By Mary Jaksch
Ok, folks – we’re back to writing school. An important piece of advice that many writing tutors give is to ‘show not tell’. But how exactly do you do that?
What’s the trick? What’s the secret?
Because, it’s the bits that show and don’t tell that stick like burrs. Months later, you still can’t get the darn things out of your mind. Here’s an example:
A while ago I asked on the A-list Blogger Club forum for help with a particular task. I got this response from Jean Sarauer of Virgin Blogger Notes:
I’ve already got one foot on a banana peel and the other one in Meltdown City, so I’ll have to pass. Dang it.
Her response was definitely memorable. (Check out Jean’s related post How to Get Off the Meltdown City Express.)
Ok, then – how to show and not tell?
I’ve been reading a novel by Meg Gardiner, a new rising star of the suspense genre – which is what I tend to read when I’m trying to get off that Meltdown City Express. I tried reading Meg’s The Memory Collector while lolling in the bath. But in the middle of the first page I lurched to my feet – sloshing water all over the floor – and hollered for help: “Bring me a pen, quick!” Her writing is so exciting, I was desperate to scrawl all over the page and highlight the best bits for you.
Tip #1 Use familiar words in a weird context
Let’s take the word ‘unfriendly’. As a practice run, write down five sentences that include the word ‘unfriendly’. Now check how you used the word. Most likely you will have used it to describe human interactions. In contrast, here’s how Meg Gardiner uses it:
The garage was cold and the bare bulb gave off unfriendly light. Vance jittered in a circle around them.
‘Are we screwed?’
That single work ‘unfriendly’ creates atmosphere. You know immediately that these are bad guys and something ugly is going to happen. Soon.
Tip #2: Put characters into a weird context
Whether you’re writing a novel or non-fiction, try putting the people you talk about in a weird context. Here’s Meg Gardiner again:
Ginrich’s girlfriend, Clare, was thin and nervous. So were the three Chihuahuas jumping around her feet like grease in a frying pan.
With those three doglets jumping around here feet, Clare’s character comes to life.
Tip #3: Use weird metaphors
If you connect two disparate ideas, the brain jangles. That’s why using ‘weird’ metaphors makes your writing memorable. Here’s Meg Gardiner again:
The man grabbed him. This guy was square with a gray buzz cut like a concrete brick.
You know immediately that this is an ugly character. Definitely not the kind of person you’d like to encounter in a park after dark…
I think these three examples show how potent the ‘weird’ trick is.
How about we all get together and collect more examples?
You could write something and use the ‘weird context’ trick. Or maybe you can find some great examples in the stuff that you read.
Please share your treasures in the comments below, friends. Feel free to link to your own stuff :-)
Mary Jaksch is the Chief Editor of Write to Done. Enjoy more of her posts on her blog Goodlife ZEN and join Leo Babauta and Mary in the A-List Blogger Club (we’re accepting new members right now).
I remember, instead of saying “rat’s a$$,” a writer said “I couldn’t give a buttered flying rat carcass.”
That’s funny!
Here are a few from my own writing:
o The price of the lamp could feed the hungry of Calcutta for a year.
o A pimple the size of Vesuvius.
o The day was done and it smelled like a rotten potato.
o He had all the charm of an angry bush pig.
This is fun. Looking forward to reading what others come up with.
I love your examples, Karen. Especially the ‘charm of a bush pig’…!
Mary, you got me going…
From ANYWHERE I HANG MY HAT by Susan Isaacs
o His head was flowerpot-shaped, with his hair serving as a low, grassy growth.
LOL! Wow, I’m printing all of these out and taking them to my writers’ meeting today :)
oh how i needed this. i can’t think of anything right now…but i do know that this advice is flippity-flip fabulous……
xxo, kim
What great suggestions. This will definitely help to make my writing interesting. Thanks! I recently came across a book called “The Thinker’s Thesaurus”. It provides alternative synonyms than the usual thesauruses. It also gives examples of nearly all the synonyms presented. These are taken from current recent newspapers periodicals and books. It’s great!
Just popping in after a delightful weekend far from Meltdown City :) I was reading a bit of Seth Godin today and his phrase ‘a jar of pickles the size of a small Volkswagon’ was a winner for me.
I love your examples! I’m always collecting weird descriptions. Here are a few of my favourites:
_______
From Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler
The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips.
—
“Never heard of him,” the tall man barked. He took my card, didn’t even glance at me, and went back into his office. His door closed on the pneumatic closer and made a sound like ‘phooey.’
—
“I don’t like your manner,” Kingsley said in a voice you could have cracked a brazil nut on.
“That’s all right,” I said. “I’m not selling it.”
___________
Favourites from P.G. Wodehouse
At five minutes to eleven on the morning named he was at the station, a false beard and spectacles shielding his identity from the public eye. If you had asked him he would have said that he was a Scotch business man. As a matter a fact, he looked far more like a motor-car coming through a haystack.
—
I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express in the small of the back.
—
The Right Hon. was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say `When!’
___________
A couple of my own
It was the most brilliant shade of dark purple. Like eggplant on steroids.
—
He looks like a gleeful peach; flushed pinky orange skin with the soft fuzz that will one day become stubble.
—
He was a thin straight man, who looked as if he’d spent his life in a tall broom closet. The only feature protruding from his cylindrical shape was his nose, which showed blatant disregard for the engineering principle of counter weighting.
I’m reading a series of Australian books to my children at present. It is about a trio of a cat, wombat and native mouse. The cat often says, “Fish! My favourite fruit!” It’s become a common saying in our household.
Great post. I love using the weird analogy – my critique group hates it when I do. Sometimes that’s the best reason to do it – keeps the conversation interesting.
Hey Jean!
I just started subscribing to WritetoDone and your article was the 1st to hit my email inbox.
I’m looking forward to improving my writing as time goes on and have a lot to learn!
Using Unfriendly:
There was unfriendly presence in the cramped Subway in the mornings – no one seemd human – we were all just calloused robots being hauled away in a shipping box.
(towards a destination where we’d do what he had been programmed to do.)
- Does it sound better to finish the sentence at shipping box or to add on that last line?
A Weird Situation:
Ripe out of college I was both excited and scared to start out on my life for the first time. It was like loosing my Virginity all over again – A little confused about what goes where, nervous as to whather it would feel great or hurt, and of course a sense of uncertainty as to if I was going to be any damn good at it in the first place.
Thanks for the fun exercises!
I like Karen’s above where she said, “The day was done and it smelled like a rotten potato.”
Ahem … this post was written by me, Mary – and not by my friend Jean :-)
Love your examples, Lauren
One of my favorite novels, White Oleander by Janet Fitch, is full of these.
Here’s one from the very first page: “Her beauty was like the edge of a very sharp knife.”
and a couple pages later,
“She was a beautiful woman dragging a crippled foot and I was that foot. I was bricks sewn into the hem of her clothes, I was a steel dress.”
This next one is my own, from a NaNoWriMo novel I wrote three years ago:
“She and Steve had told him together. Stupid, meaningless words, buzzing like fat bloated flies in Kyle’s cheerful blue room.”
Thanks, Denise. Janet Fitch sounds like a very interesting writer.
Nice article your thinking express you as a good writer.This may sound like a simple statement, but you’d be surprised how many aspiring authors let time get in the way of them reaching their dreams. Write every day. Come up with a plan. If you write better in the morning, give yourself extra time in the morning to write. If the only time you have is during your lunch at work, then devote each and every lunch to writing. If one lunch gets interrupted, make time later in the day to write. It doesn’t matter if you write a page or a chapter each day but write. It doesn’t even matter if you end up throwing out what you’ve written. Each day, each word brings you closer to completing your book and as they say, practice makes perfect.
Hi Mary,
What a marvelous job you’ve done of illustrating the #1 principal of writing – show, don’t tell.
I think it’s so important for bloggers to use this too, not just fiction writers!
I remember when I first started writing short stories (it wasn’t on stone tablets – but it was a while ago – I was still in high school) and submitting them to magazines for publication I got a very nice note of rejection (nice and rejection in the same sentence? lol) saying that I needed to show and not tell. I had no idea what the editor was talking about.
It wasn’t until I was in college that I really understood this important rule.
Thanks so much for making this principal to clear for all of us.
LOL! I’m still laughing at Jean’s example! That’s why I love her writing so much, because it’s so vivid! :)
Thank you for the interesting post on “show and not tell.” I use metaphors often, but this definitely stretches my creativity. Many creative folks out there!
My favorite example of this actually comes from a song – Arlo Guthrie’s “Darkest Hour.”
…yes her blue velvet perfume, filling up the night…
Thanks, Mary, for getting me to think about “weird descriptions!” I love the first line of River God by Wilbur Smith: “The river lay heavily upon the desert, bright as a spill of molten metal from a furnace.” We usually think of water as cool and soothing. But this is the Nile, in the heat of summer.
One of my favorite writers on the web is Kelly Diels (http://kellydiels.com), specifically for her uncommon use of adjectives and metaphors. Here is the last line of her latest post: “And buried therein are the tangled roots of juicy fear and fearsome joy.”
I’m getting back into writing and recently found your blog. It is very helpful! Here is my attempt at “weird” writing.
- The flicker in the lantern of her brain became a blazing flame.
In Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ he quotes George V. Higgins: “It was darker than a carload of assholes”
This one writing technique has helped me today to start writing on my short story that I could not get my head around to start until I started playing with this trick. Thanks again!
Pain covered with skin was how John Steinbeck described Grandma Joad. I’ve always remembered that one.
Great article, and some awesome examples. Here’s the opening paragraph of a short story I’m just about finished with, doing the best I could to describe a swamp:
Nathan wasn’t sure what decomposing bodies smelled like, but he was certain it was something like this. It was somehow stale and fresh together, like that time he threw a car air freshener into the trash can rather than take out the garbage like Maggie asked him to. Though the smell here might have been the rotting vegetation. The swamp was full of it, leaves and vines and branches and grasses and logs that bobbed in the stagnant water like floating corpses. Insects buzzed everywhere, so thick in some places that they looked like plumes of smoke.
Hi Mary – what about this Shakesperean quote from ‘As You Like It’?
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
unwillingly to school.
Or, Tam O’Shanter (hope you don’t need a translation!) where the men are at the pub drinking and not thinking about the consequences of their actions…
We think no on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps, and styles,
That lie between us and our hame,(home)
Where sits our sulky sullen dame.
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.
Dear Congressman and Judicial Committee Member Jared Polis, 06 Sept 2010
Right now, there is an urgent need for legislation similar to what has wisely been put in place for credit records. The records in need of regulation are the so-called “criminal history” data handed out by the FBI’s National Crime Information Center. These records are provided, as a courtesy, to judges in all manner of trials, but especially misdemeanor offences. The other use these “criminal histories” have is in intimidating a confession from some mope in an interrogation room (hardened criminals admit nothing). At a glance, these records are treated with all the care that is given to “patient confidentiality” in the medical world. The real deal is that anyone except the person to whom the “criminal history” pertains can have access to it. I know this sounds like an exaggeration.
Less than a year ago, if anyone were to ask me about my criminal history, I would have been quick to inform them that I am not a criminal and have no criminal history. I would have been half right. Unlike the verdicts of trials, which are a matter of public record, the bulk of the N.C.I.C.’s “criminal history” data is a collection of allegations, hearsay, errors, and outright mendacity. Remember that the intent of these records was originally similar to “word on the street has it that …”, a useful avenue to clues. Then ,the use in extracting confessions was discovered. And then, their use in boosting fines at trial was discovered. Now we’re moving on to- funneling all government job applications through the Department of Commerce for an FBI background check (NCIC “criminal history”). My reason in writing to you is to raise your awareness of a growing problem. A problem that fuels the expanding atmosphere of fear in this country.
Since you must feel some doubt that things are going as badly with “criminal history’ reports as I relate the situation to you, I invite you to take “The Lenny Challenge” (TLC). TLC is very simple to implement.
STEP ONE: Request someone on your staff to volunteer for a special assignment.
STEP TWO: Have them Google FBI.
STEP THREE: Have them click on CRIMINAL HISTORY, It’s on the right side of the home page.
STEP FOUR: Take the fee from petty cash (about $30) and have them apply.
STEP FIVE: Wait twelve to twenty weeks after they have gone through the ordeal of having their
finger prints done at the local police station.
STEP SIX: Ask them what the results were.
I don’t bet on long-shots Congressman…… Either your staff member will have a notice that
they have no “criminal history” (a valuable document) , or , you might need to console them. And you may consider repeating step one with another volunteer, for veracity’s sake. Please do not fire them, no matter how many mothers the FBI says they have raped, or how many fathers they are supposed to have stabbed. Back in the era of Viet-Nam, there was a T-shirt that said “Kill them all and let God sort it out”.
The FBI’s motto may as well be “Make horrendous allegations against them all and let personnel clerks sort it out”. But, H.R. clerks do not sort. They pass the application through, or toss it. With a “criminal history” of RITUAL MUTILATION that was DISCHARGED ON LEAVE, I bet you can guess what has happened to every application (99%+) for the last fifteen years of my life!
There is a letter from Deputy Pender to Senator Udall, and some other documents for your consideration included with this correspondence. By the way, the NCIC uses a relational database. That means that it could be queried for how many times my record was referenced in the last fifteen years. Since I have never been under any criminal investigation, those would be all the times my records were referred to for the sake of personnel clerks. It is also a fact that fingerprints are not necessary to reference anyone’s files at the NCIC. NAME, DATE OF BIRTH, SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER, and DRIVERS LICENSE NUMBER are all that is needed, and (if you have the clout) any police station, sheriff’s office, etc. can obtain a “criminal history” for you.
You are a shepherd and your constituency is your flock. I hope you are willing to go to some length to protect your flock from the evil that has befallen me and many others. Thank you for your time and consideration.
YOURS TRULY,
Len Haglund laurielen.haglund@gmail.com