Yearly Archives: 2014

Show Don’t Tell! So, show me what that means

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By P.J. Parrish

How many times have we all heard this: SHOW DON’T TELL!

I put it all in nice bright letters because those three words are so commonplace in writing workshops that shoot, we might as well put them in neon, right? Ask a writing coach or an editor what the cardinal sin of bad writing is and “telling” is right up there with procrastination. We really get our panties in a wad about it. But let’s stop and take a deep breath here

((((Breathe in pink, breathe out blue…)))

and figure out what SHOW DON’T TELL really means.

Okay, let’s start with a definition because it’s always good to start with specifics.

Show don’t tell means writing in a manner that allows the reader to experience the story through a character’s action, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the narrator’s exposition, summarization, and description. The idea is not to be heavy-handed, but to allow issues to emerge from the text instead.

(((((ZZZzzzzzzz))))

And that, my friends, is me telling you what “show don’t tell” is. And now, I’m going to try to show you.
But first, a caveat: Not all telling is bad. Sometimes, you have to tell things in your story. Not every thing that happens in your story is worthy of showing. Some things are best handled in narration:

Boring but necessary physical action
You don’t waste words on stuff like this : “He stared at the phone then slowly depressed the little red button to disconnect the line.” You write: “He hung up.”  Also, you don’t write: “He slowly swung his bare feet to the cold wood floor, scratched himself, yawned, and got out of the bed in an existential funk.” You write: “He got up.”
Boring dialogue
You don’t write:
       “Hello Joe,” he said. “Long time no see.”
       “Yeah, it’s been about two months.”
       “That long, eh?”
       “Yeah.”
       “What you been up to?” he asked.
       “I was carving fishing lures, but the then the wife left me and I found myself living alone and eating and drinking too much.” 
Write (tell) this: He hadn’t seen Joe for two months.  He looked terrible, like he had been living on Big Macs and Jim Beam. Talk around the station was that his wife had left him and he was going crazy sitting at home making fish lures. 

Pure description

This is where you the writer can step in and shine because it is you telling us (in your unique voice), what things look, smell and sound like. But usually, description works best and is more involving for the reader if you can filter it through a character’s point of view. Here are two examples. You tell me which one works best.
Third person POV detached
She looked at Louis. He was twenty-nine and bi-racial, his father white, his mother black. She knew he had grown up as a foster child and had made peace with his mother toward the end of her life, but that his father had deserted him.
Third person POV intimate 
She turned toward him. God, she loved his face. Forceful, high-cheekboned, black brows sitting like emphatic accents over his gray eyes, the left one arching into an exclamation mark when he was amused or surprised. And his skin, smooth and buff-colored, a gift from his beautiful black mother whose picture he had once shown her and his white father, whom he had never mentioned.
    

Backstory

There are a lot of great posts in our TKZ archives about how to deal with backstory. But in terms of “show don’t tell” we have to concede that backstory is essentially telling. And that’s okay. Just do it well, be evocative and be brief because your reader wants to get back to the forward plot momentum. Example:

        The first image that usually came to him when other people started talking about their childhood was a house. Other things came, too. Faces, smells, emotions, mental snapshots of events. But those kinds of memories were fluid, changing for good or bad, depending on how, and when, you chose to look back on them.
But a house was different. It was solid and unchanging, and it allowed people to say “I existed here. My memories are real.”
His image of home had always been a wood frame shack in Mississippi. It was an uncomfortable picture, but one he had held onto for a long time, convinced it symbolized some kind of truth in his life about who he was, or what he should be.

Notice that although this is TELLING, the reader is emotionally involved with the narrating character. And it is short. The very next sentence takes us right back to the present plot.

Okay, so show me already!

Now I’m going to try to show you what I mean by all this with some before and after samples from a workshop I teach on this subject. Number 1 is an excerpt where the setup is a cop standing over a dead body in bayou country.

        Shadows closed around him as the sun played hide-and-seek behind dark clouds. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Impending rain scented the air. Spanish moss fluttered in a sudden breeze that carried with it the cloying acridness of the swampy bayou.
        And at his feet in the vermin-ridden humus lay a young woman. A woman who, until a day or two ago, had hoped, planned, and dreamed. Maybe even loved.
        Now she lay dead. Violently wrestled from life before her time. And it was his job to find her killer.
        He started when, with a flap of wings, a snowy egret soared into the air twenty feet in front of him. As the regal bird disappeared from sight, Kramer couldn’t help but wonder if maybe it was his Jane Doe’s soul wafting to the Land of the Dead. The way the dove in Ulysses had carried Euripides’ soul.
        Despite the day’s heat, a chill seeped through him. Instinctively and unselfconsciously, Kramer crossed himself and wished her soul Godspeed.

Here’s a rewrite of the same scene:

       Shadows closed around him as the sun played hide and seek behind dark clouds. Distant rain scented the still air and Spanish moss hung like wet netting on the giant oaks. The cloying acridness of the bayou was everywhere.
      Kramer wiped the sweat from his brow and  looked down at the dead woman and drew a shallow breath .
      She was the third young woman this year who had been left to rot in the muddy swamps of Louisiana.
      With a sudden rustle of leaves, a snowy egret soared into the air twenty feet in front of him.  Against the slanting sun it appeared little more than a ghostly white blur but still he watched it, oddly comforted by its graceful flight up toward the clouds.
     Then, with a small sigh, he looked back at the woman, closed his burning eyes and crossed himself.
     “God’s speed, ma cherie,” he whispered. “God’s speed.”

Why does the second one work better? Why does it hit our emotions harder? Because the writer got out of the way and let the character’s actions and words move the story along.

Here’s example 2. This is the opening of chapter 1 and the setup is a woman overseeing a parade at Disney World. It’s long but it’s worth analyzing.

        Dorothy Gale got it wrong. Even as a kid, I didn’t understand why she was so hell-bent to hustle herself out of Oz to return to Kansas. Was she crazy? I ached to leave ordinary behind and devoured every magical Frank Baum book in the library. When I was nine, I vowed I’d find the Emerald City one day and I did. The Wizard—or rather Orlando’s theme park industry—set a shiny, incredible Land of Oz at the end of my personal yellow brick road.
Ten years ago, with a fresh college diploma—Go Terps—I’d found my niche and myself when I snagged my first job at Oz. Work felt like play in my fairytale world. And my disappointed parents stopped blaming themselves for those library trips when Oz promoted me to assistant department manager for process improvement. Tonight, we were rolling out a new parade, and for me, the excitement rivaled Christmas Eve.
Churning the humid Florida air, the dancing poppies whirled by in a swirl of red, plum, and purple, so far a flawless debut. Across the Yellow Brick Road, my boss Benjamin flashed me a rare smile and gestured to his stopwatch. The lilting music gave way to the recorded yipping of hundreds of puppies, and forty employees pranced by in shaggy-doggy costumes. Toto’s enormous basket-shaped float reached the corner, and excited children squealed, adding a thousand decibels to the noise.
“Slower, Toto,” I murmured into my mouthpiece. “Turn on three.” I counted and the basket’s driver, hidden deep inside the float, turned with inches to spare. 

Here’s how I would handle it.

      The red and pink poppies danced in the humid Florida air.  The lilting music gave way to the recorded yipping of hundreds of puppies, and forty employees pranced by in shaggy-doggy costumes. Toto’s enormous basket-shaped float reached the corner, and excited children squealed, adding a thousand decibels to the noise.
      Across the Yellow Brick Road, my boss Benjamin flashed me a rare smile and gestured to his stopwatch.  So far, it was a flawless debut. I pressed my clipboard to my chest and smiled.
       God, how I loved it here.
       My own fairy tale world.
       My own private  Oz.
       “Slower, Toto,” I murmured into my mouthpiece. “Turn on three.” I counted and the basket’s driver, hidden deep inside the float, turned with inches to spare.
        My own parade – every day.
        Dorothy got it wrong. Even as a kid, I never understood why she was so hell-bent to get out of Kansas. 

I think the writer got into the scene way too early and it’s way too much exposition “telling” backstory so early in the book. And I think you always save your best line for last. In this case, it was “Dorothy got it wrong.”  The writer opened with it and as such, it’s not not bad. But I think it works better AFTER we know we’re at Disney World. Plus, I like the technique of ending a scene with your best line because it works as an emphasis of the point you are trying to make with your scene. And every scene does have a point, right?
Here’s one more for you to chew on. The set up is an unidentified person creeping through a house after already finding one dead body. We do not know who this is, what gender, or why he/she is there.

         In a large pantry off the kitchen, I found the maid.  She, too, was dead.  From the marks on her neck, my guess was someone had strangled her.  As I completed my trip around the downstairs, I heard a noise from the front of the house, then a call of, “Police.  Anyone here?”  I took a deep breath and started toward the front room.
The cops met me in the hall with the obligatory order to drop my weapon and assume the position against the wall.  I complied and a young patrolman named Johnson explored areas I preferred not touched by a stranger.  However, I understood.  I’d have done the same if I had found anyone during my search, and I wouldn’t have concerned myself about his or her privacy.
Once he finished, I showed my PI credentials. 

In the rewrite, I converted the “tellling” into “showing,” mainly by handling things in dialogue.

         In a large pantry off the kitchen, I found the maid.  She was face down on the marbled floor, arms splayed, feet part, still dressed in her baby blue cotton uniform. I knelt  and when I moved her thick pony tail, I saw a tattered clothesline wrapped tight around her neck. She had no pulse. It hit me that I met her three times on previous visits and yet I could not remember her name.
      “Police! Anyone here?”
      I turned toward the echo of voices, toward the long cavernous hallway that led to the living room. Before I could take a step, I felt a jab of steel against my temple and someone’s hot breath in my ear.
       “Against the wall, lady.”
       “But —”
       “Shut up,” the cop said as he patted around my ass for a weapon. He found my gun, ripped it from its holster and roughly  turned me around.  I didn’t know the officer in front of me but I saw Sgt. Randy Rawls standing in the doorway, trying not too hard to stifle his snicker.
       “She’s okay, Jim,” he said. “Her name is Jenny Smith. She’s a local P.I.”

One more example but it’s one of my favorites. The setup is a TV anchorwoman looking forward to meeting her boyfriend after work. I like it because the writer was so close to getting it right. But he needed to focus in on what I call special details and actions that show (ie illuminate) character.

     Tonight, however, Corrie was looking forward to dinner with Jake.
     Jacob “Jake” Teinman employed a wicked, take-no-prisoners wit.  She found his sense of humor engaging, and delighted when he would elevate one eyebrow while keeping the other straight alerting his target to an oncoming barb.  Corrie truly liked Jake, a lot, but experience taught hard lessons and she had qualms about the two of them as a couple.
      They were awfully different — she: a public persona, trim, career driven, self-centered, frenetic and Irish Catholic; he: private, stocky, successful with a controlled confidence that drove her nuts, and Jewish.  At least that’s how she pictured the two of them.  She wondered if Jake’s version would agree.
      She’d noted they’d been dating exactly one year and he had made reservations at “The 95th” just six blocks from the WWCC studios.  It was sweet of Jake since he knew it was one of her favorite places.

Notice how the rewrite below works better because the same info is conveyed through tighter action and dialogue rather than the writer telling us what is happening.

      Tonight, Corrie was looking forward to dinner with Jake. And as she watched him come in the restaurant door, she smiled. It used to annoy her when people said how different they were. But it was true.
     Jake…
     Stocky. Dark. Jewish. Coming toward her with that confident swagger.
     And her…
     Tall. Blonde. Irish-Catholic. Sitting here wondering if he’d show up.
     He kissed her on the cheek and sat down.
     “You remembered,” she said.
      He frowned. “Remembered what?”
      “That this is my favorite restaurant.”
     He glanced around before the puppy-dog brown eyes came back to hers. “Sure, babe,” he said. “I remember.”

So what do we get from all this? The point I am trying to make here is that whenever you can, filter the story through the consciousness of your character(s). Don’t waste words on dumb physical stuff. Be evocative and fresh in your description. And when it comes to backstory narrative, don’t dwell in the past too long.
Okay, that was telling. Let me show you one more time, this time in an action scene (where you should always show not tell).
TELLING DRAMATIC ACTION
As he was walking slowly down the hotel corridor, someone hit him on the back of the head and pushed him forward. He felt the world go black. His body flailed, hitting the plate glass window and shattering it. The glittering shards caught the throbbing glow of red neon as they fell, like the tails of fading fireworks.
He fell to his knees and looked up into the chiseled face of his attacker. 
SHOWING DRAMATIC ACTION
      He walked with his head bent, scanning the front page of the New York Post. The hallway was dim, the slow blink of the red neon from the lone window lighting his way. 
      The blow came out of nowhere. So quick, so hard, blood filled his mouth as he bit his tongue. He stumbled forward, his head hitting the window. 
       An explosion of sound and glass. A rush of cold air. A flood of warm blood.
       He dropped to his knees and looked up.
       The face above him pulsed red. Then it was gone.

What’s the main problem with the first one? The “telling” is slow-paced and un-viscereal. And if the guy just went through a plate glass window he probably can’t see the glass falling and it sure as heck wouldn’t register in his senses as “glittering shards” and “fading fireworks.” In the second version, the POV is fixed and every detail that IS possible is filtered through the man’s senses.

In summary, here are the pitfalls of TELLING
  1. Narrating the physical movements without being in character’s head.
  2. Use of too many ‘ly’ words in action or in dialog (i.e. She said impatiently, walked slowly, yelled angrily.) 
  3. Use of stock descriptions, purple prose or lengthy descriptions of places (and people) especially those that have no bearing on the plot.  
  4. Too many adjectives and cliches.
  5. Omniscient POV (distancing, describing from an all-seeing POV) The man getting hit on the head cannot see the glass as it falls six stories to the ground.)
Here are the strengths of SHOWING
  1. Action that uses the senses, stays within the character’s consciousness and uses words and phrases that reinforce the mood of the scene.
  2. Strong verbs.  (Walked vs Jogged, Ran vs Raced, Shut the door vs Slammed the door.)
  3. Original images and vivid descriptions that are filtered through the character’s senses in the present.
  4. One compelling adjective vs. a string of mediocre ones.
  5. Keep POV firmly in character’s head. (Establishes sympathy and connects emotionally.)
As usual, I have flapped my lips and overstayed my welcome. It is 7:30 p.m. There is pizza and a glass of pinot with my name on it out there and a chapter 12 that needs to be finished.  Don’t tell me to stop. Someone needs to show me the way to go home. 

Pick up the Pace for a Real Page-Turner

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by Jodie Renner, editor & author

Readers of fiction often complain that a book didn’t keep their interest, that the characters, story and/or writing just didn’t grab them. Today’s readers have shorter attention spans and so many more books to choose from. Most of them/us don’t have the time or patience for the lengthy descriptive passages, long, convoluted “literary” sentences, detailed technical explanations, author asides, soap-boxing, or the leisurely pacing of fiction of 100 years ago.

Besides, with TV, movies, and the internet, we don’t need most of the detailed descriptions of locations anymore, unlike early readers who’d perhaps never left their town, and had very few visual images of other locales to draw on. Ditto with detailed technical explanations – if readers want to know more, they can just Google the topic.

While you don’t want your story barreling along at a break-neck speed all the way through – that would be exhausting for the reader – you do want the pace to be generally brisk enough to keep the readers’ interest. As Elmore Leonard said, “I try to leave out the parts that people skip.”

Here are some concrete techniques for accelerating your narrative style at strategic spots to create those tense, fast-paced scenes.

~ Condense setup and backstory.

To increase the pace and overall tension of your story, start by cutting way back on setup and backstory. Instead, open with your protagonist in an intriguing scene with someone important in his life or to the story, with action, dialogue, and tension. Then marble in only the juiciest bits of the character’s background in tantalizing hints as you go along, rather than interrupting the story for paragraphs or pages to fill us in on the character’s life — which effectively eliminates a lot of great opportunities to incite reader curiosity and add intrigue with little hints and enticing innuendos.

~ Include hints at questions, secrets, worries, fears, indecision, or inner turmoil to every scene.

This will keep readers curious and worried, so emotionally engaged and compelled to keep turning the pages.

~ In general, develop a more direct, lean writing style.


Be ruthless with the delete button so your message and the impact of your story won’t get lost in all the clutter of superfluous words and repetitive sentences. I cover lots of specific techniques with examples for cutting down on wordiness in my book,  Fire up Your Fiction.

~ Rewrite, condense, or delete chapters and scenes that drag. 

Do you have slow-moving “filler” scenes, with little or no tension or change? Reduce any essentials from the scene to a paragraph or two, or even just a few sentences, and include it in another scene.

~ Keep chapters and scenes short.

This will help sustain the readers’ interest and keep them turning the pages. James Patterson is a master at short chapters, and his followers seem to really like that. Especially effective for reluctant or busy readers.

~ Start each scene or chapter as late as possible, and end it as early as possible.

Don’t open your chapters with a lengthy lead-up. Every scene and chapter should start with some kind of question, conflict, or intrigue, to arouse the curiosity of the reader and make them compelled to keep reading. And don’t tie up the events in a nice, neat little bow at the end – that will just encourage the reader to close the book rather than to keep reading in anticipation. Instead, end in uncertainty or a new challenge.

~ Limit explaining – Show, don’t tell.

Keep descriptive passages, expository passages, and ruminations, reflections and analyses to a minimum. Critical scenes need to be “shown” in real time, to make them more immediate and compelling, rather than “telling” about them after the fact. Use lots of action, dialogue, reactions, and thoughts. And keep the narration firmly in the viewpoint character’s voice – it’s really his/her thoughts, observations, and reactions to what’s going on.

~ Use summary to get past the boring bits, or skip ahead for effect.

Summarize in a sentence or two a passage of time where nothing much happens, to transition quickly from one critical scene to the next: “Three days later, he was no further ahead.” Skip past all the humdrum details and transition info, like getting from one place to another, and jump straight to the next action scene.

~ Make sure every scene has enough conflict.

In fact, every page should have some tension, even if it’s questioning, mild disagreement, doubts, or resentments simmering under the surface. Remember that conflict and tension are what drive fiction forward and keep readers turning the pages.

~ Every scene needs a change of some kind.

No scene should be static. Throw a wrench in the works, make something unexpected happen. Add new characters, new information, new challenges, new dangers. And the events of the scenes should be changing your protagonist in some way. Change produces questions, anticipation, or anxiety — just what you need to keep reader interest.

~ Use cliff-hangers.

For fast pacing and more tension and intrigue, end most scenes and chapters with unresolved issues, with some kind of twist, revelation, story question, intrigue, challenge, setback or threat. Prolonging the outcome, putting the resolution off to another chapter piques the readers’ curiosity and makes them worry, which keeps them turning the pages.

~ Employ scene cuts or jump cuts.

Create a series of short, unresolved incidents that occur in rapid succession. Stop at a critical moment and jump to a different scene, often at a different time and place, with different characters – perhaps picking up from a scene you cut short earlier. Switch chapters or scenes quickly back and forth between your protagonist and antagonist(s), or from one dicey, uncertain situation to another. And of course, don’t resolve the conflict/problem before you switch to the next one.

~ Use shorter paragraphs and more white space.

Short paragraphs and frequent paragraphing create more white space. The eye moves down the page faster, so the mind does, too. This also increases the tension, which is always a good thing in fiction.

~ Use rapid-fire dialogue, with conflict, confrontations, power struggles, suspicion.

For tense scenes, use short questions, abrupt, oblique or evasive answers, incomplete sentences, one or two-word questions and responses, and little or no description, deliberation or reflection.

~ Use powerful sentences with concrete, sensory words that evoke emotional responses.

Utilize the strongest, most concrete word you can find for the situation. Avoid vague, wishy-washy or abstract words, and unfamiliar terms the reader may have to look up. Concentrate on evocative, to-the-point verbs and nouns, and cut way back on adjectives, adverbs and prepositions.

Also, take out all unnecessary, repetitive words and those wishy-washy, humdrum “filler” words and phrases. And use plenty of sensory details, emotional and physical reactions, and attitude. (For more on this, see Fire up Your Fiction.)

A well-disguised example from my editing:

Before:

Kristen fired him a dirty look, probably because he was doing this in piecemeal and not getting straight to the point as she would have liked him to. Her voice was terse. “Why not?”

After:

Kristen fired him a dirty look as if to say, Cut to the chase. Her voice was terse. “Why not?”

Or just:

Kristen fired him a dirty look. “Why not?”

~ Vary the sentence structure, and shorten sentences for effect at tense moments.

Shorter sentences give a pause, which catches the attention of the reader. At a critical moment, don’t run a bunch of significant ideas together in one long sentence, as they each will be diminished a bit, lost in among all the other ideas presented. You can also go to a new line for the same effect.

For a fast-paced, scary scene, use short, clipped sentences, as opposed to long, meandering, leisurely ones. Sentence fragments are very effective for increasing the tension and pace. Like this. It really works. Especially in dialogue.

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. She has also Captivate_full_w_decalpublished two clickable time-saving e-resources to date: Quick Clicks: Spelling List and Quick Clicks: Word Usage. You can find Jodie at www.JodieRenner.com, www.JodieRennerEditing.com, her blog, http://jodierennerediting.blogspot.com/, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Pick up the Pace for a Real Page-Turner

Posted on by

by Jodie Renner, editor & author

Readers of fiction often complain that a book didn’t keep their interest, that the characters, story and/or writing just didn’t grab them. Today’s readers have shorter attention spans and so many more books to choose from. Most of them/us don’t have the time or patience for the lengthy descriptive passages, long, convoluted “literary” sentences, detailed technical explanations, author asides, soap-boxing, or the leisurely pacing of fiction of 100 years ago.

Besides, with TV, movies, and the internet, we don’t need most of the detailed descriptions of locations anymore, unlike early readers who’d perhaps never left their town, and had very few visual images of other locales to draw on. Ditto with detailed technical explanations – if readers want to know more, they can just Google the topic.

While you don’t want your story barreling along at a break-neck speed all the way through – that would be exhausting for the reader – you do want the pace to be generally brisk enough to keep the readers’ interest. As Elmore Leonard said, “I try to leave out the parts that people skip.”

Here are some concrete techniques for accelerating your narrative style at strategic spots to create those tense, fast-paced scenes.

~ Condense setup and backstory.

To increase the pace and overall tension of your story, start by cutting way back on setup and backstory. Instead, open with your protagonist in an intriguing scene with someone important in his life or to the story, with action, dialogue, and tension. Then marble in only the juiciest bits of the character’s background in tantalizing hints as you go along, rather than interrupting the story for paragraphs or pages to fill us in on the character’s life — which effectively eliminates a lot of great opportunities to incite reader curiosity and add intrigue with little hints and enticing innuendos.

~ Include hints at questions, secrets, worries, fears, indecision, or inner turmoil to every scene.

This will keep readers curious and worried, so emotionally engaged and compelled to keep turning the pages.

~ In general, develop a more direct, lean writing style.

Be ruthless with the delete button so your message and the impact of your story won’t get lost in all the clutter of superfluous words and repetitive sentences. I cover lots of specific techniques with examples for cutting down on wordiness in my book,  Fire up Your Fiction.

~ Rewrite, condense, or delete chapters and scenes that drag. 

Do you have slow-moving “filler” scenes, with little or no tension or change? Reduce any essentials from the scene to a paragraph or two, or even just a few sentences, and include it in another scene.

~ Keep chapters and scenes short.

This will help sustain the readers’ interest and keep them turning the pages. James Patterson is a master at short chapters, and his followers seem to really like that. Especially effective for reluctant or busy readers.

~ Start each scene or chapter as late as possible, and end it as early as possible.

Don’t open your chapters with a lengthy lead-up. Every scene and chapter should start with some kind of question, conflict, or intrigue, to arouse the curiosity of the reader and make them compelled to keep reading. And don’t tie up the events in a nice, neat little bow at the end – that will just encourage the reader to close the book rather than to keep reading in anticipation. Instead, end in uncertainty or a new challenge.

~ Limit explaining – Show, don’t tell.

Keep descriptive passages, expository passages, and ruminations, reflections and analyses to a minimum. Critical scenes need to be “shown” in real time, to make them more immediate and compelling, rather than “telling” about them after the fact. Use lots of action, dialogue, reactions, and thoughts. And keep the narration firmly in the viewpoint character’s voice – it’s really his/her thoughts, observations, and reactions to what’s going on.

~ Use summary to get past the boring bits, or skip ahead for effect.

Summarize in a sentence or two a passage of time where nothing much happens, to transition quickly from one critical scene to the next: “Three days later, he was no further ahead.” Skip past all the humdrum details and transition info, like getting from one place to another, and jump straight to the next action scene.

~ Make sure every scene has enough conflict.

In fact, every page should have some tension, even if it’s questioning, mild disagreement, doubts, or resentments simmering under the surface. Remember that conflict and tension are what drive fiction forward and keep readers turning the pages.

~ Every scene needs a change of some kind.

No scene should be static. Throw a wrench in the works, make something unexpected happen. Add new characters, new information, new challenges, new dangers. And the events of the scenes should be changing your protagonist in some way. Change produces questions, anticipation, or anxiety — just what you need to keep reader interest.

~ Use cliff-hangers.

For fast pacing and more tension and intrigue, end most scenes and chapters with unresolved issues, with some kind of twist, revelation, story question, intrigue, challenge, setback or threat. Prolonging the outcome, putting the resolution off to another chapter piques the readers’ curiosity and makes them worry, which keeps them turning the pages.

~ Employ scene cuts or jump cuts.

Create a series of short, unresolved incidents that occur in rapid succession. Stop at a critical moment and jump to a different scene, often at a different time and place, with different characters – perhaps picking up from a scene you cut short earlier. Switch chapters or scenes quickly back and forth between your protagonist and antagonist(s), or from one dicey, uncertain situation to another. And of course, don’t resolve the conflict/problem before you switch to the next one.

~ Use shorter paragraphs and more white space.

Short paragraphs and frequent paragraphing create more white space. The eye moves down the page faster, so the mind does, too. This also increases the tension, which is always a good thing in fiction.

~ Use rapid-fire dialogue, with conflict, confrontations, power struggles, suspicion.

For tense scenes, use short questions, abrupt, oblique or evasive answers, incomplete sentences, one or two-word questions and responses, and little or no description, deliberation or reflection.

~ Use powerful sentences with concrete, sensory words that evoke emotional responses.

Utilize the strongest, most concrete word you can find for the situation. Avoid vague, wishy-washy or abstract words, and unfamiliar terms the reader may have to look up. Concentrate on evocative, to-the-point verbs and nouns, and cut way back on adjectives, adverbs and prepositions.

Also, take out all unnecessary, repetitive words and those wishy-washy, humdrum “filler” words and phrases. And use plenty of sensory details, emotional and physical reactions, and attitude. (For more on this, see Fire up Your Fiction.)

A well-disguised example from my editing:

Before:

Kristen fired him a dirty look, probably because he was doing this in piecemeal and not getting straight to the point as she would have liked him to. Her voice was terse. “Why not?”

After:

Kristen fired him a dirty look as if to say, Cut to the chase. Her voice was terse. “Why not?”

Or just:

Kristen fired him a dirty look. “Why not?”

~ Vary the sentence structure, and shorten sentences for effect at tense moments.

Shorter sentences give a pause, which catches the attention of the reader. At a critical moment, don’t run a bunch of significant ideas together in one long sentence, as they each will be diminished a bit, lost in among all the other ideas presented. You can also go to a new line for the same effect.

For a fast-paced, scary scene, use short, clipped sentences, as opposed to long, meandering, leisurely ones. Sentence fragments are very effective for increasing the tension and pace. Like this. It really works. Especially in dialogue.

For more tips with examples for picking up the pace, check out Jodie’s editor’s guides to writing compelling fiction, Writing a Killer Thriller, Fire up Your Fiction, and Captivate Your Readers.

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: FIRE UP YOUR FICTION, CAPTIVATE YOUR READERS, 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: VOICES FROM THE VALLEYS – Stories and Poems about Life in BC’s Interior, and CHILDHOOD REGAINED – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers. Jodie lives in Kelowna, BC, Canada. Website: www.JodieRenner.com; blog: http://jodierennerediting.blogspot.com/; Facebook. Amazon Author Page.

Marketing Lessons from Mad Men

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@jamesscottbell


On a recent episode of Mad Men, “The Monolith,” a huge IBM computer is being installed in the offices of Sterling Cooper & Partners. Don Draper, reduced to hack work as some sort of vindictive punishment, watches from his office.
A character named Lloyd is overseeing the installation. Taking a smoke break, Lloyd asks Don if advertising really works.
Don says, “It helps if you have a good product.”
Boom. All advertising wisdom and marketing strategy must ultimately be filtered through this one non-negotiable. You’ve gotta have a good product, a quality thing to sell.
This is as true for books as it is for Brylcreem. You can pour

all the time and money you want into getting the word out, but that only gets you an introduction. To succeed people have to like your product enough to become a repeat customer.

So how do you know when you have a quality book? Here’s one way:
Find five beta readers, one of them a professional editor whom you pay. Do a little research and put in a little effort, and you’ll get a quality group together.
Four out of the five beta readers need to tell you they really liked your book. They don’t have to love it, though that would be the best result. But they have to more than like it. They have to really like it.
These are your scientific categories:
1. Loved it!
2. Really liked it!
3. Liked it.
4. Only okay.
5. Dreadful.
6. Don’t ever ask me to read anything of yours again.
7. I am getting a restraining order against you.
Your book needs to score a 1 or a 2 from 4 out of the 5 beta readers, and the professional editor must be one of the four.
Is that a high standard? You bet it is. Because if you want to be a name brand and not the generic, that’s where you need to aim.
The second thing Don says to Lloyd is, “What makes your product unique?” This is only slightly less important than the first lesson. You might be able to build a readership with well-written genre pieces that are, nevertheless, derivative. But to truly break out you need to give your writing something more.
What is that thing? It’s you. It’s your voice giving your story everything you’ve got. It’s your imagination churning to make your concept just a little fresher. It’s you going beyond the first thing that jumps into your mind. In every scene you are not settling for what’s obvious.
One exercise for coaxing out your voice is the page-long sentence. Every now and then in your WIP choose a single emotional moment. Then write one run-on sentence until it fills a page. Let your imagination go wild. Most of this you won’t use. But you will find, usually toward the middle or end of this exercise, some narrative gold. This is the stuff that sets you apart.
The third marketing lesson from Mad Men is this: don’t get drunk. Drunk Don Draper is not charming, artful or clever.
The fourth marketing lesson comes from a Don Draper pearl of wisdom: “The day you sign a client is the day you start losing them.” In advertising, the client demands to be dazzled. They need to believe the agency is going to work magic for them.
It’s the same with readers. They’ve given you a chance, they’ve paid their money and they’ve got your book. Will they love it? Make them love it. Then make them love the next one, and the next. It’s a high bar, as I mentioned, but it’s the only one worth stretching for. True, you’re not always going to make it, but you’ll be a better writer for the effort.
The final marketing lesson is this: It helps if your author photo looks like Don Draper. Lacking that, remember that people do form an opinion of you based on your public persona. Don’t just fling yourself wildly into social media madness. Be professional, courteous and positive. Make people glad when they read something from you, be it book, blog, update or tweet. Take the long view. Your career is a marathon and intemperate remarks can become pebbles in your shoes.
Brylcreem had one of the most famous ad lines in history: “A little dab’ll do ya.” 
Try a little dab of advertising wisdom and see if it doesn’t help your writing career.

So do you think about your books as part art, part craft and part product? Don’t you think you should? 

Marketing Lessons from Mad Men

Posted on by

@jamesscottbell


On a recent episode of Mad Men, “The Monolith,” a huge IBM computer is being installed in the offices of Sterling Cooper & Partners. Don Draper, reduced to hack work as some sort of vindictive punishment, watches from his office.
A character named Lloyd is overseeing the installation. Taking a smoke break, Lloyd asks Don if advertising really works.
Don says, “It helps if you have a good product.”
Boom. All advertising wisdom and marketing strategy must ultimately be filtered through this one non-negotiable. You’ve gotta have a good product, a quality thing to sell.
This is as true for books as it is for Brylcreem. You can pour

all the time and money you want into getting the word out, but that only gets you an introduction. To succeed people have to like your product enough to become a repeat customer, this is why businesses that believe they have a good product to offer customers spend so much money on marketing campaigns from the likes of IRN, LLC and other marketing agencies.

So how do you know when you have a quality book? Here’s one way:
Find five beta readers, one of them a professional editor whom you pay. Do a little research and put in a little effort, and you’ll get a quality group together.
Four out of the five beta readers need to tell you they really liked your book. They don’t have to love it, though that would be the best result. But they have to more than like it. They have to really like it.
These are your scientific categories:
1. Loved it!
2. Really liked it!
3. Liked it.
4. Only okay.
5. Dreadful.
6. Don’t ever ask me to read anything of yours again.
7. I am getting a restraining order against you.
Your book needs to score a 1 or a 2 from 4 out of the 5 beta readers, and the professional editor must be one of the four.
Is that a high standard? You bet it is. Because if you want to be a name brand and not the generic, that’s where you need to aim.
The second thing Don says to Lloyd is, “What makes your product unique?” This is only slightly less important than the first lesson. You might be able to build a readership with well-written genre pieces that are, nevertheless, derivative. But to truly break out you need to give your writing something more.
What is that thing? It’s you. It’s your voice giving your story everything you’ve got. It’s your imagination churning to make your concept just a little fresher. It’s you going beyond the first thing that jumps into your mind. In every scene you are not settling for what’s obvious.
One exercise for coaxing out your voice is the page-long sentence. Every now and then in your WIP choose a single emotional moment. Then write one run-on sentence until it fills a page. Let your imagination go wild. Most of this you won’t use. But you will find, usually toward the middle or end of this exercise, some narrative gold. This is the stuff that sets you apart.
The third marketing lesson from Mad Men is this: don’t get drunk. Drunk Don Draper is not charming, artful or clever.
The fourth marketing lesson comes from a Don Draper pearl of wisdom: “The day you sign a client is the day you start losing them.” In advertising, the client demands to be dazzled. They need to believe the agency is going to work magic for them.
It’s the same with readers. They’ve given you a chance, they’ve paid their money and they’ve got your book. Will they love it? Make them love it. Then make them love the next one, and the next. It’s a high bar, as I mentioned, but it’s the only one worth stretching for. True, you’re not always going to make it, but you’ll be a better writer for the effort.
The final marketing lesson is this: It helps if your author photo looks like Don Draper. Lacking that, remember that people do form an opinion of you based on your public persona. Don’t just fling yourself wildly into social media madness. Be professional, courteous and positive. Make people glad when they read something from you, be it book, blog, update or tweet. Take the long view. Your career is a marathon and intemperate remarks can become pebbles in your shoes.
Brylcreem had one of the most famous ad lines in history: “A little dab’ll do ya.” 
Try a little dab of advertising wisdom and see if it doesn’t help your writing career.

So do you think about your books as part art, part craft and part product? Don’t you think you should? 

Getting Inside the Mind of a Killer

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One of the skills a thriller writer needs to master is getting inside the head of the villain. This can be hard to do if you’re not a villain yourself. I’ve never killed anyone or ordered an execution. I’ve never tortured an enemy or smuggled drugs across a border or hacked national-security secrets out of a Defense Department computer. The challenge isn’t describing how to do these things; you can read manuals to learn how to hack a computer, and there have been excellent newspaper stories detailing the mechanics of smuggling. (And if you want to learn how to torture someone, just read a book on the CIA’s recent history.) No, the problem is describing the why. Why is the villain doing all these awful things? Does he/she have a reason or an excuse? A traumatic childhood? A thirst for power or riches or revenge? A misguided idealism? Or just plain old psychopathic insanity?

Without a thorough understanding of your villain’s motives, you run the risk of defaulting to the Snidely Whiplash cliché, the evildoer who cackles and twirls the ends of his mustache as he reveals his foul plans. But how can you achieve this understanding without descending into villainy yourself? You have to employ your imagination, sure, but what can you use as a real-world guide?

One strategy is to read the memoirs of famous villains. Mein Kampf is a good example. The manifesto of the Unabomber is another. It’s definitely not pleasant reading, but it can be instructive. You learn that evil really does exist. And that we should take hateful people seriously and never underestimate them.

This past week, as a result of the horrible murders in Isla Vista, California, we have another manifesto to add to this sad genre. The 22-year-old berserker, Elliot Rodger (who killed himself after stabbing three people in his apartment and fatally shooting three more on a rampage across the college town), wrote a 140-page memoir titled “My Twisted World” and e-mailed it to two dozen people before he went on his spree. After reading about the killings in the New York Times, I clicked on the link to Rodger’s memoir and spent the next hour perusing it. Here are the things I learned about this kid’s particular strain of banal evil:

1) He was a pathetic creature full of grievances, both large and petty. One of his earliest memories was getting upset at his three-year-old birthday party because another kid got the first slice of cake. His background wasn’t extremely privileged, but he had some contact with the spoiled-brat Hollywood world, and its screwed-up values infected his mind. He expected everything to fall into his lap and threw tantrums when it didn’t happen. He played computer games for hours at a time and failed at school. He became obsessed with playing the lottery and freaked out when he didn’t win. And he grew enraged at all women because none of them would have sex with him. This was his primary grievance, the one he repeated ad nauseumthroughout the manifesto. He was an “unkissed virgin” and he deserved better. It drove him mad to know that other people were having sex and he wasn’t. So he decided to take revenge.

2) Were there any mitigating circumstances? He was bullied in school. His parents divorced, and he had conflicts with his stepmother. And yet I got the sense that he was the main cause of his own misery. He wasn’t liked because he wasn’t likeable. It’s a vicious circle, I suppose.


3) I was shocked at how openly racist this kid was. He was a Eurasian obsessed with “hot blonde girls” and he shows vile scorn for any Asian, black or Latino man who has the nerve to date a white woman. I know there are millions of other racists who share these attitudes, but it’s rare to see them expressed in print like this. The newspaper reports didn’t emphasize this aspect of his personality, which seemed surprising given the fact that three of Rodger’s victims were his two Asian roommates and their Asian friend. In the manifesto, Rodger calls his roommates “repulsive.”


4) The kid was a world-class narcissist. Just listen to him: “Humanity has never accepted me among them, and now I know why. I am more than human. I am superior to them all. I am Elliot Rodger… Magnificent, glorious, supreme, eminent… Divine! I am the closest thing there is to a living god. Humanity is a disgusting, depraved, and evil species. It is my purpose to punish them all. I will purify the world of everything that is wrong with it. On the Day of Retribution, I will truly be a powerful god, punishing everyone I deem to be impure and depraved.” It’s hard to take this stuff seriously, right? And yet the kid kept his promise. He had his Day of Retribution.

No, it’s definitely not pleasant reading. But texts like this are windows on the world of evil, and getting a good view of the Adversary can be useful for both fiction and life.

Getting Inside the Mind of a Killer

Posted on by

One of the skills a thriller writer needs to master is getting inside the head of the villain. This can be hard to do if you’re not a villain yourself. I’ve never killed anyone or ordered an execution. I’ve never tortured an enemy or smuggled drugs across a border or hacked national-security secrets out of a Defense Department computer. The challenge isn’t describing how to do these things; you can read manuals to learn how to hack a computer, and there have been excellent newspaper stories detailing the mechanics of smuggling. (And if you want to learn how to torture someone, just read a book on the CIA’s recent history.) No, the problem is describing the why. Why is the villain doing all these awful things? Does he/she have a reason or an excuse? A traumatic childhood? A thirst for power or riches or revenge? A misguided idealism? Or just plain old psychopathic insanity?

Without a thorough understanding of your villain’s motives, you run the risk of defaulting to the Snidely Whiplash cliché, the evildoer who cackles and twirls the ends of his mustache as he reveals his foul plans. But how can you achieve this understanding without descending into villainy yourself? You have to employ your imagination, sure, but what can you use as a real-world guide?

One strategy is to read the memoirs of famous villains. Mein Kampf is a good example. The manifesto of the Unabomber is another. It’s definitely not pleasant reading, but it can be instructive. You learn that evil really does exist. And that we should take hateful people seriously and never underestimate them.

This past week, as a result of the horrible murders in Isla Vista, California, we have another manifesto to add to this sad genre. The 22-year-old berserker, Elliot Rodger (who killed himself after stabbing three people in his apartment and fatally shooting three more on a rampage across the college town), wrote a 140-page memoir titled “My Twisted World” and e-mailed it to two dozen people before he went on his spree. After reading about the killings in the New York Times, I clicked on the link to Rodger’s memoir and spent the next hour perusing it. Here are the things I learned about this kid’s particular strain of banal evil:

1) He was a pathetic creature full of grievances, both large and petty. One of his earliest memories was getting upset at his three-year-old birthday party because another kid got the first slice of cake. His background wasn’t extremely privileged, but he had some contact with the spoiled-brat Hollywood world, and its screwed-up values infected his mind. He expected everything to fall into his lap and threw tantrums when it didn’t happen. He played computer games for hours at a time and failed at school. He became obsessed with playing the lottery and freaked out when he didn’t win. And he grew enraged at all women because none of them would have sex with him. This was his primary grievance, the one he repeated ad nauseumthroughout the manifesto. He was an “unkissed virgin” and he deserved better. It drove him mad to know that other people were having sex and he wasn’t. So he decided to take revenge.

2) Were there any mitigating circumstances? He was bullied in school. His parents divorced, and he had conflicts with his stepmother. And yet I got the sense that he was the main cause of his own misery. He wasn’t liked because he wasn’t likeable. It’s a vicious circle, I suppose.


3) I was shocked at how openly racist this kid was. He was a Eurasian obsessed with “hot blonde girls” and he shows vile scorn for any Asian, black or Latino man who has the nerve to date a white woman. I know there are millions of other racists who share these attitudes, but it’s rare to see them expressed in print like this. The newspaper reports didn’t emphasize this aspect of his personality, which seemed surprising given the fact that three of Rodger’s victims were his two Asian roommates and their Asian friend. In the manifesto, Rodger calls his roommates “repulsive.”


4) The kid was a world-class narcissist. Just listen to him: “Humanity has never accepted me among them, and now I know why. I am more than human. I am superior to them all. I am Elliot Rodger… Magnificent, glorious, supreme, eminent… Divine! I am the closest thing there is to a living god. Humanity is a disgusting, depraved, and evil species. It is my purpose to punish them all. I will purify the world of everything that is wrong with it. On the Day of Retribution, I will truly be a powerful god, punishing everyone I deem to be impure and depraved.” It’s hard to take this stuff seriously, right? And yet the kid kept his promise. He had his Day of Retribution.

No, it’s definitely not pleasant reading. But texts like this are windows on the world of evil, and getting a good view of the Adversary can be useful for both fiction and life.

For the Love of Horror & History

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Jordan Dane
@JordanDane


On Monday, my lovely TKZ blogmate Clare Langley-Hawthorne had a post called “Losing the Past” where she discussed the state of the historical. I must admit I’ve been intimidated from trying to write an historical. The research seemed daunting, not to mention the world building and dialogue challenges, but I’ve always loved classic literature set in a historical time period made into movies, like Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, David Copperfield, and Jane Eyre. There is something very compelling about taking a peek into the past to see the cultures, classes, location settings, and period clothing. Whether in a book or on screen, it’s a beautiful escape to a different time and place. Historicals aren’t dying out, they’ve become the new black if they’re reimagined into something fresh.


Lately I’ve become enthralled by TV period pieces, especially if the writing and storytelling are solid and the visuals and world building are memorable. Shows that have pulled me in are: Fox’s Sleepy Hollow, BBC’s Ripper Street, and Showtime’s Penny Dreadful. I watch other shows for different elements towards my writing, but these shows have influenced me into crossing the line of my comfort zone. I firmly believe, for me, that I must seek out projects to push my perceived limits. I think I learn more about myself when I do it. The only limit to any writer is the limit of their own imagination.


So when I was recently asked to contribute to a time travel anthology (with an amazing group of authors), I accepted with great enthusiasm (even though it scared me). I accepted the challenge because of my love for these three shows and my desire to push my writer limits. I wanted to share these feature film quality shows with you to see if they stir your imaginings as writers for inventive plots, attention to detail on world building and research, and the fearlessness of the creative mind to combine ideas that may not connect easily.


Icabod with skullSLEEPY HOLLOW – The motto at Sleepy Hollow these days is “Embrace the Ridiculous.” Show creators and the talented writers have thrown together very unlikely elements to create what’s been called WTF TV. On paper, the pitch for the show would’ve sounded absurd – Washington Irving adaptations of Headless Horseman and Rip Van Winkle, mixed with Revelations in the Bible and the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse and historical conspiracies from the Revolutionary War. Icabod Crane is reimagined as a Revolutionary War hero and Revelations “witness” who arises from his secret grave at the same time as the Headless Horseman (aka Death) starts a killing rampage in the quiet town of Sleepy Hollow. The battle of good versus evil has found a home. Crazy, yet it works. The added touch of humor to this “man out of time” story makes Icabod a very endearing character. There’s tongue in cheek humor and the show is notably very ethnically blended. Sleepy Hollow is making history in more ways than its flashbacks.


Ripper SettingRIPPER STREET is set in Victorian London right after Jack the Ripper left his mark. Fear runs high that the monster will return. The shows are tightly written, very emotional, and there is great sensitivity to social issues of the time that reflect on those same issues today. Another thing I love about Ripper Street is the portrayal of early forensics and crime scene analysis. Many scenes are laughable (ie surgical operations done in the open without sterilization or proper care for infection) yet accurate for the time period. Costumes are stunning and the street settings are vivid with great care for detail.


Penny Dreadful BooksPENNY DREADFUL – The show title of Penny Dreadful comes from history, the name given to paper pamphlets filled with terrifying stories. Such stories (also known as Penny Blood, Penny Awful, & Penny Horrible) plus stage performances of the genre were the rage in London during the Victorian time period. They were printed on cheap pulp paper and aimed at working class adolescents. Fear abounded and made fertile ground for when Jack the Ripper wreaked havoc on the streets.


Cast 1Penny Dreadful is an homage to literary horror and classic monsters of the time: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, etc. What I love about Penny Dreadful is the intense world building in every scene. The details of lush sets and gorgeous costuming and the use of practical literary monsters (not animated computer generate imagery). The horror is visceral.

Dr VicHere is Dr Victor Frankenstein slaving over his “creature” in secret. The scene where Victor lays eyes on his living creature (and the creature sees his creator for the first time) is an unforgettable moment where the viewer holds a breath to watch the touching intimacy. Everything about this show speaks to me of good writing, solid storytelling, and memorable characters in classic conflict. Visually stunning. It’s a feast for the eyes, mind, and heart.


For Discussion: What shows stir your writer imaginings? Have they ever influenced you to write a genre you’ve never tried before?