Talking about show vs tell at the scene level is a little bit harder than talking about it at the paragraph and scene levels.
But it’s also a tiny bit easier.
When you’re looking for telling at this level of the story, what you’re looking for is a couple of things:
- A butt ton of backstory.
- A butt ton of info dumps
- A lot of flashback.
You can have bits of these things in your stories. Where us authors get into trouble is when we have a lot of it and we have a lot of it in telling language.
So, that really happens when we do this:
Bud Godzilla looked down on his sweet friend turned zombie. They’d been friends forever, so this hurt. Three page description of how they met – info dump or backstory
Or:
Bud Godzilla looked down on his sweet friend turned zombie. They’d been friends forever, so this hurt. Three page scene of how they met – flashback.
You usually want to limit these places and instead sprinkle in action/dialogue/details throughout to help the readers understand that the characters have history or the world exists before the book begins.
There’s a balance between telling too much and too little. You want the reader to anticipate that something cool is going to happen or has happened, but you don’t want to leave them confused or knowing way too much.
You know how sometimes you’ll be on the plane and the person will not stop talking for six hours about their boil, their aunts’ piano obsessions, their dinner plans while you just want to finish watching the inflight movie? That’s what happens with those paragraphs of backstory, flashbacks and info dumping.
Everything is paused. The stakes are gone. And when that happens? You risk losing your reader completely.
DOG TIP FOR LIFE
Pogie says keep your eyes on the prize, my friend, and laugh.
COOL WRITING EXERCISE TO MAX OUT YOUR SKILLS
This comes from the Writing Cooperative and it’s really about how to spot your info dump, which is an exercise.
“Once you spot an info-dump, ask yourself the following questions:
- “How much of this information is it essential for the reader to know right now? Most of the information will not be essential. Be ruthless. Cut it out.
- “Of the information left — if any — how can I get the protagonist to do something which shows or implies the information? This may involve minor or major rewriting, but you do no-one any good by avoiding it. Rework or add scenes which convey the information through present situations and your protagonist’s actions.
- “If the information is necessary, how can I use it to enhance the emotional effect of the scene? Key in on the emotional impact of the scene and if you must retain information that can’t be shown or implied, look for ways to add it in a way that will have an emotional impact. ;But the woman you saw can’t have been my mom, Angie. Mom died when I was a kid.'”
PLACE TO SUBMIT
The Blue Mountain Review launched from Athens, Georgia in 2015 with the mantra, “We’re all south of somewhere.” As a journal of culture, the BMR strives to represent all life through its stories. Stories are vital to our survival. What we sing saves the soul. Our goal is to preserve and promote lives told well through prose, poetry, music, and the visual arts. We’ve published work from and interviews with Jericho Brown, Kelli Russell Agodon, Robert Pinsky, Rising Appalachia, Turkuaz, Michel Stone, Michael Flohr, Lee Herrick, Chen Chen, Michael Cudlitz, Pat Metheny, Melissa Studdard, Lyrics Born, Terry Kay, and Christopher Moore. bluemountainreview.submittable.com/submit
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!
LINKS WE REFERENCE
https://gizmodo.com/another-ufo-report-is-a-bust-so-why-do-so-many-people-1851331674
