Welcome to Show.
Don't Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vadori, where I teach you the tried
and true secrets to writing fiction nonfiction that are gonna wow your
readers broken down step by step.
We're gonna explore writing techniques.
I'm gonna show you a glimpse behind the scenes of successful writers' careers that
you wouldn't have access to otherwise.
And I'm also gonna coach writers live on their pages so that you can learn
and transform your own storytelling.
Whether you're just starting out, you're drafting your first book, you're
editing, or you're currently rewriting that book, or maybe even your 10th book,
this show's gonna help you unlock the writing skills that you didn't even
know you needed, but you definitely do.
I'm so looking forward to helping you get your amazing ideas from your mind onto
your pages in an exciting way for both you and your readers, so that you can
achieve your wildest writing dreams, and you're gonna also have some fun doing it.
Let's dive in.
Welcome to part three in my Deep Dive series of Show Don't Tell.
In part one, we talked about why show tell is important.
It's not just tired writing advice, how it actually works in the human brain.
And why you need to care about it.
We also reviewed some of the most typical advice that you get and how to
level it up, because here's the thing is show don't tell is writing advice and a
technique that you're gonna be working on for your entire writing career.
And I hope you're as excited about that as I am, because I promise you,
if you start to really get it and understand it, you're gonna have a
lot of fun with it In episode two.
We'll link to all of these in the show notes.
In episode two, we went through some next level techniques and some things
that you've probably never heard before.
Some places where you can introduce, showing into your writing and really
make a huge difference for your reader, drawing them in and making
them experience firsthand what it's like to be a character in your story.
So this is episode three, and we're out of showing techniques that I used to teach.
But here's the thing.
I'm gonna show you how to tell.
Because there comes a point in every writer's career when I've been working
with them and they keep getting this information like, show don't tell.
Show don't tell.
And they think, oh, okay.
And then there comes a point in time where I'm like, Hey, maybe don't show here.
This is a place where you could be telling.
And they say, but Susie, like good telling me that they need to show
more and all of a sudden, right.
It is a balance.
It is absolutely a balance.
And it is okay to tell sometimes.
And it's in fact preferable to tell sometimes.
So we've talked a little bit about in the prior episodes, about the fact
that you're the God of your own story.
You're the director of this movie that is going to play in reader's minds.
And so you've got your video camera and you can zoom in if you're
gonna show, and you can listen and you can hear what they're saying.
And you can be in their bodies and you can do all of those things or can zoom
out and show us the bondages of their life going by where we've got a little bit of
music, we've got a little bit of feeling.
We're not really zooming in and we're not seeing all of the details.
Okay.
There are moments when you want to do that.
We're gonna go through some of the places where it's perfectly acceptable
to actually tell in your writing.
So if you have, and you're the God of that video camera, and you can
decide, then I guess the question is, what do you want your readers to know
and what do you think is really cool about your story and what's important?
That's totally up to you.
This one is particularly important if you're writing memoir.
It's a really good example, and this same thing applies to fiction,
but in memoir, we have all these events that happened in your life.
Memoir is basically telling your own biography in the narrative format.
It ends up reading more like a novel, but they're real events
that happen in your life.
So how do you decide which ones get a scene or a chapter
and which ones you skip?
Remember, writing a memoir is not an all access pass into everything
that happened in your entire life.
People do not get to see it all, nor should they, 'cause
they'll be born to tears.
We don't want a cradle to grave.
I was born on this day and I took my first steps on this day.
No, we're showing a particular journey that you went through.
That's why people can write more than one memoir because you've been changed
which journey you're showing, and I'm sure that you've gone through different
growth journeys in your entire life.
Right.
So if you're looking at a memoir, then you take your video camera and you can
decide which pieces are important to show that character change that I went
through, or that change that I went through from the beginning to the end.
What are the moments I need to zoom in on and what are the note moments
that I can pull back and summarize?
Okay.
The same thing happens in a novel.
If you're wondering.
When to use that zoom lens and go right in and show us all of the
dialogue or when to summarize.
We talked about X, Y, and Z. When are you gonna do that?
I. That is totally up to you.
And in fact, I get this a lot, especially when we're working on showing is writers
will send me a chapter and they've zoomed in on a conversation that is
completely inconsequential, and you'll hear things like, oh, I like your shoes.
Yeah, I like your shoes too.
And, oh, what did you do yesterday?
I did this yesterday and I hope that you're bored to me because
it's a very boring scene and it has nothing to do with.
It has nothing to do with anything.
So I would cut that and I wouldn't show that.
I might, if it's important.
And the first thing that you need to answer, it's the same thing when
you're looking at an info dump and fixing an info dump, which we talked
about in episode one of this series.
The first thing that you need to ask yourself is, does the reader
actually need this information at this particular moment in your book?
And if the answer is no, then cut it right.
If the answer is yes, but you've zoomed in in such excruciating detail, you've got a
five page dialogue scene where really all we learned was that the dog was named Rex.
Then maybe you can summarize it with a sentence or two and pass that.
We talked for over an hour and I learned that his dog was named Rex, right?
So you have a choice.
You can either use quotations and dialogue and zoom right in and show
me all of the moments that happen, or I can zoom out and summarize.
This is a great example.
If nothing else in that conversation is relevant and the reader doesn't
need it, let it and tell us.
A quick litmus test.
If it's important to the story and the reader needs it, zoom
in, let us experience it.
If it's not important, zoom out and skip it.
Okay, now I tease this next one a little bit in episode two, which is
that if you're recapping something that the reader already knows, you can
skip it or summarize it and tell it.
So the example that I used was, if you have already shown us this
amazing epic battle where your characters best friend dies in their
arms on the battlefield, right?
And we've been there and your reader's gone through this emotional arc and
has exhausted themselves emotionally.
And then your character goes the next day to the his best
friend's, widow's home, and recaps all of the battle and the glory.
Your reader's already been through that arc. Number one, we know all
of the information, but number two, we don't wanna go through the
emotional heartbreak of it again.
And writers will tell me, but the widow needs to know what happened.
Yes, that's true, but we don't need to go through that excruciating,
zoomed in shown detail again.
What you can do in that case is if you're recapping something that happens
offscreen or something that we've already witnessed, that the reader already has
that information, that's a great place to use your telling techniques, right?
So rather than showing us in three pages and re blow by below what
happened in the bloody battle and how that character died, you could do
it in a couple of sentences, right?
Harry died in my arms and he was well, and then have the widow sobbing.
I like the game, just kinda like cut to the chase, especially if it just happened.
This is actually one of the biggest ways to find word count in your book,
is to look at these recapping scenes.
They happen in many, many, many books.
I've seen them over and over and over again.
Your writing will always be stronger if you take them out, even if you've spent
all this beautiful showing technique.
You've made a detailed and heart wrenching, and the widow's reaction
is so amazing, your reader's gonna be like tired because they've already
gone through that emotional arc once.
They don't wanna see it again.
These are hard scenes for you to cut.
They're like killing your darlings, right?
These are hard scenes to cut, but I would highly, highly recommend
skipping ahead, telling us that your character recapped it, recapped the
battle to the widow, and then moving on and giving us new information.
The widow's reaction might be new information, right?
So we can still go there.
We can still have that conversation, or you could even
say it off screen the next day.
I went and told his widow what happened.
That could be it.
And then move on to the next.
If nothing consequential happens in that scene again, you've got your zoom lens.
You get to decide whether you're gonna zoom in or zoom out.
And I would argue that watching the widow react to it is not that
interesting because we've already reacted to it ourselves, and hopefully
we're appalled by what happened.
This is the most common way that this shows up where we're recapping something
that the reader already knows and we're doing it to tell another character.
But it does definitely show up in other ways.
It shows up when you're writing book two or book three, and you wanna
tell us something that happened before, or tell us something in their
backstory that we have already read.
If we have read those books.
So a way that you can do it.
Sometimes we need that information.
Again, ask yourself, does the reader need this information?
Is it even important?
If it isn't, skip it entirely.
If it is important, I would highly recommend telling us or
summarizing it rather than dropping into it and showing it again.
Number three, if you absolutely must include information that the reader
already has from a previous book or from a previous chapter, and there's
no way around it, make sure that you're giving us something new, please.
So that if you know for your readers that are paying attention, you're
rewarding them for paying attention.
You're not boring them by telling them the same thing over again.
You're giving them new information.
So, for example, if you were to say, if you were in that bloody battle scene,
and then you go and tell the widow, maybe we create some new information where the
widow says, you know, I'm pregnant and we were gonna have a child, and we, he
just found out right before the battle.
That's new information that makes it way more interesting.
So rather than just recapping, number one, do you need it?
Number two, can you summarize it in a faster way rather than
zooming in and making us experience the same thing over again?
And number three, if you have to do it.
How are you gonna make it interesting?
What are you gonna add to it?
What perspective can you give us?
What new information can you give us to reward those readers that are paying
attention so that it doesn't feel redundant and it doesn't feel like we're
just watching the same thing again?
Another place that summary or telling can be really, really useful is
in managing the passage of time in your book or in your story.
This is one of the hardest things for writers to learn, and when you first
start writing, many, many writers do this.
They'll drain the well dry and tell us everything that happens, right?
They're gonna tell us your character woke up and then they went to breakfast,
and then they did this, and then they did that, and then they did
this, and then they did that, right?
It's very natural.
One of the first things that a lot of coaches teach or editors teach
writing instructors is to create a timeline to make sure that it all
makes sense and hangs together.
And then we go along and we write on this timeline and we fill in all the blanks.
But the thing is, is that it could be really boring, and
again, we're giving equal weight.
Everything that happens, and that's not your job when you're outlining.
You might need to know all of that for yourself so that you
don't screw up and have them have breakfast after they've had supper.
Right?
We don't want that.
But at the same time, we also, this is your prerogative as the
director or the god of your story.
To figure out which pieces we actually get to see and to manage passing that time.
So there are a lot of things that happen during character's
day that we're going to assume.
So it's considered amateur writing to include because it's
the easiest way to open a scene.
That's why is to have a reader or to have a, have a character wake up at the
beginning of the scene is the first thing that writers do because it feels natural
and it feels easy, but it's so overdone and it's so cliche that you could just
start the scene after they woke up, and we will assume that they woke up today.
We'll also assume that they go to sleep at the end of the day, right?
So you can skip those boring things, but you could also pass time or pass
several days by recapping or telling.
And so we don't want every single event in this character's
life to have equal weight.
So when you're taking your zoom lens, you may need to use telling
to have that time pass quickly.
Now you can do some cool things with it.
I like to say to pass the time, if there's some kind of device that you
can use or something like a thread in your book that you can show that
time has passed, you might do it.
Some of the simple ones, and they might be a little cliche, is they're heck
growing longer or their fingernails were heck longer or however long it's been.
Those are some obvious ones, but it might also be, I had a. A writer who
used this, she'd been given three jars of food, of an ethnic type of food
from her dad, the character's dad, and those kind of dwindled along the
way, and showed the passage of time as, as those jars were no longer full,
and then she was on the last jar.
You can use an object to pass that time.
You could also use a growing relationship.
You could use somebody starting to date in the beginning of it,
but then they've been out a bunch of times and they're celebrating
their 20th anniversary together.
Obviously, time has passed, right?
You can find ways to pass the time I.
They don't have to always be zooming in on every single moment.
In fact, that makes it feel very boring.
It's not gonna light up your reader's brains.
They don't need to be in every moment of the day.
It is especially true if you are trying to show a period of time that is boring.
So literally you are showing us, or your idea in the scene is to
show that your character is bored.
Sometimes I see these scenes people are saying mundane things and nothing's
happening, and the clock is ticking, and all these wonderful things are
happening, and the writer says to me, yes, I'm showing that they're bored.
I said, well, that's great, except here's the problem with that is
you've actually done a terrific job.
Such a good job of showing me that your character is bored, that
I'm also bored when I'm reading it because I am your character.
And so that is a, it's a bit of a trap, so if you're trying to show that
somebody is bored, please don't let us sit in that for five or six pages.
You may be doing a great job of making us bored, but you're making us bored.
And honestly, I'm gonna skim ahead if I don't put the book down entirely.
So instead of doing that, that's a great place to tell us, right?
To pass that time to tell us that something was so bored that I watched
the paint peel off the walls, right?
So find a way to do it and it could be a telling way, and
that is totally perfectly fine.
Okay, now this next one, I'm gonna break one of my own rules that I
shared with you in episode one.
We talked in episode one about the really typical show tell advice, which
is, please don't name it motions.
But here's the thing, if my body is shaking.
It might be anger, it might be sadness, it might be overwhelm.
It could be a lot of different things.
So sometimes when we're naming emotions, you can use a show and a tell.
It's not always, it's not always wrong to leave the tell in there.
So I was shaking with anger.
I was shaking with emotion, I was shaking with sadness, I was
shaking with overwhelm, right?
You can name emotions in that state if you need to, if it's obvious.
What's happening?
You can leave the tell out if it isn't obvious, or the reader could possibly
be confused or misinterpret it.
Sometimes actions could mean more than one thing.
And when I'm shaking with anger and when I'm shaking with sadness, when I'm shaking
with overwhelm, those are very different.
So you're going to have moments where you can actually name an emotion.
So hopefully you've listened to this series all the way through and you
can go back to your notes and be like, except in the case of, but do make
sure that you're showing us as well.
So give us a visceral reaction.
That the character is going through that sort of demonstrates that.
But if it is too vague, you can also name that emotion to give
us a hint as to what's going on.
That same advice can bring true to anything that needs clarification.
So again, I. I don't want you to gimme an info dump on how the machine works.
That's five pages long, but you could give me a sentence or two, and that
might be a perfectly appropriate place to use your telling techniques
to tell us something that we need some information a bit or a snippet.
That we need.
So don't be afraid of telling.
It is a balance and you get to decide, at the end of the day, you get to decide,
and I get asked this question a lot, which is, but Susie, like, how do I know?
Well, you know, so take a look at your scenes and be like,
alright, is this important?
Is this pivotal?
Is this a milestone or should I be summarizing it?
Don't waste your time with all your beautiful showing techniques, describing
things that really don't matter.
Please don't let me sit in their boredom.
Please don't describe all of the things to another character.
All of these things are places where you wanna jump into Summary.
And use your telling techniques too.
So as you get more comfortable and now that you understand all
of these different places, you can make that decision, whether you're
telling or whether you're showing.
Showing is almost always going to be longer.
So watch your word count.
It doesn't have to be though, because showing can also mean that
you're getting really specific.
And sometimes using a list of two to three details can really get you into showing.
Without putting all those purple prose or flowery prose into your
book and slowing it right down.
Okay, so showing doesn't always have to be longer, but it often is.
Telling is almost always shorter if you can.
If something is feeling too long, something is slow, you have a pacing
issue, then be strategic about it.
But find places where you might be able to summarize or tell
if you can't cut it completely.
Okay, so if you need a little bit of practice adding back telling and it just
feels wrong, believe me, it can be done.
There are some places in your manuscript or in your book where you can add this
without being overwhelming to the reader.
So here's a few cheats for you.
The first place that you should be adding a little bit of extra
information, not necessarily telling.
It might be showing or slow it down a little bit is if something's
really important, slow it down.
You can give us a little bit more information on that.
Don't be afraid to do it.
The biggest mistake that I see is especially if you've got like magic
or politics or something that's really important to your book and you skip
over it and you don't because you're worried about the pacing and everything
else and it's been beaten into you.
Slow it down.
If it's important, it's okay.
Add an extra sentence or two.
Make it a whole paragraph.
Potentially be careful and be really sparing in where you do this.
Okay.
Second place that you can add a lot of information.
It depends on your genre, but for instance, different genre norms
or different types of books.
The readers have different levels of tolerance for more information, or
sometimes even for tele, for example, I.
If you are writing hard science fiction, if you are writing fantasy,
if you're writing science fiction, those readers actually are okay
with a little bit of telling.
It doesn't mean you can do four pages of world building, but you
could do a paragraph and you can sometimes slow it down and actually
explain the science, right?
I'd still try to break it up if it's a lot of information altogether.
Use your techniques that you learned in the earlier episodes for info
dumping and how to solve info dumping.
You can actually include a little bit more information in fantasy.
There's a little bit more leeway in world building and your magic.
In historical fiction, there's a little bit more leeway in terms of
what's interesting historically.
Again, we don't want three pages on all the weapons that were used in the
middle Ages, but maybe in quick detail or two, use your specificity where you
can, A quick detail or two is always a good thing, especially given the genre.
If it's something that people are interested in, find a
way to slip it in there.
When you are grounding a scene, so again, when you walk into a new
scene or chapter, we wanna ground our readers with four things, right?
We're gonna tell us whose head are we in, or what point of view
are you telling the story from?
Who is in the scene?
Where are we like the setting, and where are we in time and space relative
to the scene that we just left?
And so those four things that in the first two paragraphs of the scene are
a great place to add an extra detail or two that you can't figure out where else
to add it without it slowing the pace.
That is a great place 'cause your reader's brain is already resetting
and trying to get that information, so they're looking for it.
You can slow down for a beat there and give us a little bit of extra information.
An extra sentence or two there if you need to, is usually okay with your reader.
It won't slow the pace.
The last place that I highly recommend putting something that you
can't find another spot for is when we're first meeting a character.
Okay?
When we first meet a character, it's the same thing as grounding,
where we need to visualize them.
That's when we're gonna formulate an opinion.
We're gonna have a little bit of detail around that character.
So if there's a. Detail that you are trying to find a place to
stick it and it feels like it doesn't belong anywhere else.
That might be a good place to put it in context of how it relates to
the character that we're meeting.
I hope you've had an absolute blast.
Listening to all these techniques of show don't tell and that your next revision
or that you're chopping at the bit to go and find these in all of the places.
If you found something in your manuscript that was super helpful,
please drop it in the comments.
Let us know.
We love, love, love to hear from you.
And if you wanna brainstorm one page of your writing with me that
you know has a lot of telling in it and you wanna learn how to show.
I'd be more than happy to brainstorm it with you on the podcast.
Just click the link to apply to.
There'll be a link in the show notes.
Click the link to apply to get a free, totally free complimentary show.
Don't tell session with me on your page and we'll have a lot of fun doing it.
So I hope you do apply.
Thanks for tuning in to show.
No, tell Writing with me, Suzy Vadori.
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Keep going and I'm gonna be right here cheering you on.
See you again next week.