So... I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about "life-changing writing advice" all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.
I'm going to try it.
I love the lawyer metaphor, because whenever I see “John knew that...” in prose writing I immediately think “how? How does he know it?” Interrogate your witnesses. Cross-examine them. Make them explain their reasoning. It pays dividends.
All of this, but also feels/felt. My editor has forbidden me from using those and it’s forced me to stretch my skills.
This is your "show not tell" advice explained!
Editor here.
First, let me preface this with something very important: you can treat all of this advice as SECOND-DRAFT ADVICE. It is so much easier to rewrite this kind of stuff once you have words on the page. Telling yourself the first draft is totally appropriate and acceptable.
What we’re talking about here are FILTER WORDS (and to some degree verbs of being). Yes, “thought” words are included. But so are “heard, saw, looked, tasted, smelled” etc.—most words having to do with the senses.
This isn’t black and white advice; sometimes you’ll use these words and that’s okay. They’re not WRONG. They’re just weaker. And they’re weaker because they create distance between the reader and the experience of the character.*
If you want your reader to feel like they’re experiencing the story right alongside the character, you want to cut down on filter words.
*This is particularly important with first person and close third POVs. The reader always knows whose eyes they’re seeing through and thoughts they’re privy to. So you don’t need to tell them “I saw X.” Or “I heard X.” Or “I thought Y.” You can just jump into the action/observation as it’s happening.
This is also where you want to pay attention to verbs of being.
“It was rainy.” Versus: “The rain pounded against the roof.” Or “The rain howled like an injured animal.” Or “The rain tapped against the window like an anxious lover.” All of these are inviting the reader deeper into the experience of the story by using stronger verbs and similes. And, at the same time, they stir feelings (instead of TELLING feelings). And feelings keep your reader engaged. Engaged readers keep turning pages; engaged readers become FANS.
This is also where
you want to pay attention
to verbs of being.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
The most valuable advice that Author Ex gave me through the years that we wrote together was this: the problem with all these filter words is that they create distance in the POV.
That means that when you read a line like
John saw that the curtains were open.
It immediately takes you OUT of the character's perspective and instead tells you what they experience as a secondhand observation.
You don't have to get fancy or purple with how you rephrase things like this. Not everything needs a ton of breathing room.
You wanna know what's perfectly impactful while keeping a tight POV?
The curtains were open.
Simple as that.
This was one of my all time most powerful writing lessons! This mindset shift makes you a stronger writer immediately in a way that just keeps getting easier and better for you.
The take I always have on advice like this is that "John saw that the curtains were open." and "The curtains were open." are sentences that are telling you two different pieces of information.
Some of this, yes, is about POV distance--but some of it is also about the information being conveyed by the sentence. If you are using a sentence like "John saw that the windows were open" it should be because the information you are seeking to convey is that John saw it.
Maybe this matters because the next time John looks back they are closed, and so he's doubting what he saw. Maybe it matters because he later has to recount information about the room he was in, and it's notable that he specifically saw that the windows were open. The fact and method of his observation is part of the point of the sentence, rather than simply the observation itself.
When we are using sense verbs, it should be because part of the point is the sense. Same with "thought", "felt", etc.: "Mary thought that Susan looked a little thin" is telling us a different piece of information than "Susan looked a little thin."
Contrarily, at least in my opinion, simple telling phrasing like "It was rainy" can sometimes bring us more into a character's head than something showing like "The rain howled like an injured animal." I have read books when a relatively plain-spoken/plain-thinking character suddenly starts having elaborate descriptions of things like scenery or weather, and it is abundantly clear that the author wanted to spruce up their writing and avoid "telling." The problem is that it drags me as the reader out of the character's head and shows me where all of the strings are. I'm suddenly thinking about how the author is worried about being yelled at for "telling" instead of just reading the story.
Your writing, down to the sentence structure and word choice level, should be about what you are trying to accomplish. Is the point to tell us that the window was open, or is it to tell us that John saw that the window was open?
I need to come back to this when I do my revisions, so reposting so I can find it.
