Don't Show, Don't Tell, Make

I love Dave Farland’s Daily Kick in the Pants. Those of you who are writers, if you haven’t signed up to receive the posts, do it. Every entry is great. I learn something new every time I read his essays.

The post on July 11^th was about Showing, Telling and Making. His premise is that young writers are always given the advice to ‘show, don’t tell’ when vague descriptions are written.

He says this kicks writers into the mode of writing cinematically as if one were looking through the eyes of the camera. He says that when we do this, we lose sight of the viewpoint character. We are writing about actions only so we don’t get their feelings.

He proposes that we need to bring our manuscripts to life by bringing the reader into the illusion we have created—by making the experience real for the reader—with smells and tastes and feelings in the scene. Can we write so that the reader is experiencing the illusion right along with the protagonist?

So we as writers don’t need to show; we don’t need to tell’ we need to make the experience real for the reader.

My picture book, Love, Hugs, and Hope When Scary Things Happen will be out in hard copy September 1^st, 2013.

My women’s self help book, Becoming Free, A Woman’s Guide to Internal Strength, comes out for the Nook, Kindle and iPad September 1^st, 2-13.