Writing Tip #3: Show, don't tell

Hi all. Thought I better get another writing tip up, as I'm back on a roll with my next collection of ghost stories. Cleaned out a bunch of mental constipation in regards to this book, and my mojo is back to work. Anyway, thought I'd go over an obtuse concept in the world of writing.

First question: What's the difference between a Tom Clancy novel and an instruction manual on how to assemble your kid's new swing set? The instruction manual is only ten pages long.

No, I kid. I do like Clancy a lot. He tells some great stories. If he'd only learn to edit his fiction pieces down to where they're dealing with the story, not every little technical detail. King suffers from this problem in his longer works as well. He's probably the greatest short story writer in the history of horror, but give him a book length manuscript, and he gets wordy. Clancy writes a lot of historical books now, and that's great, because it gives him room to tell the story with all the details that history and tech geeks like myself love. What I don't love is all those details in a piece of fiction I'm reading.

Let me use and example of Clancy to illustrate what I'm talking about. In "Clear and Present Danger," the need a satellite connection to establish communication between Washington and the agents in the field doing the wet work. Now today, we'd simply use encrypted cell phones and bounce the signal off any communications satellite. Then, it was radio connection. Clancy went through paragraph after paragraph explaining this. He told about the technology behind the radio, the satellite itself, a long description of the launch and how the thing opened up and established and orbit. How it maintained an orbit. How the Soviets developed the technology and we stole it. For over a page, it read like a tech manual. Again, nothing wrong with that, if you're writing a tech manual. In the movie, "A Clear and Present Danger," the scene of the satellite launch lasted about 30 seconds in the film.

Now, a fix for that, to me, would be a scene with the troops on the ground. The communications specialist makes a call, it goes through and he's connected with Washington. He hands the phone to his commander, and says something like: "The link's up now, Sir." Quick, easy, and it moves the story along.

What you want to do is concentrate on what details move the story forward? What details does the reader need to complete the picture? A lot of things are back story. We don't need a biography of every character, and how Bill's mother leaving for another woman when he was five affected his relationship with girls. What we need are small details that show the same thing. Maybe Bill has a major hate for lesbians, and it comes out as he's walking down the quad with his girlfriend and they pass a gay couple. Maybe he has major trust issues that come out when he accuses his girlfriend of running around on him when she shows up ten minutes late for a date. What details do you need, and how do you present them? It moves things forward and makes the writing smoother.

If you really need to have a lot of back story with a character, do a character biography in a separate file.

Another thing about showing, not telling, is character description. If you read the short story I posted here, I don't give you many details about the characters. Only those that move things along. I don't tell you about Danny's life before this event, other than to mention he worked third shift in a warehouse. I don't give much physical description either. I believe that to do so, comes off as spoon feeding the reader. We all know people that fit this type. If I tell you what Dan looks like, it interferes with what your image of Dan is.

Look at Jennifer. I don't tell you much about her, except she has soft hands, lives in one of the big houses back in the woods, and was wearing running togs when we first meet her. I wanted her to come across as a bit naive and pampered. That adds to the image when she introduces herself as Jennifer, not Jen, not Jenny, but the full, formal name. That brief description of her, ought to bring up an image of a young girl who's lived a pretty protected life. You can fill in the other details as you go along.

Hope this helps. Clean up your writing. Show us, don't tell us. You don't want your work to be confused with a technical manual.

Writing Tip #1

Lets cover the first thing we all hear, first time we try to write something: Write what you know.

Now, this is good information, and a good start for your junior high composition project. It works well. It gets you familiar with putting your thoughts together in a way that isn't daunting. the problem is, what do we do when we want to get beyond what we know? If we're honest, most of us lead pretty boring lives. What to do then? At that point, you start doing research.

When I went to WIU, I was a History Education Major, a Biology Education minor, and I wrote for the school paper. I learned how to do research. There are huge quantities of legitmate material and facts out there. Millions of sources on the internet alone. You don't have to become an expert in a give field, just enough to fill in details of your charectors lives, or the plot of the book. If you want to do a story about dog grooming in outer space, first you need to know about how the pro groomers do it. There are probably a number of them in your town. Talk to them first hand on a day they're slow. First thing is to explain why you need the info, and pick their brains about it. You may even be able to find out thier thoughts of grooming in space. Would zero gravety affect the dog? Where would the loose hair go? They probably have never thought of it before, but you'd probably get some gems for your story.

A second hand example. A friend of mine knew the county coroner of a small downstate county. he was writing a pretty vicious crime story, and needed to know the affects of a washing machine on a severed head. He was able to procure such an item, and with the coroner's supervision, ran the head through a wash cycled on an industrial washer. The results weren't pretty, but it gave the story an authentcity it wouldn't have had any other way.

Do you need to stuff a head in a washing machine? Probably not, but there are experts in your area that often would love to talk about their jobs. Police have great insights not only into their world, but criminal minds as well. One of the girls I dated in high school had a narc cop for a father. He had some great stories, and in hindsight, I wished I'd written some down.

One important thing to remember, don't just show up unannounced. Call and make an appointment to talk to someone. Explain what you're looking for, and have questions ready ahead of time. I back up my notebook with a small recorder. It's an old reporter's habit, but a good one to get into.

If you don't have a lot of access to the internet, or need something unusual there isn't a lot of data on, you can still do research with hard copies. Go to the library, and go through the books. County courthouses are great for facts of births, deaths, marriages and property. In Illinois, Platt books are on record in courthouses. It shows property ownership in a give year, and the layout of the property. It also if accompained by a picture of the home. I'm talking 1800's here, early 1900's. If you want to know what an old Victorian house looked like in its glory days, that's a great way to find out.

The whole point of this? Do your research. Not many of us live exciting lives filled with adventure. Barry Eisler was a CIA spook. His experiance give his books great nuance. Trey Barker is a county deputy. His work has a lot of detail you don't find elsewere. We can't all live lives like that, but we can talk to other people who do, or find the stories they've left behind.

Good writing.