Editing your novel Part 3: How to show, instead of tell

If you’ve ever been on a creative writing course or read books on editing, at some point you’ve been urged to “show, don’t tell.” In other words, try to make your “scenes” come to life.

Look at this example:

Tracey was furious, too nervous to continue making dinner. She paced up and down the small living room. How do you dare! And with that fool, Maria, who had gone around the middle of the street. Well, she would show him that she was not someone to be taken lightly. She waits for him to come home.

He looked around frantically. On the sideboard was an ugly bronze statuette that her grandmother had given him. She imagined it buried deep in Charlie’s skull.

When she walked through the door, she was as bright and cheerful as ever. She gave him a strong kiss and asked him what they were going to eat. She told him to sit down, it wouldn’t be long. She wondered how she was going to approach him, what the infidels would say. In the end she just went out with her. He told her directly that he knew what he had been doing with Maria. But he just laughed. She said that Maria had reached out to him, that there was nothing to it.

Enraged, she grabbed the figurine and smashed it into the back of the neck. She saw the shock on her face and her mouth open in protest, but her rage took over. All she could see was the infamous red mist, and she brought her ornament down on her head over and over again until she froze.

Now the above gives you all the information you need. It is not badly written and the information contained in the piece is clear. It gives us the details we need and does it succinctly. In fact, if you read 19th-century novelists like George Eliot, Jane Austen, or Henry James, you’ll find vast expanses of text written like this (the writing will certainly be of better quality, surely it will be longer). out of breath) and that’s how fiction was written then. To be honest, I’d rather enjoy it. Done right, it engages the intellect and draws the reader into the author’s thoughts very effectively.

Look at this passage from Middlemarch.

His thought was not tinged with any solemnity or pathos about the old man lying in bed: such sentiments are easier to affect than to feel about an aged creature whose life is visibly no more than a remnant of vices. He had always seen the ugly side of Mr. Featherstone: he wasn’t proud of her and she was only useful to him. Craving for a soul that is always biting you should be left to the saints of the land, and Maria was not one of them.

But today’s readers expect more immediacy than that. They would expect Mary’s feelings to be shown, rather than just told about them. In fact, in general, today’s readers want to be much more emotionally engaged. This is true of all fiction, including novels and short stories, but it’s particularly true if you want to write genre fiction, such as crime, romantic fiction, spy novels, or historical romances.

Take a look at the first excerpt rewritten to show, rather than tell, what happened between Tracey and Charlie.

Tracey smoked. Her breathing hitched and she could hear her heartbeat.

‘That cheating pig’ she said to herself. And with that fool, Maria. How could she? What does she have that I don’t?

He tried to steady his breathing, which came in short, sharp gasps. She debated with herself how she was going to bring it up, put it in her face. She with one eye she looked at the bronze statuette on the sideboard.

‘Right,’ she said. Let’s see what you have to say for yourself. Let’s see how you feel about that buried in your skull.

He heard her footsteps in the hallway before he opened the door.

‘Hello honey,’ he said. ‘Good day?’

‘Oh, not bad, not bad.’

‘The dinner is ready?’

‘Not yet. It won’t be long.

She looked. ‘Something wrong? Your face looks a little smudged. Do you get sick from something?

He stood up and put his hands on her shoulders. Hold still for a minute, will you? Stop pacing up and down. What’s wrong?

She stared back at him, her eyes like hot coals. ‘Only a word. Mary.’

He looked, and his grip on her shoulder tightened.

‘What the hell are you…?’ she started her, but then she started laughing. She let go of her shoulders and flung herself down into the meat.

‘So you heard. So what old meddlesome old woman let you in on that?

‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is why?

‘Why do you think?’

‘How could you?’

‘Oh, give it up. She was all over me like a rash. she wanted it. I just forced. It didn’t mean anything.

He looked at her and offered his hand. Come on, trace. It’s not like you haven’t been around the block.

She reached out to him as if forgiving, but with her other hand she grabbed the figurine and flung it hard. Her blood spurted from her forehead from the wound she had given him.

“For God’s sake, Trace,” she managed to say. ‘Be careful.’

As she swung the ornament over and over, she muttered, ‘And don’t call me Trace.’

This time, the writer has explored the action and dramatized the incident to make it look like a scene in a play, showing the events as they are actually happening, thus drawing the reader in. The first two extracts are simply recorded events (the first) or recorded thoughts (the second).

Of course, there are times when ‘telling’ is actually the best vehicle for conveying something. The reader would be exhausted if every page contained drama and conflict. But there are other mechanisms, which when done in moderation, can also ensure that we are shown rather than told. In fact, here is another passage from Middlemarch that uses another technique, that of the internal monologue.

Lydgate, in fact, was already aware of being fascinated by a woman strikingly different from Miss Brooke; he did not suppose in the least that he had lost his balance, but he had said of that woman, ‘she is grace itself; she is perfectly beautiful and accomplished.’ The simple women considered like him the other severe facts of life, to be confronted with philosophy and investigated by science..

In my own novel, Hangman’s Wood, I use this technique to reveal both the fate of one of the hostages and the state of mind of one of the perpetrators without taking the reader through the incident.

He enjoyed begging more, he decided. That’s when you really felt the terror of her, when you got closer. She begged and cried so much that he got bored. meeventually he had to stop her babbling, stop her with a good slap to her fat white face. That had put some color in her cheek. She had hated the whiteness of it, she thought it looked like raw cake.

It had been easy, he chuckled, getting her into her car and then driving it out of the parking lot. He had checked where the CCTV cameras were the day before and had seen that they did not cover the entire site. And it was such a cloudy and rainy afternoon, and dark at four in the afternoon, that no one was going to pay much attention. He just wanted to get into their cars to get out of the weather. The security guy wasn’t doing much either. Staying dry, Graham supposed. So it had been a matter of minutes for two nice young men to offer to help her put her heavy purchases in the trunk of her car and then into the back.

The reason I chose this method was because at that time I also needed to think a lot about the pacing of the story. And the rhythm is something that I will analyze in the next article.