By now the distance between me and the burning train was swarming with cops and firefighters. Sirens wailed. A Hennepin County sherriff’s helicopter whoop, whoop, whooped overhead. But I didn’t see any other media. 

“Ours alone, I think,” I tweeted.

The rule on a breaking story like this is you don’t take the time to write full paragraphs. It’s better to shoot just one sentence back to the newsroom as soon as you have a detail. An editor will pull it all together, hopefully taking out all the typos. Keep it comin’, they say. So I did.

“Counting 20 trucks from all firehouses. Sheriff chopper overhead. City, county cops everywhere.”

“Two cars on train fully engulfed. Smells like hair burning.”

“Pop, pop, pop. Don’t know what. Electrical something?”

“Ads on train for Citizen and Metro Transit bubbled, melted on sides of cars.”

I hope someone in the newsroom, our newsroom, is getting all this, I thought, and kept texting.

“Cops set up command center. ”

“Hear no cries for help from train; only rush of fire.”

“Windows pop out on train.”

“More sirens. Maybe 6 ambulances pulling up.”

“They’re not hurrying. Doubt anyone survived.”

Just then one of the half dozen cops at the command center turned in my direction so I ducked under the tarp in the truck bed, finding myself nose-to-nose with a giant wrench. When I poked my head up seconds later I found myself in the steady gaze of Minneapolis Sgt. Victoria Olson, her feet planted like the roots of an oak, her face as impassive as bark. She gave me a slight nod, then said something to one of the other cops at the command center. 

“Busted by Sgt. V. Olson.”

Someone was going to roust me, and soon, I figured, so I had to send back as much detail as possible because, as far as I could tell, I was the only representative from the public on the scene. 

“Smoke clearing a bit. Most damage in 2^nd car. Front of train seems only scorched.”

“Grass around train burned for about 30 feet.”

“Looks like cops evacuating nearby houses. ”

Finally I saw that my tweets were getting through.

“U R doing good. Keep it comin,” came a reply.

I couldn’t tell who sent it but it didn’t matter. Someone in the newsroom was receiving. Thank God.

Another explosion. I ducked under the tarp again, this time to protect myself. Good thing, too, because I felt the ping, ping, ping of shards of glass and metal raining down on me. Unfortunately, I moved so fast that I banged my noggin on a pile of hammers. As I rubbed my forehead someone snapped the tarp away.

“What exactly are you doing, Ms. Hughes?” said the white guy with the close-cropped haircut and the FBI badge hanging around his neck. 

Show, Don't Tell

by Jodie Renner

“Show, don’t tell” is the most common mantra among advisors to fiction writers. It’s about bringing the scene alive and putting the reader right there, inside your characters, experiencing her fear along with her, feeling the sweat on his brow and his adrenaline racing, your pulse quickening right along with theirs, muscles tensed, ready to leap into action.

            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’ 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.

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

Jodie Renner, a freelance fiction editor specializing in thrillers and other fast-paced fiction, has published two books to date in her series, An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: WRITING A KILLER THRILLER and STYLE THAT SIZZLES & PACING FOR POWER (Silver Medalist in the FAPA Book Awards, 2013). Both titles are available in e-book and paperback. For more info, please visit Jodie’s author website or editor website, or find her on Facebook or Twitter.