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[tklivory]

Updates for article and concrittin'! I wanted to make sure to give Saqqara an extra day since I was late updating last week, but the next week will be updated on Sunday.


New article for discussion:

Dennis G. Jerz's Show, Don't (Just) Tell

List of previously discussed articles can be found here.


New sacrificial lamb concritter:

tklivory's Rise of the Wolf, Chapter 1 - An editable Google Doc has been created for comments here. You may also PM tklivory on BSN directly.

List of previous concritters can be found here.

Modifié par tklivory, 19 mars 2012 - 04:06 .

[Saqqara]

I just wanted to pop in to thank everyone for their reviews!! I don't have a beta so that leaves all the editting to me
I appreciate all the helpful feedback. Thanks again so much!! <3

[tklivory]

Hmmm, based on this week's article:

I wonder if it would be fun to provide a "do and don't" example, just like in the article, but based on or even taken from our own works.  That could be a cool way to 'discuss' the article, especially if it helps us with something in progress.

For example:

"She had a nightmare and woke up."

vs. 

"Pressing her hands to her face, she trembled in the dark, fighting to recover her complacency. Around her the warm air within Arl Eamon's estate was dead, almost choking her with its tepid moisture and cloying stillness. She curled into a fetal position, wrapping her arms around her knees and fighting the urge to keen her grief to the stars. Gradually the shivering ceased, and she slowly relaxed into the mattress beneath her.
---taken from my short story "The Last Night"

----------

As for the specifics of the article, I felt at times that the examples given were just a bit too much, but that may have been because he was giving examples for a specific purpose.  In general, I agree that it is far better to show emotion through motion and body language than saying "He felt bad", or something.

However, I think that direct (i.e., 'telling') descriptions can be very useful in certain situations.  For example, for minor characters or single-use characters, such an abbreviated description may be more desirable than an extended paragraph or two, for the interests of moving the story along.  I mean, you don't want the messenger who's going to be in the story for a sentence or two to suddenly get a Homer-esque treatment.  As well, if *every single emotion* was shown in this manner, even for the major characters, it might quickly become what I would call turgid writing.

So, some kind of balance?  Hmmm... 

[Corker]

tklivory wrote...
As well, if *every single emotion* was shown in this manner, even for the major characters, it might quickly become what I would call turgid writing.

^^ Yeah, this.  Every emotion, intention, et cetera, described by the paragraph would be wearying rather than gripping, I think.

My Don't example... heh, I have a lot...

There, balanced precariously on the slanting roof of the great hall, was a man. He lay on his stomach, clinging to the edge of the roof, and looked upside-down through one of the windows. “Ho there!” Karolis called. “You, on the roof!”

The man looked up, startled, and Karolis saw that he wore a black mask on his face. The lord’s Black Fox! Karolis briefly admired the man’s daring, coming so close to a lord who was even now offering fifty sovereigns for his head -

- but the admiration evaporated at the Black Fox squawked in surprise and, losing his grip, tumbled headlong off the roof, landing in an ungainly heap amidst the roses.

-- from 'The Black Fox and Karolis'

precariously, startled, and ungainly could have been shown, and to good comic effect.

My Do is a short look at the process of healing from trauma, and how sometimes everything feels okay and normal until it doesn't. I'm still pleased with this one.

After a month, he stopped hearing phantom footsteps from Dumar’s office.

After three, he was no longer surprised to look up at the sound of clanking armor and see a templar instead of a guardsman standing in his doorway.

After six, things seemed almost normal again. The worst of the carnage was cleaned up and repaired; the solidarity that had brought the citizens of Kirkwall (less the elven traitors who fought with the qunari) together faded into the petty squabbles and gamesmanship he was accustomed to.

So when the soft, hesitant voice called, “Seneschal? Bran?” from the door, he took a short, sharp breath of anticipation. Even if it wasn’t quite dinner time, if Merrill were here, Isabela surely in tow, he could afford an hour or so to close the door and --

Merrill, whom he’d last seen six months ago, dripping blood and hurling Dalish curses along with balls of fire, no paltry wild elf hedge witch but a deadly force of nature. Arcs of lightning, burning flesh, and blood, the blood dripping from that small, sharp knife.

-- from 'Broken Dolls'

[Tryynity]

Thanks for the article TK - one of my concritters suggested I show more rather than tell - I wasnt sure how to do that so this article will be a help to me.

This thread is turning out to be more awesome than I had hoped.

BTW I have not concritted your RISE OF THE WOLF because I have already reviewed every chapter I think - I love it and would change nothing except to say :-

PLEASE WRITE SOME MORE !!! LOL

PS: my blood test results say Im anaemic and low in VIT D - haha no surprise there - I sit downstairs writing all day or playing games.  (I know you were just hanging to find that out LOL)

Modifié par Tryynity, 24 mars 2012 - 01:33 .

[tklivory]

Tryynity wrote...

Thanks for the article TK - one of my concritters suggested I show more rather than tell - I wasnt sure how to do that so this article will be a help to me.

This thread is turning out to be more awesome than I had hoped.

BTW I have not concritted your RISE OF THE WOLF because I have already reviewed every chapter I think - I love it and would change nothing except to say :-

PLEASE WRITE SOME MORE !!! LOL

Oh, lawd, tell me about it... I literally have two *future* chapters all done, but have to write two more to get there, and time has not been kind.  


Here's to hoping that my current more-time-than-usual will hold out while I get those chaps finished...  And then Dailana, so she'll stop yelling at me...  And poor Loghain... *sigh*

[Tryynity]

That was a great article and I agree an excercise is called for. The question I am left with now is, when do I decide to show and when do I decide to tell.

Im guessing, I show when I want to draw the reader into the scene more and tell when I just want to info dump. Yea?

[Tryynity]

Okay I re-wrote this (I should have kept the original version to show the difference after reading the article) - comments welcome. (More or Less telling/showing)

Kyerra awoke the next day feeling deeply refreshed, having slept way past her usual pre-dawn nightmare that woke her. For the first time since becoming a Grey Warden, the horrific half-Tamlen-half-Creator-knows-what, had not appeared to her at the end of one of her nightmares. Last night there had been no never-ending battle with hoards of descending darkspawn creatures, and no mournful song of the arch demon beginning to play soulfully in the background heralding Tamlen’s imminent arrival to the scene. In a bizarre way, Kyerra was unsettled though, she had become used to this occurrence, and now that it had ceased, at least for one night, she was concerned as to why.

Kyerra perused the haphazardly set out camp around her; everyone was still asleep, even Kitty snored contentedly, feet twitching as if enjoying some imaginary canine chase. Zevran lay flat on his back with his face staring straight up to the heavens, a slight curve of a smile upon his lips. Alistair lay curled up in a foetal position with covers pulled up to his ears. Leliana slept on her stomach with her pillow ensconced in a tight embrace.

Modifié par Tryynity, 25 mars 2012 - 04:13 .

[Corker]

@Tryynity - I am beginning to think adverbs are signs that point to when we can show more than tell. I use a *lot* of adverbs myself, because they're fast and efficient and I'm an engineer. XD But they're not the most engaging, vibrant writing. (I just released a chapter that I rewrote a bit to fix this sort of thing, but it could still probably use more of it. A lot of my stuff could. I've just been sitting on it for three weeks and enough was enough, I wanted to get it OUT.)

So in this case, I zoom in on "deeply refreshed" and "haphazardly." And "unsettled."
------------------------
It was the first rays of dawn that woke Kyerra - something that had not happened since her Joining, months ago. Eyes still closed, she half-smiled at the warmth on her face, reveling in how good it felt, how complete. Almost as if everything was normal again.

She opened her eyes, rubbing the sleep from them. "Normal" had become twisted dreams of Tamlen, turned into some corrupted beast, and never-ending battle with hordes of darkspawn, all led by the soulful song of the Archdemon. Why had it stopped? Alistair had said she might learn to ignore them... or did it mean something, the way the silence of birds meant a predator hid nearby?

She rolled to her feet, trying to ignore her own doubts and, as she moved through the sleeping camp, scolding ghosts from her clan. That latrine isn't far enough away. No one banked the fire last night. Creators, did you all simply fall down where you stood and slept? This is hardly a proper camp at all! Because in truth, they had bedded down quickly, all exhausted from long travels and hard battles. Her companions still slept: (insert your descriptions here).
--------------------------------
Y/N?

[maxernst]

I was watching the 1940's film of Jane Eyre the other night and struck by a particularly odd example of telling, rather than showing. There were several spots in the film where they showed sentences from the book with voice over narrative and one of them had Jane observing something to the effect that Mr. Rochester's abrupt manner might be related to some dark thing in his past. What I found particularly odd was that the scene right after that, Jane has an exchange with Grace Poole, who hints at exactly that, and I was struck by the fact that it seemed sort of redundant.

On reflection, it occurred to me that in the book (I haven't read it in a long time), Charlotte Bronte may have been showing us something about Jane by that paragraph, rather than telling us something about Mr. Rochester. I didn't think it worked on film, however, and I can't think what made them choose those particular sentences to pluck out of the entire novel and read verbatim.

@Corker, you might be on to something about adverbs standing in the place of more vivid descriptive passages. Which suggests that the advice to cut them out may not be the best choice, unless you replace them with something better. Maybe they're a bit of an imaginative crutch. I was reading Neil Gaiman recently, and it made me feel that I really fail to use much creativity in my descriptions and don't have a knack for striking similes/metaphors.

But you have a point, too, about there being a balance. Not everything needs to be described in an evocative, engaging way--sometimes that can lead to being too long-winded or flowery.

[tklivory]

I just wanted to make sure to thank everyone who concritted my story! I got lots of very useful and thoughtful feedback!  :happy:  I truly appreciate it!

Go, go, Writer's Lounge team!

[tklivory]

I've updated the front page post!


New article for discussion:
Bad (and even worse) writing advice - A little different than a typical writer's advice article, this is a blog that collates some examples of bad writing advice given to authors. I thought it might be fun to talk about. So, read the article and then post not only reactions, but also: what bad advice have you gotten from betas/readers/etcetera?

List of previously discussed articles can be found here.


New sacrificial lamb concritter:
Maria13's The Elven Princess, Chapter 3 - An editable Google Doc has been created for comments here.

List of previous concritters can be found here.

[Maria13]

Thanks Tkl... [*Gargle*]

[Corker]

tklivory wrote...

New article for discussion:
Bad (and even worse) writing advice - A little different than a typical writer's advice article, this is a blog that collates some examples of bad writing advice given to authors. I thought it might be fun to talk about. So, read the article and then post not only reactions, but also: what bad advice have you gotten from betas/readers/etcetera?

W.  T.  F?

"Remove all your commas"?  Yeah, that's... that's pretty bad.  Most writerish advice I find educational, along the lines of "That's something I should think about, even if I don't think it's 100% applicable."  That stuff is... yeah.

I write Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse and sometimes submit it to competitions, complete with documentation explaining what it is and how it's supposed to be written.  When I get back comments like "should rhyme" or "would have liked to see more assonance," I take a deep breath and move on. 

[Tryynity]

Corker wrote...

@Tryynity - I am beginning to think adverbs are signs that point to when we can show more than tell. I use a *lot* of adverbs myself, because they're fast and efficient and I'm an engineer. XD But they're not the most engaging, vibrant writing. (I just released a chapter that I rewrote a bit to fix this sort of thing, but it could still probably use more of it. A lot of my stuff could. I've just been sitting on it for three weeks and enough was enough, I wanted to get it OUT.)

So in this case, I zoom in on "deeply refreshed" and "haphazardly." And "unsettled."
------------------------
It was the first rays of dawn that woke Kyerra - something that had not happened since her Joining, months ago. Eyes still closed, she half-smiled at the warmth on her face, reveling in how good it felt, how complete. Almost as if everything was normal again.

She opened her eyes, rubbing the sleep from them. "Normal" had become twisted dreams of Tamlen, turned into some corrupted beast, and never-ending battle with hordes of darkspawn, all led by the soulful song of the Archdemon. Why had it stopped? Alistair had said she might learn to ignore them... or did it mean something, the way the silence of birds meant a predator hid nearby?

She rolled to her feet, trying to ignore her own doubts and, as she moved through the sleeping camp, scolding ghosts from her clan. That latrine isn't far enough away. No one banked the fire last night. Creators, did you all simply fall down where you stood and slept? This is hardly a proper camp at all! Because in truth, they had bedded down quickly, all exhausted from long travels and hard battles. Her companions still slept: (insert your descriptions here).
--------------------------------
Y/N?

Ahh - ok I see, I think.  Wow and I thought I had nailed it with that 1st re-write.  I can see just how weak I am in this area.  Your re-write is such an improvement - thanks.

[Merilsell]

For me writing emotions of a character is always first and foremost to give the reader the possibility to feel with that character. So hence a show approach is much preferred, instead to tell "She was jealous" or something. But sometimes when I don't want to spent endless paragraphs on the journey in between two places, I revert to info dump, like in my most recent chapter:

[...] Their journey toward Redcliffe was arduous, more difficult than thought.

The peaceful time in the safe shelter of Dalish camp let them almost forget about the Blight raging on. They had to fight darkspawn at almost every mile, in spite of avoiding coming to close to what once had been Lothering. While they had solved the conflict of the Dalish and saved their alliance for the looming war, Ferelden had lost ground. Whole areas were tainted by now, withered and twisted landscapes with dead animals and slaughtered humans; soldiers and children alike. It was hard to breathe there, but even more harder to bear. The Wardens were even more tensed and horrified than the rest of their group at the sight, Zevran noticed, and he knew why. They could sense the taint, feel it in their very being, which must be a gruesome experience in such landscapes. He might fight at their side and kill darkspawn as they did, but Zevran certainly didn't envy them for this ability and for the taint in their own bodies. [...]

Sure, I could have described how exactly the Wardens are feeling upon seeing it, but to what purpose? I just wanted to get the point across that the Blight is spreading within Ferelden. So yeah... *shrug*

[tklivory]

Corker wrote...

W.  T.  F?

"Remove all your commas"?  Yeah, that's... that's pretty bad.  Most writerish advice I find educational, along the lines of "That's something I should think about, even if I don't think it's 100% applicable."  That stuff is... yeah.

I write Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse and sometimes submit it to competitions, complete with documentation explaining what it is and how it's supposed to be written.  When I get back comments like "should rhyme" or "would have liked to see more assonance," I take a deep breath and move on. 

Yeah, i reacted the same way to the commas comment.  I literally can't imagine writing fiction without commas.  I mean, punctuation is so integral to sentence structure, no matter what form of writing you're working on.  Seriously, why on *earth* would you remove commas?  Granted, I have to remind myself to *not* use the Oxford comma, but commas in general are kinda, I dunno, as important to writing as, say, freaking capitalizing names when necessary.

Oh, and the 'don't use dialogue' one also killed me.  Seriously?  I can see that, maybe, in non-fiction writing.  But for a story?  It could be used as a literary device in a short story, certainly, but... seriously?  No dialogue?    *shrugs*  Yeahno.

[thesnowtigress]

tklivory wrote...

New article for discussion:
Bad (and even worse) writing advice - A little different than a typical writer's advice article, this is a blog that collates some examples of bad writing advice given to authors. I thought it might be fun to talk about. So, read the article and then post not only reactions, but also: what bad advice have you gotten from betas/readers/etcetera?

-On the use of "said": I read somewhere that for the majority of a piece of writing, you should only use "said" and use other words like "whispered" and stuff only once every thousand words or something (I may not be remembering correctly). Someone also said when using fewer words that mean "said" (oh man I hope this makes sense I am tired lol), the story is smoother to read. I remember being told in high school or cegep that using a variety of words for "said" was the best thing. Maybe then it was just to build our vocabulary? I am so confused now. What do you all think of this?

-I've also heard the adverb thing before and do try to limit my use of them, and like Corker I think it was, I try to substitute those for a showing when it suits the story.

-I can't imagine an interesting story without dialogue.

[Klidi]

Oh I missed so much. So I'll return first to the last week article, if you don't mind. I agree with most of it, exept the example 'he looked at me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable'. There the 'improvements' would make it worse, imho. I understand that the look can make one feel uncomfortable - I experienced that, few times. But - waggling eyebrows in almost sensual manner? What does that mean? If someone started waggling his eyebrows at me, I'd think he's a lunatic and I'd be scared, not uncomfortable. If any, there should be description how uncomfortable the narrators feels.

My Don'ts are usually in dialogue. It's funny, because I often think dialogue is my strong point - maybe that's why sometimes I pay too little attention to it, and end with pathetic lines with adverbs in dialogue tags that just tell the emotion instead of showing it. Like this one:

"So... are you finally going to tell us where are we going? What is this pearl'?" Alistair looked at him curiously.
"So impatient, my friend. Very well. The Pearl is a brothel."
"You mean they set their headquarters in a brothel? Why would they do something so stupid? No, I don't think that's right. You didn't decipher it correctly." Airam shook his head wisely.
"I agree. Grey Wardens in a brothel? Who would ever believe such nonsense," agreed Alistair angrily.

OUCH. This is my hottest candidate for rewriting.

My Do's... hm, I guess the scene of Zev killing his first victim:

The man doesn't even have time to get up before he's there, grasping his hair, pulling his head upwards. Their eyes meet. They stare at each other. A prey and its hunter. Both are terrified. His hands are sweating and the dagger is slightly trembling. A second; an eternity; then he slides his hand across the man's throat. The blood is pouring and pouring, bright red, spoiling his dagger and his hand. He lets the body fall to the ground, and doesn't give him another look. Instead he focuses on his hand and the drops of blood at the tip blade of his dagger, dripping, dripping...

"Well done, Arainai."

He lifts his eyes, startled. He didn't even notice when Master Xavier came over. When the Master reaches his hand, he half expects a blow for his carelessness, but the Master just playfully strikes his face, tips his chin upwards and gently brushes their lips together. He stiffens and the Master pushes him off, chuckling.

"Go clean yourself and come to my quarters. We will start with the next part of your training immediately."
It's good that his body knows what to do and bows and moves by itself; but the blood is dripping, still dripping...

The bad advices... bad are all those advices that try to convince you there is only way correct way to write, molding everything into the same bland, grey mass. Bleh. Bad advice is also vague, alibistic advice, like just saying 'show don't tell' instead of showing (heh) where and how to use each one. Or saying 'try to avoid adverbs as much as possible' witout explaining when it's better to use just an adverb and how to recognize it. And bad are of course advices to omit commas and dialgoue.  

Said - I got both advices, 'use only said, it's invisible and dousn't disrupt the flow' and 'try to use variety of expressions'. Well, said is not 'invisible' for me. Maybe it's because I'm not native speaker - in Slovak if the author only used said, it would sound very unnatural.

But I recently realized another reason. The authors are recommended to use strong verbs, right? But that, too, can be abused. I've read so many stories where the characters never simply run, they sprint, trot, pace, race, flash, rush or storm out, if they're angry. When they're angry, they will crash, trash, throw, slam and bang things and walls.They can't look at anyone without waggling their eyebrows in sensual manner (really - just start paying attention to how many characters and how often quirk their brow). And I often suspect them of acute neurosis, because they twitch, blink, sigh, rub their noses, twist hair around their fingers or fold/unfold their arms after every single sentence. 

And in the middle of it all, they say something. In calm, flat, expressionless voice. That's how 'say' sounds to me, at least. That's not invisible. That stands out like a cucumber on a strawbery cake.

So I decided that both advices are bad. I stopped worrying about it. Sometimes I use 'said', sometimes some other word, depending on what I think fits that particular utterance the best. And I"m much happier person.

Modifié par Klidi, 26 mars 2012 - 10:37 .

[maxernst]

thesnowtigress wrote...

tklivory wrote...

New article for discussion:
Bad (and even worse) writing advice - A little different than a typical writer's advice article, this is a blog that collates some examples of bad writing advice given to authors. I thought it might be fun to talk about. So, read the article and then post not only reactions, but also: what bad advice have you gotten from betas/readers/etcetera?

-On the use of "said": I read somewhere that for the majority of a piece of writing, you should only use "said" and use other words like "whispered" and stuff only once every thousand words or something (I may not be remembering correctly). Someone also said when using fewer words that mean "said" (oh man I hope this makes sense I am tired lol), the story is smoother to read. I remember being told in high school or cegep that using a variety of words for "said" was the best thing. Maybe then it was just to build our vocabulary? I am so confused now. What do you all think of this?

-I've also heard the adverb thing before and do try to limit my use of them, and like Corker I think it was, I try to substitute those for a showing when it suits the story.

-I can't imagine an interesting story without dialogue.

I agree with the comment in the article that almost all absolute (whether it's always or never) advice is bad.  As far as the frequency of speech verbs, I think they're difficult to avoid if you're writing a scene with more than two characters speaking, because you need to do a lot of dialogue tagging.  Sure, you could have the characters frowning or tapping their toes or whatever as a way of clarifying who's speaking, but that gets distracting.  I recently wrote a series of scenes with nine speakers and found it really difficult.

If you find yourself using "said adverb-ly" an awful lot, you might want to look at using a greater variety of speech verbs, but if you want a neutral tone of voice, and you feel a tag is needed to identify the speaker at this point, said is an unobtrusive choice.

I was struck by how many people mentioned "never use first person" as the worst advice because I think one of the articles we read earlier said almost everything is better written in the third person.  It seems like there are a lot of people who are turned off by first-person narration but there are many, many great books written that way and I personally find it easier to write in the first person. On the other hand I think Lynn recommended writing either in the first person or the limited third (which is  almost the first person with a pronoun change)...and that works better for me.

Modifié par maxernst, 26 mars 2012 - 10:40 .

[Muirin]

Corker wrote...

@Tryynity - I am beginning to think adverbs are signs that point to when we can show more than tell.

I'm lagging behind on the discussion a bit. But with my brain still on the show/tell topic, there's also this
http://www.foremostp...w_not_tell.html

-it has a few more examples of signs that you are TELLING (I need to see lots of examples before something sinks in enough that it will be folded into my future writing).

[Klidi]

BEFORE: "You are such a jerk," he said angrily. 

First off, you should never modify "said" with an adverb. Second, keep adverb use to a minimum. They're not evil little words that have to be avoided at all costs, but they should be kept to a minimum. It's far better to SHOW he was angry:

AFTER: "You are such a jerk." Dan slammed the phone book shut and threw it at the couch. The pages ruffled open, the names inside seeming exposed and vulnerable against the stark black leather. Dan got to his feet, moving so fast his chair skidded against the floor and dented the new drywall.

Yes, it is true that here you see how angry Dan is.

But how often you see real people act like this Drama Queen? And how many times you hear someone talking angrily without them denting the wall?

I'll take 'said' modified with an adverb over creating as ridiculous character as this Dan any time.

Modifié par Klidi, 26 mars 2012 - 11:33 .

[thesnowtigress]

@Klidi, oh I don't know, I've seen people get so angry they throw chairs... though that person was drunk... so maybe that's a different story altogether lol. I got really mad at my printer once, so mad that I ended up throwing my backpack all over the room, thinking it was empty, then I remembered my iPod was in there - I totally broke it. I should have thrown my printer on the ground, it would have been less expensive to replace haha.

@AmbraAlhambra, nice examples. I think it all does come down to balance.