God love my editor, the woman has the patience of a saint. She had to walk me through some of the most basic fundamentals of writing. As a first timer, my first manuscript contained a catalogue of rookie mistakes that needed to be corrected.
Aside for my penchant for the use of “ing” words, my biggest faux pas was overexplaining.
I absolutely have trust issues, and not necessarily about the reader. I was concerned that my writing failed to effectively convey what was in my head. To avoid any potential confusion I elucidated way more than I should have. I was so concerned that subtle clues, subtext, a play on words, or an important hint might be missed that I reverted to an early years educator role, reemphasizing and repeating beyond what was needed (there I am again with my “ing” words) to the point of potentially insulting my reader.
Show don’t tell is so simple in its concept yet without making a conscious effort to avoid it, I found myself consistently falling into the same trap. And that was not good.
Telling is explicit and descriptively monotonal. It states information directly, summarizes events, and is often devoid of emotion.
Showing on the other hand creates a more immersive experience. It takes a sensorial approach, engaging the readers senses by incorporating sight, sounds, smells, taste and touch. It details physiological responses to situations and allows for deeper character development.
Telling is like reading a travel guide. Showing is like taking the trip.
It is an imperative element in building reader-character connections. For example, you could write pages upon pages detailing a character’s traumatic past, but it is far more powerful for the reader to be exposed to their internal and external reactions as a result of prior experiences.
Explaining a novel is different from telling a story. Explaining prevents any dramatic elements from unfolding organically, it slows the pace and denies the reader the opportunity to discover independently.
As well as disrupting the pace, overexplaining steals away the readers ability to anticipate and wonder. Nobody wants to be told why a character is doing something, we want to see them do it for ourselves.
Being told why takes away the mystery. If the writer is constantly summarizing, any conflict is over before the reader gets a chance to worry about what it all means. At any point the reader should have questions that they want to have answered, that is one of the driving forces for them to continue turning the pages.
It takes time for suspense and tension to build. And these are two key modes of hooking readers.
How is anyone supposed to finish a book, let alone enjoy it, if they are unable to connect to the characters and story? No one knows what is going to happen next in real life. The characters in a story shouldn’t know what is about to happen, and neither should the reader.
Reiteration, repetition, and elaboration piss readers off. An important point to remember is that what they want supersedes what you want.
When it comes to differentiating between what you want the reader to know and what they need to know, it isn’t easy. I’ll be honest, I was a tad miffed when I realized that the backstories I had carefully constructed for my main characters had no place in my novel. I’d done all that work and for what?
I learned quickly that unfortunately that’s just part and parcel of creating fiction. You as the writer need to build and develop a character so that you can understand them, because when you’re writing you have to become them, but to your reader the full backstory is unnecessary, and its inclusion often breaks the pace and focus of the storyline.
That’s not to say a character’s background and experiences are irrelevant. It is just that the mode used to portray them needs to be subtle and woven into the current day events. In short, revealing the past through the present.
For example, Noah had a decorated history as a fighter pilot. He dedicated his life to a cause only to have the ones he pledged loyalty to turn against him. This led to his persecution, but more importantly it caused long-term psychological damage which stifled his ability to form independent judgement, allowing him to be exploited and manipulated. Explaining these facts to the reader is telling, and somewhat boring.
Alternatively, by illustrating character flaws through interactions and events such as his unwavering loyalty despite the loss of everything he holds dear, his willingness to self-sacrifice, his struggle with conflicted feelings and a disproportional amount of fear when faced with a breakdown in relationships, the reader starts to identify a pattern and is then free to draw their own conclusions. By showing the effect, the reader figures out the cause independently and a higher level of engagement is achieved. Information about his past is still woven into the storyline, but in drips and always associated to something unfolding in the present.
Being told about an experience that happened in the past is not as powerful as feeling its effects in the present. And the more your reader cares about your character, the more they’ll want to read about them.
In summary, you have to put your faith in the reader’s ability to read between the lines, to allow their relationship to the story and all its characters to develop organically, and to trust in your ability to do the only thing you desire; to tell a tale.