My Epiphany

Ever have one of those days? You've been plugging along, learning new things and trying to find ways to apply what you've learned with your writing. I had one last week, and it made me want to leap out of my seat. I don't know about you, but one of the things I struggle with is the whole Show, Don't Tell thing.

When I first heard about it, it was hard to get people to spell it out, define it for me. They'd quote me Anton Chekov's "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." And that's lovely. But as a new writer--who sucks at description--getting my hands around that imagery so I could apply it to my own little scenes was like expecting me to suddenly be able to handle the women's uneven parallel bars.

Um, no. 

Aware of my shortcoming, I've been diligently seeking to understand it, so I can use it. I talked about the Show, Don't Tell class taught by author/editor Annette Lyon at the 2011 Storymakers conference in my blog post here.

The R&R input has shown me some kinds of telling I hadn't recognized as such. I pulled out Annette's PowerPoint, and printed out some key slides to remind me of things--like senses. For example, she suggests that each page should have include at least one other sense besides sight.

So, last week I'm plugging away, evaluating the comments provided by the small publisher while going through my copy of The Emotion Thesaurus, published by the awesome ladies over at The Bookshelf Muse. 

Smack!

It was like someone had whacked me up side the head. I connected some dots! 

One of the things Annette says is to trust your audience, that when we "tell" them what to feel, we're insulting the reader's intelligence. Instead, let the reader experience it with the character.

Emotions. Duh. 

Sitting in front of me was a single paragraph that identified three emotions. Three! In one paragraph. Where I told the reader how to feel.

You guys are probably sitting there and thinking, "I already knew that."

Shut up. Because I didn't. 

So, I sought out a list of emotions and printed it out, adding it to those nifty slides. I've been busily evaluating each time I've used one. I ask myself if there's a way I can show it with body language. Since this project is in first person, I can show internally or externally.

I'm not necessarily good at the showing yet, but at least now I'm better armed at identifying the places that need attention. This is huge for me.

What about you? What's the hardest thing for you with the showing thing?

Finding It

I have struggled with a particular plot line in WIP #1 since I first conceived it. It wasn't that I should leave it out. It was trying to find a way to portray it so the readers could make of it what they want ... or not.

My oldest daughter was the first to raise the issue of how I'd shown it, and it's been sitting back there in the back of my mind like an itch I couldn't scratch. It was quite an issue of discussion when my critique group reviewed the full novel.

As I went through all the critiques and made changes, I attempted to fix it.

When I read those changes to hubby, I didn't like them.

Trying to find that balance was starting to grow from an unscratchable itch into a pebble in my shoe. The kind that's more than a minor irritation. The kind that's starting to hurt whenever you walk, that invades your dreams (nightmares).

And then my firstborn son (David) makes the same kind of observation the others have made but in a brutally honest (but hilarious) way that cuts right to the quick of the problem.

What did he notice?

I'd completely emasculated the hero / love interest.

Never once had I considered that. It certainly wasn't my intent. As I stewed (and chuckled) over his email (and our subsequent Skype chat) and thought about it in terms all the things my other critiquers had noted and suggested, I realized what I had to do.

Not mention it at all. Let the reader's imagination fill in the blanks.

Duh!

No more balancing act needed.

Does it sometimes take you a while to see the obvious? Or do you need the right pieces of the puzzle to come together before you can really see the picture?

Professional Critique Sessions & Lugheadedness

Source

I've had the opportunity on two occasions now to attend a live critiquing session. The first time was in what they called Bootcamp in May as part of the LDS Storymaker conference.

My second opportunity was Saturday. It was hosted by Precision Editing Group, LLC. My particular group included a fun assortment of people and was lead by Annette Lyon (see one of her posts here at the Precision blog). Annette is a writer as well as an editor, and she taught one of my favorite classes at Storymaker on Show, Don't Tell that I talked about here.

Since WIP #1 was what I took to the Storymaker session, I needed something else. But I've been focused only on that project for so long I wasn't sure what to do. I've been dying to work again on my SciFi, but it's got kind of a rough first couple of chapters, and I wasn't sure it would be a good fit for this particular group. Plus, I've learned so much over the past year that I'm sure it would take tons of work.

My other option was to submit the first pages of my NaNo project from last October. I hadn't worked on it in many months, and it also had a problem in that it began its life as a middle grade fantasy but is now going to be a young adult fantasy. I decided to go with this one, and I took two days of vacation time last week to work on it.

Oh. My. Heck!

I never realized how hard it was going to be to take that original project and move it into a different genre. I struggled almost from the beginning, clinging to the idea that I could just edit it.

Nope.

My breakthrough came, when I opened a new Word document and started fresh.

Duh!

A twelve-year-old main character just does things differently than a sixteen-year-old does, is interested in different things. I knew that. Honest. So why didn't I know that from the start?

• Do you ever find yourself stuck in one mindset, when the the one you need and will take you where you want to go sits quietly in a corner just waiting for you to take notice? 
• Do you have any tricks that have helped you to step back and realize you're not suffering from writers block so much as you're simply on the wrong track?