Mimi Barbour

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Part 4 – Facts from the RWA Convention

August 5, 2012 By Mimi Barbour 1 Comment

***
Another workshop I so enjoyed was called “It’s
Showtime!” by Janice Hardy. Just by the title alone, I have no doubt you
know what we covered. Yep – Show don’t Tell – a simple concept to some, but not
so simple to everyone.

After many workshops, how-to books and discussion with
other authors, I feel I have beaten this stubborn horse to death. And still
someone tells me a simple fact and makes the well-known light bulb dazzle me
with its brilliance.

Fact to remember – If you can physically act out
what your character is doing, then describe it – that’s show.

Example”

Tell: (no action) I reached over to pick up the cup.

Show: (action) I reached over and picked up the cup.

Or better yet …I picked up the cup. The old rule of
KISS works well. Unless the reaching over is important to the plot for some
reason, leave it out.

This information resonated with me. I often find
myself using to-verbs (infinitives) as shown in the example above. As soon as
the speaker mentioned this as a flag for telling, my stomach tightened. I
glanced around at the others in the room…who were all glancing around at the
others in the room. Seems like there were more than a few guilty culprits. (Being
a bit of a bitch, that did make me feel better….my bad!)

A few red flag words –
before, when, wondered, with, in, felt, sound of, tried to, could see, as,
considered, thought, realize….

 

Heck, that’s half my vocabulary. My dry tongue
glued itself to the top of my mouth. Panic creeped into my brain, squeezing the
tiny cells. Thoughts exploded. Suffering succotash! My full-length book will
end up as a novella!!!     

*** 

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Comments

  1. Kenra Daniels says

    August 12, 2012 at 3:05 pm

    Whew! Sooo glad to know I'm not the only one guilty!

    I always thought I was pretty decent about showing, until an agent remarked that my MS was heavy on telling. That forced me to re-analyze every word. Lo and behold, there were plenty of TOs, though I'd managed to avoid many of the others.

    Reply

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