{"id":4838,"date":"2014-06-22T07:00:18","date_gmt":"2014-06-22T06:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=4838"},"modified":"2014-06-22T07:00:18","modified_gmt":"2014-06-22T06:00:18","slug":"no-telling-tales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=4838","title":{"rendered":"No telling tales…No cheating!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jean<\/a>
Jean is a great speaker – delivering great advice with a dose of laughter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

This week, at the RNA London Chapter, my good friend and fabulous historical writer Jean Fullerton gave a writing workshop.<\/p>\n

I love going to writing workshops. It doesn’t matter how many books I have written – I believe there is always more to learn about writing – and who better to learn it from than someone whose books I admire.<\/p>\n

Her message was \u2013 do not cheat your readers.<\/p>\n

The topic under discussion was that oft repeated writing adage \u2013 show don\u2019t tell. We hear those words so often \u2013 it\u2019s sometimes easy to lose sight of what they really mean.<\/p>\n

The definition is not that hard\u2026.<\/p>\n

I could tell you\u2026 Alice is nervous.<\/p>\n

Or I could show you\u2026 Alice\u2019s palms are damp with sweat. She wipes them on her skirt, shifting her weight from one foot to the other as she stares at the door.<\/p>\n

In the latter example, I haven\u2019t told you that Alice is nervous. I have allowed the reader to make that discovery for themselves by interpreting what they were seeing.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s what Jean meant by not cheating the reader.<\/p>\n

Telling the reader something makes the reader passive. They do nothing but absorb the information. But showing them involves them in the story and in the scene. This gets the reader thinking \u2013 and suddenly they are emotionally involved. That\u2019s what they are looking for \u2013 a story and characters that they can care about.<\/p>\n

Jean reminded us that dialogue is a great way of showing \u2013 and getting readers involved.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t tell me that\u2026 he was angry.<\/p>\n

Show me\u2026 \u201cDamn them all to hell!\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no need to add, he said angrily. The words themselves show that he\u2019s angry.<\/p>\n

Of course there are times when we do have to tell. When we take our readers to a place or a time or a world that they don\u2019t know, we will need to tell them a bit about it. Through description. Jean does this in her historical novels \u2013 but warns that we have to find a balance between telling people what they need to know about this place and time \u2013 and telling too much.<\/p>\n

This is something I am very aware of. Because my books are set in out-of-the-way places (you don\u2019t get more out-of-the-way than Antarctica), I have to tell the reader a bit about the place. But I try when I can to do this through the eyes of the characters.<\/p>\n

I can tell you it was several degrees below zero, with an added wind chill factor.<\/p>\n

Or I can show you Jenny hunched down inside her heavy jacket, her hands pushed deep into her pockets as her mind conjured up terrible visions of frostbite.<\/p>\n

Jean\u2019s very good advice was this \u2013 if you are going to tell \u2013 tell the setting. But always show the emotion. Because emotion is all about characters \u2013 and the characters are the key to the book.<\/p>\n

The discussion during the workshop was lively and a lot of fun\u2026.<\/p>\n

You can check out Jean’s books – and find lots of other great writing advice on Jean’s website \u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

I could tell you that my good friend Jean and I agreed that we are crazy women because we talk to imaginary people in our heads and write books about them.<\/p>\n

Or I could show you\u2026<\/p>\n

Jean (or me) seated at a desk, eyes glued to a computer screen, hands flashing over the keyboard. Lips move and in a voice too soft for anyone else in the room to hear\u2026 \u201cYes. Of course you love her. But you don\u2019t know how to tell her. What if\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  This week, at the RNA London Chapter, my good friend and fabulous historical writer Jean Fullerton gave a writing workshop. I love going to writing workshops. It doesn’t matter how many…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g6jm-1g2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}