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Writing Advice: Show, Tell, Adverbs and Others

In the last couple of entries, I've covered a number of topics on the periphery of actual writing: things to consider before getting started to get in a productive space, examining motivation. It's time to focus on some things about the actual words on the page!

This short piece will focus on some technical aspects of writing itself, and share my thoughts on a couple of common pieces of writing advice that come up from time to time. I'll focus on the biggest one first, and that's the common 'show don't tell' mantra. I'll then move on to some other topics that are common enough and give some comments, but the main thing I want to impress on you is that really, how you write is all up to you.

To borrow a movie quote, a lot of rules in writing aren't rules. They're more guidelines really, and it all depends on understanding when it is good to break a rule for the sake of your story. As a writer, you need to be confident and trust in your vision and technical ability to execute it - a bit like how confidence in something can go a long way in other walks of life. Same kinda applies here. But before I go too far ahead it's important to know what the rule is before you bend, or break them.

'Show don't tell' refers to a method of writing often given to beginners to improve their writing. 'Telling' is the act of quite simply saying something in the story happens - for example, driving home. From a narrative point of view, it's both sparse and prevents a lot of other things being presented that engage a reader, such as actions, thoughts, feelings. 'Showing' is taking the same action and presenting it in a more engaging way that describes the experience by providing those actions, thoughts, feelings etc. For example, instead of saying I drove home, I could 'show' the scene by saying I did battle with a three hour, five lane gridlock, crawling along nose to tail having my dreams turned to dust by the numbing, vibrating hum of the engine. The thing is, 'showing' takes up words, and the more you put into it, the longer it takes a reader to get through your story. So the advantage of 'telling' is that you can summarize details that slow things down too much, preventing your story getting bogged down in unnecessary detail. From my perspective, this is often when comments on pacing and flow are about with writing, and in essence, both showing and telling are necessary tools to control that so you focus on the important scenes, and move past the unimportant ones to keep things satisfying.

A lot of discussion and feedback for beginners will focus on the 'show don't tell' point, but I think it's worth remembering, even at all levels, that there are moments for both. It can be tempting as you get more experienced and established to think you're beyond paying close attention to using both with equal consideration in a story, but both are fundamental tools a lot of important things can be built on. They'll exist in balance in your writing, and while this is not necessarily an equal balance, you'll notice as you read it whether the pacing feels too slow or too fast without reason, or that the writing itself feels like its writing. After all, all writing is a sleight of hand that makes the words we craft feel like a real, authentic voice, and we know there's a wonderful variety of voices out there. Ultimately, the best way to spot whether you're telling or showing too much is by trusting the feedback from your readers. I'll definitely save beta readers as a topic for a following piece, but to be brief here, the feedback of others will really help you spot the parts of your story that need improvement - and not just regarding showing or telling.

Now, the next point to consider and follow on from the above is that not everything needs explaining. This is beyond creating mystery or intrigue in your story - it's a necessity for your reader and a kindness to them. If you pause to explain everything in a story, you'll bring the flow and pacing of your story to a crawl, destroying any excitement or sense of urgency to events. A really common area this can occur is in fantasy and science fiction - we've seen our fair share of movies that begin with a narrator providing crucial information to make sense of the setting, and inevitably, the pacing slows, or stalls. Let's take Star Wars: A New Hope for example, and it's famous yellow text advancing across the screen. While the information is short and sweet, it does take some time to complete, and ending up reading the information rather than having it unfold on screen is a bit of an odd, jarring setup. I'm not criticizing the film here (the text is essential and iconic to introduce the story with no further exposition, and is be far more epic and interesting than some of the long, meandering prologues some movies are guilty of), but it provides a good, short example of the effect of protracted exposition in your story. Imagine if further information was needed throughout A New Hope in such a way: to explain what the Clone Wars are, or what a hyperspace drive is. This is why you should be careful about the desire to explain - too much, and you pull away from the story too much. However, sticking to A New Hope as a metaphor, there are plenty of ways you can work in detail and explain in an organic way. Let's take for example, how Ben Kenobi introduces a lightsaber to Luke. If you'll forgive me paraphrasing, the scene is brief, with Luke being told it's a weapon from a more civilized age, while Luke experimentally waves the saber about. The entire scene succeeds in its aim - introducing us, through Luke, to the iconic weapon, a little bit about the Jedi, and it does so in a way that makes sense in terms of the wider story. It feels organic, and in doing so in this way, the potential to slip into exposition is avoided. Still, at that time we're neither told nor shown what the weapon can do fully, neither are we experts at what Jedi actually are. It's just as well, as we'd likely slip into a longer scene that would slow the pacing down, and remove a lot of the suspense and surprises that come as the rest of the film answers those questions. To summarize - not everything needs to be explained, and what does need to be explained is shown in an organic manner, and sometimes incrementally. Consider the ways you can do that in your writing, and you'll build up compelling, exciting scenes that are well-paced and don't get slowed down by too much information. Not everything needs to be explained.

Next, I'm going to speak a little bit about adverbs, since the theme we are on here is about description. An adverb is a word that can modify or describe a verb, another adverb, or an entire sentence. For example, quickly, slowly, extremely, and very are adverbs, but also other words like yesterday, here, daily, and never. Now, a lot of writing advice says never use adverbs because it is a sign of weak writing to use multiple words when a single one will do. But of course, some adverbs are important which is why I included yesterday, and why I'm not advocating here for such a blanket ban on them in your writing. The reason why strong statements are made is because often writers will slip into using them to modify words in ways that aren't necessary. For example, in that previous sentence I could have written "to modify words in ways that aren't really necessary." Strictly speaking, 'really' doesn't need to be there. It doesn't change the meaning of the sentence, it simply adds emphasis to it. However what often happens in writing is that we use that emphasis in the wrong way. For example, you could write "the wolf ran very quickly." This is not a good piece of writing, because what's happened there is instead of using a stronger, single verb to more accurately describe the action: such as sprinted, bolted, two adverbs have been bolted on there to try and get the same effect. But, to say "the wolf sprinted" is much stronger and precise than "the wolf ran very quickly." This is why a lot of writing advice advocates removing all adverbs. But as we've learned, if you did that, the sentence "I saw the wolf yesterday, he comes here daily" would really not work. There's a time and place for adverbs, but we just need to be alert to them and scrutinize why we are using them. Is the emphasis justified? Is it essential to the structure? Or are we instead making poor word choices, and can remedy that with picking some more accurate ones?

Now, from that last paragraph your thoughts may be to turn to the thesaurus and select as many new and interesting words to make your writing stronger and avoid tricksy adverbs slipping in (I'll stop with them, I promise). But remember, we're looking for accuracy and precision with our word selection, so you should resist the urge to pick up a thesaurus and canter through all the interesting words you can find. Make sure the words you are picking fit the tone, the character, the setting, the time, the speech. It would not make sense for someone in a modern setting to slip into words that are archaic. To ease any concerns, I would say that a lot of the time we speak using a selection of common words: a sort of core vocabulary language speakers often use. It's the same for writing, and since we're aiming for text that feels natural, we should be conscious of that and not worry if you've used the word "said" too often. Sometimes when there's lots of speech going on and people are just talking normally, you need to just add it in with the speech tags so readers keep track of who is speaking. Rather than potentially, all those 'saids' getting turned into different words. Use the thesaurus sparingly, but still, it pays to have a large vocabulary. Often said will do.

Hopefully this gives you some further food for thought. Happy writing!