Control Your Tells, Don’t Give In To the Passive

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation

Control Your Tells, Don't Give In To the Passive

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Babe,

I know you don’t want to talk about showing vs telling any longer, our massive series, but it’s really really important. It’s sunk many a cool book idea, stopped others in its tracks. It is a chaos agent in the life of many a good writer. And there are so many damn facets to it. I could fill a year of podcasts talking about it.

Don’t worry, I won’t.

But I would be remiss—no, we would be remiss—if we didn’t give people a couple more hints about how to locate told prose in their own text.

Here’s the thing. Told prose happens at three major levels:

The sentence.
The paragraph.
The entire scene.

And there’s different ways of hunting it out for each type.

Let’s talk about the sentence level. At this level, telling language is usually explaining language. The question most writers have is how to find it. Janice Hardy wrote Understanding Show Don’t Tell and she has a lovely breakdown of this at the sentence level.

Motivational tells

Explains why a character is motivated to do something.

Words to look for: to, when, because

Example: Bud Godzilla ran over to Hammy the Hamster because he loved Hammy so much and wanted to hug him.

How to revise it: “I love you!” Bud Godzilla screamed, running to Hammy. “Let’s hug!”

Emotional tells

Explains that a feeling is happening, usually by saying the feeling itself.

Words to look for: Any emotion words; felt

Example: Bud Godzilla felt pretty darn happy to see Hammy.

How to revise it: Bud Godzilla’s heart pitter pattered. Hammy was here! Right here! With him!

Mental tells

Explains thoughts without being immersed in the thought itself.

Words to look for: realized, believed, hoped, wondered, thought

Example: Bud Godzilla believed that if he could just hug Hammy gently enough and maybe give him some pizza, Hammy would love him, too.

How to revise it: He’d hug Hammy gently. Maybe give him some pizza. Then, Hammy would love him, too.

Stage direction tells

Explains stuff before it happens or is just a little too detailed about what’s happening.

Words to look for: by, since, before, after, when.

Example #1: Before Bud Godzilla could hug Hammy, Hammy coughed up phlegm all over the floor.

How to revise it: Hammy’s body heaved, shaking. “Bud! Don’t come closer!”

Bud stepped forward, arms open. “But, what’s—”

Phlegm spewed out of Hammy’s mouth. “Told you. Zombie bit me. Two hours ago.”

Example #2: Bud Godzilla sat in the car while Hammy got out of it. Hammy shut the door behind him, walked around the front of the car, hit the key fob to unlock Godzilla’s door, then reached out his hand and pressed the door handle, pulling it up and also pulling the door toward him so that it would open and Godzilla could get out.

How to revise it: Hammy and Bud got out of the damn car. I have no idea how Godzilla fit in it or how Hammy touched the wheel but whatever.

Descriptive tells

Explains what’s about to be sensed. I usually call this distancing language.

Words to look for: saw, heard, felt, smelled, watched, seemed, looked, ah, so many!

Example: Godzilla could see that Hammy had turned into a zombie. Godzilla felt sad.

How to revise it: Hammy’s mouth gawped open. “Brains. Need more brains.”

Passive tells

Live in passive sentences. What’s that? It’s when the subject of the sentence isn’t doing the important work of the sentence.

Words to look for: was + verb; is being + verb, by (sometimes)

Example: Hammy was pushed into the roadway by the radioactive pepperoni pizza breath of Godzilla.

How to revise it: Godzilla’s radioactive pepperoni pizza breath pushed Hammy into the roadway.

Whew! That was a lot. Carrie will be talking about this more on her substack, LIVING HAPPY AND WRITE BETTER NOW tomorrow.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

Dogs are all about showing, basically because they can’t talk. Channel your inner dog, show people you love them.

WRITING EXERCISE OF AWESOME

This is from the fantastic Writer’s Room:

“However, my favorite passive voice exercise is “the zombie test.” If you aren’t sure whether your sentence is active or passive, add “by zombies” after the verb. If the sentence still makes sense, then it’s passive. If it doesn’t make sense anymore, then it’s active.”

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Enter between January 1, through April 30, 2024.

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RANDOM THOUGHT LINK

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SHOUT OUT!

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It’s pretty awesome.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!

Author: carriejonesbooks

I am the NYT and internationally-bestselling author of children's books, which include the NEED series, FLYING series, TIME STOPPERS series, DEAR BULLY and other books. I like hedgehogs and puppies and warm places. I have none of these things in my life. View all posts by carriejonesbooks

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