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For those of you who’ve been with me a while, much of this post may seem familiar . . . because I’ve lifted most of it from the Showing vs. Telling series I did several months back.

Creating a deep, intimate point of view—getting the readers entrenched in each viewpoint character’s head—is inseparable from using a style of writing that shows rather than tells, in both limited and omniscient POV.

In omniscient POV, your readers are always going to feel a little more at-arms’-length from your characters, simply because of the fact that they’re never in one character’s head long enough to really feel comfortable becoming intimate with the characters. In limited POV, however, because the story is being told from only one viewpoint character’s POV at a time, the reader will settle in, will let their mental defenses drop, will become comfortable being intimate with the characters—but only if you use a showing, active style that allows them to be so.

Character Descriptions
See also Showing vs. Telling—Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, and Showing vs. Telling—In the Eye of the Beholder

Describing what a character looks like from his or her own viewpoint in a limited POV story can be difficult. Gone are the days when we could have our heroine stand in front of a mirror and think about her own appearance. We don’t want our characters to come off as egotistical or shallow because they’re thinking about what they look like (unless that is part of their characterization). Therefore, we must find a way somehow to show what they look like without telling—but in a way that feels natural.

It’s okay to have your character sweep her dark hair over her shoulder. It’s not perfect, but readers accept it. The easiest way to do it in 3rd Person/Limited is to describe each character in the other characters’ viewpoints. But most readers, especially romance readers, are going to want some kind of clues to begin building a mental picture of the character from the beginning. For examples from Susan May Warren’s and Linda Windsor’s novels, see Showing vs. Telling—Mirror, Mirror on the Wall and Showing vs. Telling—In the Eye of the Beholder.

Character Emotions
See also Showing vs. Telling—Feeeeeeeeeelings . . .
One of the points I hit repeatedly through the Showing vs. Telling series is the signpost words of telling: was (Character was adjective) and felt (Character felt emotion). Remember what I said about using felt to describe your characters’ emotions?

Starting today, however, train your brain to associate the word FELT with that heavy, scratchy, stiff fabric used for arts and crafts and not character emotions. Felt does not make comfortable clothing, so why “dress” your characters with it?

Make the emotions do something to the character (Fear ran down Molly’s spine like a hundred tiny mice with cold feet.)

What is your character’s internal vocabulary? If Molly isn’t afraid of mice, the above example wouldn’t be a good way to describe her fear. Your character’s age, cultural background, ethnicity, historical era, education, spirituality, etc., will all make a difference in the words you choose to use for the character’s internal emotional conflict. And each character’s should be different. This is one of the ways in which you give each character a unique voice in his or her viewpoint scenes.

For example, in Ransome’s Honor, my hero William is a sea captain—has been at sea since he was twelve years old:

William waited behind a middle-aged couple, careful to stay far enough behind to avoid the plumage swaying wildly from the back of the woman’s head.

Beyond the enormous white feathers, the crowd of well-dressed guests surged and ebbed like the tide rolling into Spithead harbor during a summer thunderstorm. His nerves tensed just as they did every time one of the lookouts cried, “Sail, oh!” But this wasn’t the sea, and these weren’t French and Spanish ships lying in wait to blow him out of the water. He must secure the guns, loose the headsail, and make forward progress into these unknown social waters.

This is his internal vocabulary; it’s how his experiences, his life impacts his thought processes.

The Five Senses
See also Showing vs. Telling—Do You See What I See? and Showing vs. Telling—Do You Smell What I Taste?
For the use of the five senses, I’m not going to try to summarize here what I wrote in the Showing vs. Telling posts. The most important reminder I can give here is that in limited point of view, you can only show what the viewpoint character experiences or knows for him- or herself. If the character doesn’t see it, you can’t show it (no statements like: Unbeknownst to Callie, John slipped out the front door while she set the dessert aflame).

The Sixth Sense
See also Showing vs. Telling—The Sixth Sense
Try to eliminate words such as knew, thought, and wondered from your writing. If you are deep into limited POV, you do not need to call attention to the fact that it is the viewpoint character who is knowing, thinking, or wondering. It’s just stream of consciousness—let it flow without the puppeteer’s hand showing through these telling signpost words. If you use italicized direct internal thoughts (which in limited POV should be used sparingly, if at all—click here for another discussion of that), you do not need to include the tag, “she thought.” The act of putting the thoughts in italics shows the reader that it is direct internal thought.

I’ll be at the ICRS tradeshow in Atlanta on Tuesday and Wednesday. Hopefully I’ll be able to at least get a few “encore” posts up, but if not, I’ll be back Thursday! If you have ideas for other writing-related topics you’d like to see discussed here, please post a comment.

Wouldn’t you know it? As soon as I finished the series on Showing vs. Telling, The Writer magazine has as one of its features an article on when to Tell instead of Show.

Rather than repeat the points from the article here, I’ll just TELL you that if you don’t already subscribe to The Writer, go out and buy the March 2007 edition for this great article.

www.writermag.com

CONGRATULATIONS TO GEORGIANA D. Because of the comment she posted on Monday, January 22, she has won the copy of Stein on Writing!

All right—onto the last post (maybe) in this series: active writing and character movement.

In nearly every style book, whether academic or publication writing, we are admonished to “prefer active verbs”:

From The Bedford Handbook(academic): 14a: Prefer active verbs. Active verbs express meaning more emphatically and vigorously than their weaker counterparts—forms of the verb be (be, am, is, are, was, were, being, been) lack vigor because they convey no action. Verbs in the passive voice lack strength because their subjects receive the action instead of doing it.

From The Chicago Manual of Style: 5.112: Active and passive voice. Voice shows whether the subject acts (active voice) or is acted upon(passive voice)—that is, whether the subject performs or receives the action of the verb. . . . The passive voice is always formed by joining an inflected form of to be (or in colloquial usage, to get) with the verb’s past participle. . . . As a matter of style, passive voice is typically, though not always, inferior to active voice.

From The Elements of Style by Strunk & White: 14. Use the active voice. The active voice is usually more direct and vigorous than the passive. . . . The habitual use of the active voice . . . makes for forcible writing. This is true not only in narrative concerned with principally action but in writing of any kind.

• There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground. versus
• Dead leaves covered the ground.

From Conflict, Action & Suspense by William Noble: Active voice…charges the story and gives it life. Passive voice…simply doesn’t do this. The active voice with its direct and straightforward verb use rivets our attention. When we want to move things along, this is what we reach for so the story pace won’t slip…

Active writing is a large part of showing instead of telling your story. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it on this blog before or not, but I have enjoyed the J.K. Rowling Harry Potter . . . books—reading and listening (yes, I preordered the 7th book the day the release date was announced). But I am firmly convinced that her books would be several dozen if not hundred pages shorter if her editor would eliminate her passive-voice sentence construction:

• It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic, 2005, p. 1) . [32 words]
• Near midnight, the Prime Minister sat alone in his office, reading a long memo that slipped through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind. [27 words]

When I was in grad school, part of our assignment for the week of residency each semester (when we were all on campus together) was to critique about 10 pages for 12-15 other students. Whenever I received a first-term student’s file, the first thing I did was to do a search for the words “was” and “were” (alone and in combination with “it” and “there”). I then highlighted every instance in red so that when I gave the critique, printed in color so that the track changes and highlights showed up quite well, the new writer would have a good point of reference when I mentioned passive verb structure in my critique.

As far as moving characters around, again I will encourage you to spend some time with the thesaurus. I have section 177 of my beloved Roget’s tagged, marked, highlighted, and dogeared. The section header is TRAVEL and it is where I turn every time I need to get a character from one place to another, for example, across a room. Sure, I could write, He crossed the room to her. It’s active. But it doesn’t really show much. It’s a puppet on a string—and we can see the strings! How about:

• He migrated across the room toward her.
• She flitted through the packed room to join him at the fireplace.
• He drifted over to the table.
• She strayed into the confectionary store.
• He thundered up the stairs.
• She raced down the street to catch him.
• He swaggered into the room.

Simply by replacing “walked” or “crossed” or any generic “go/went” verb with a descriptive verb, the sentence now reveals something about the character—about the emotion connected with the movement—it shows the pace, the body language, the meaning behind the movement, not just the movement itself.

However, you do not need to do this with every single movement your characters make, otherwise you will end up with cartoon characters who bounce, swagger, float, flit, or perambulate throughout your book. Sometimes, a well-placed “went” or “walked” works fine—especially if it’s in the midst of a lot of other descriptive narrative. Let your characters’ emotions and the intensity of the scene lead you toward choosing the correct verbs to use to convey what your reader needs to know about your character’s thoughts and emotions—without “telling” the reader what those thoughts and emotions are!

One area in which choosing these types of active verbs has fallen out of favor amongst publishers is with dialogue tags. No longer are we allowed to use embellished tags such as she grumbled, he roared, or I intoned, and now even said is on the black list. So, the best way to tag our dialogue is to incorporate action or introspection as the tag:

William stepped to the fore of the poop deck. “Mr. Cochrane.”

At the quarterdeck gunwale railing, the First Lieutenant turned and touched his hat. “Aye, Captain?”

“Any sign of the Commodore yet?”

“Aye, sir. Jolly boat just cleared the dock.”

At last. “Ready the ship for sail. As soon as Commodore Northrop is aboard, we’ll get underway for Portsmouth.”

“Sir . . .” Cochrane cleared his throat and shifted from foot to foot.

Not like his second in command to act nervous. “What is it, man?”

“Sir, there appear to be two women with the Commodore.”

William’s stomach clenched. He reached to his right. “My glass.”

Information is disseminated in the dialogue and the movements of the characters start building their personalities. In the last line, because I have written William’s action as He reached to his right, it eliminates the need for a dialogue tag such as he commanded after “My glass.” His action and the dialogue work together to show he is giving a command.

If you aren’t already a people-watcher, become one. Watch facial expressions. Watch the way people move. Does she have a tendency to reach out and touch someone’s arm when speaking to them? Does he raise his eyebrows and nod his head when he listens to his friend’s story? This is a great exercise for when you’re standing in a long line—like the post office on tax day or the security gate at the airport on a holiday weekend. When we stand in line, we’re more than likely frustrated and showing our emotions on our sleeves. How does the person in front of you stand? Tall and erect? Slouching? If he’s talking on the phone, how does he hold it? When you see someone meet with an acquaintance, how do they greet each other? What can you deduct about their relationship by the way they touch (or don’t touch) each other? By their facial expressions and tones of voice? By the way they part? (You can do this with TV shows and movies, but those actions/reactions are, for obvious reasons, not as realistic as what you can observe in the real world.)

Once you can start visualizing and describing the way people move, start applying that to your characters. If your characters were actors and you the movie director, how would you instruct them to convey the emotion of each scene they act out? Or put yourself in the actor’s role. If you had only your body language, facial expression, and tone of voice to convey what’s happening inside your character’s head, how would you move, what expressions would you make, how would you speak?

Then, write it.

Join in the discussion to have your name entered in a drawing for a free copy of Stein on Writing, one of the best writing craft books available. THE WINNING NAME WILL BE DRAWN FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2007.

As a reminder, here are the three areas Sol Stein lists as vulnerable to telling rather than showing:

1. Telling what happened before the story began
2. Telling what a character looks like
3. Telling what a character senses (the 5 senses) and feels (emotions)

Monday and Tuesday, we looked at the signposts for telling in the five senses:

• Character SAW/WATCHED (She saw him running down the street.)
• Character HEARD (He heard a knock at the door.)
• Something SMELLED adjective. / Character SMELLED something. (Something smelled like it was burning.)
• Something TASTED adjective. / Character TASTED something. (The sweet taste of the apple filled her mouth a moment before she realized it was poisoned.)
• Character TOUCHED something. / Something TOUCHED character. / Character FELT something. (He looked down when he felt something brush against his leg and saw a cat.

Now we’re going to look at the “sixth sense” when it comes to writing fiction—internal thoughts/stream of consciousness of our characters. The signposts for telling in this area are along the lines of:

Character KNEW (She knew he was unlikely to ever change his mind.)
Character THOUGHT (He thought she might consent to stay a while longer.)
Character WONDERED (She wondered if he would ever stop tapping his fingers.)

A while back, I posted an entry about the difference between incorporating a characters thoughts as narrative in deep-3rd POV and italicized direct thoughts of the character. As I went into detail there, I will not go too much into the discussion of whether or not to use direct thoughts or to incorporate. What I am going to talk about here is how much attention we call to the fact that what we’re writing are our characters’ thoughts.

When we first start out writing, because we’ve read other authors who used it and because we want to make sure our readers know what’s going on, we would write something like this:

• She wondered how she could have let her cousin talk her into another blind date.

Which, if you’re just telling a story is okay—you’re the narrator and you are telling the reader what is going on in the character’s head. When we move over into showing, though, we’re getting deeper into the character’s head—narratively:

• How had she let her cousin talk her into another blind date?

This opens up another whole debate in the world of writing craft because there are a lot of critiquers and contest judges who have a deep-seated loathing of questions in narrative. But, this forces the issue: which of the above examples is telling and which one is showing? (And which one is more wordy?) As always with your writing, you must make this decision based on what works best for your voice and style as a writer. The best advice I can give is read, read, read books in your genre published by houses you’re targeting to see what others are doing.

And now, for another episode of Kaye’s Pet Peeve Phrases.

• Where could he be? she thought to herself.

Two pet peeve phrases in this example: she thought and to herself. Let’s look at the second one first. Unless you are writing sci-fi/fantasy where your characters are clairvoyant, a character’s thoughts are always to herself, thus making the phrase redundant, and, frankly, patronizing to the reader, as if to say that the reader is too thick to realize that the character’s thoughts are in the character’s own head. The phrase she thought is also redundant based on the fact that we’re writing in deep-3rd POV . . . especially when using italiziced internal thoughts as in this example. The simple act of setting the sentence in italics shows the reader that these are the character’s thoughts.

What does your character know?

She knew he was unlikely to ever change his mind.

Aside from the fact it’s a passive sentence (signpost: WAS), it’s also telling (signpost: SHE KNEW). She’s your POV character. We’re in her head. When I think something (to myself), I don’t have the thought I know he is unlikely to ever change his mind. I think, He will never change his mind. Direct.

She knew she’d ventured into treacherous territory—TELLS
She’d ventured into treacherous territory—SHOWS

To round out this discussion, we’ll take a quick look at passive vs. active writing. But today’s the day to let me know if there is any area of Showing vs. Telling that hasn’t been covered here that you still have questions about. If you have a few sentences or short paragraph you would like to post for help in changing it from telling to showing, please do so!

Join in the discussion to have your name entered in a drawing for a free copy of Stein on Writing, one of the best writing craft books available. THE WINNING NAME WILL BE DRAWN FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2007.

As a reminder, here are the three areas Sol Stein lists as vulnerable to telling rather than showing:

1. Telling what happened before the story began
2. Telling what a character looks like
3. Telling what a character senses (the 5 senses) and feels (emotions)

Yesterday, we looked at the signposts for telling in two of the five senses:

• Character SAW/WATCHED (She saw him running down the street.)
• Character HEARD (He heard a knock at the door.)

Today, we’re going to look at the other three senses: smell, taste, touch:

• Something SMELLED adjective. / Character SMELLED something. (Something smelled like it was burning.)
• Something TASTED adjective. / Character TASTED something. (The sweet taste of the apple filled her mouth a moment before she realized it was poisoned.)
• Character TOUCHED something. / Something TOUCHED character. / Character FELT something. (He looked down when he felt something brush against his leg and saw a cat.

As with showing character emotions, make the object of the senses DO something . . . or at least make it as picturesque and descriptive as possible. This is where your thesaurus (or www.thesaurus.com) will come in very handy to help you paint the picture of what is being experienced by your POV character.

SMELL is such a funny word in that it can be used for the action of taking in and recognizing an aroma as well as describing something as giving off an aroma. If you write It smelled, are you saying that “it” did the action of breathing in through the nose and recognizing a scent or are you saying that “it” is giving off a pungency that is unpleasant? TASTE is the same way. TOUCH can mean to actually come into physical contact with something or to be affected emotionally by something. Therefore, we should be as specific as possible.

Unlike seeing and hearing, there is more of an awareness that comes with these final three senses. When we smell something, we are aware we are smelling it or else it would not gain our attention. Same as when we taste and touch things.

I recognized him even with my eyes closed by the scent of his cologne. or
She didn’t like the way the fish tasted, so she pushed the plate away. or
But Jesus said, “Someone did touch Me, for I was aware that power had gone out of Me” (Luke 8:46).

One of the best ways to overcome “telling” about smells, tastes, and textures/touches in your writing is to become a connoisseur of smells, tastes, and textures/touches. Read perfume descriptions (Light Blue is a feminine, fruity-floral fragrance, composed of granny smith apple, Sicilian cedar, bluebells, jasmine, white rose, bamboo, cedarwood, amber and musk. The lead fragrance is crisp but finishes with the fullness of amber and musk.—Dolce & Gabanna’s “Light Blue” from www.perfume.com) for scents or wine descriptions and reviews (Central Coast is a wine that has vibrant fruit aromas of black cherry and plum. This Petite Sirah is full bodied, yet it has a very mellow structure. With a hint of oak and vanilla on the palate, the finish on this wine is quite lasting and memorable.—Concannon 2004 Limited Release Petite Sirah from www.wine.com) or other gourmet foods for tastes. Remember that the sense of taste is tied to the sense of smell.

Try this exercise. Close your eyes (well, after you finish reading this paragraph!). Imagine you are walking into your favorite restaurant. What does it smell like? Start breaking apart the smell into layers (yes, like an onion, Shrek). What are the component parts of the aroma—garlic, basil, tomato? Corn, cilantro, peppers? Feta cheese, oregano, lamb?

The heavenly aroma of garlic, basil, and oregano mixed with the unmistakable yeasty scent of fresh bread and wafted on the cool air that blew in her face when she opened the door. Anne’s salivary glands kicked into overdrive and her stomach growled. She really needed to stop skipping lunch. (Kaye Dacus, Happy Endings, Inc.)

What kind of restaurant did she enter?

When it comes to touch, focus on textures (grainy, coarse, woven, pile, nap, shag, knobby, pitted, pocked, indented, rough, irregular, smooth, dainty, delicate, gossamer, downy, fuzzy, peach fuzz, satiny, gritty, fluffy, velvety, gauzy, etc.) and actions/reactions:

• He leaned forward and kissed her, his lips warm, soft, and electric.
• William ran his hand along Alexandra’s satiny wood and sinuous curves; a tingling shivered up his arm to his heart.
• His breath tickled her ear as he whispered the heart-touching lyrics of the song . . .
• Susan ran her finger along the embellished epaulette and tapped the metallic crown-and-anchor insignia on it that marked Collin’s years of service.

If you have kids, this is an area where you can incorporate them into your writing. Pull together five or six differently textured items and put them into paper bags. Have your child reach one hand into the bag and try to describe what the item feels like. Or for more messy items, have the child(ren) sit at the table and pass liquidy or squishy stuff in bowls around under the table (so they can’t see it) and have them describe it and try to figure out what it is. Another way to do this is to take one child out of the room, have him/her do this blind touch-test then go back into the room with the other children and see if he can describe what he felt well enough that they can all guess what it was (you can actually do this with adults, too). Listen carefully to the words they use to describe what they felt.

To do this on your own, go to your kitchen “junk” drawer (we all have one). Close your eyes, open it, and see if you can identify every item in it just by touch. Concentrate on the textures, shapes, sizes, surfaces, and so on. Or go to a fabric store and walk around touching the fabrics, the notions, the embellishments. (What does the fabric store smell like, by the way?)

Your turn again! Show your character experiencing one of the following using ALL FIVE SENSES (and dialogue does count as “hearing”):

• Cooking a favorite meal.
• A hike in the forest in springtime.
• A concert seated beside someone wearing too much cologne/perfume.

Join in the discussion to have your name entered in a drawing for a free copy of Stein on Writing, one of the best writing craft books available. THE WINNER WILL BE ANNOUNCED FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2007.

As a reminder, here are the three areas Sol Stein lists as vulnerable to telling rather than showing:

1. Telling what happened before the story began
2. Telling what a character looks like
3. Telling what a character senses (the 5 senses) and feels (emotions)

I’ve saved the five senses until almost last (we still have to discuss character movement and active verbs, after all!) because this has to do not just with how we write our narrative, but how deeply we delve into our chosen Point of View.

I’ve been repeating two signposts of telling in previous posts (WAS and FELT), but would like to add a few more when it comes to sensing:

• Character SAW/WATCHED (She saw him running down the street.)
• Character HEARD (He heard a knock at the door.)
• Character KNEW (She knew he was unlikely to ever change his mind.)
• Character THOUGHT (He thought she might consent to stay a while longer.)
• Character WONDERED (She wondered if he would ever stop tapping his fingers.)

Here’s how this ties in with POV. When we “tell” that a character saw something (She watched him running down the street), we are holding the reader back from truly being inside the head of the character. When I see something, I am not (usually) cognizant of the fact that I am in the process of “seeing.” I just experience the action going on outside of me. So how does this work in prose? Let’s look at an example from Candy’s point of view:

• Candy watched Mike throw open the door and storm out of the house. OR
• Mike threw open the door and stormed out of the house.

The second example shows the action through Candy’s eyes as she experiences it. We’re right there with her, not held back from her like an objective observer. Harken back for a moment, if you will, to the analogy of comparing Showing to actually seeing a movie and Telling to just hearing someone else talk about it. Even if the person who is telling you about the movie were to tell you exactly everything that happened and what each character did, you still would not have experienced what it had been like to actually SEE the movie. This is what happens when we tell our readers that the character is seeing, hearing, thinking, knowing, etc. Yes, occasionally we need these telling phrases to make a complete sentence/thought. But before writing them, we should ask ourselves if there is any other way to phrase the sentence so that the action is more immediate and seen only through the lens of our character’s eyes.

Most of the sensory information we include in our writing is seeing and hearing. With hearing, it’s a little harder than seeing, because what someone hears is not immediately recognizable at times. Take the example I used above, He heard a knock at the door. Most likely, he is not going to know who is on the other side of the door, and since we are talking about writing in deep POV, I as the author cannot step outside of my character to say who is knocking at the door if the POV character does not know. So I must see if there is another way I can rewrite it:

• Mark glanced up from his book when a rhythmic tapping interrupted his concentration. “Will someone please get the door?”
• The door rattled in its frame with the force of the pounding on the other side.
• A knock on the door—like the sharp report of a rifle—shattered the stillness of the room.

One way some writers try to get around this is just to replace the words “he heard” with a pet-peeve phrase: “there was” (There was a knock on the door). The main reason not to use this phrasing at all (or with as limited use as you can) in your writing is that it is passive-nonspecific. In this example, we have replaced a somewhat active verb (heard) with a passive verb (was) and a specific subject (he) with a nonspecific subject (there).

Kathy Harris raised an interesting question—does this ever become second nature or is it something to worry about in revisions? My answer is Yes . . . and No. Yes, the more you train yourself to use showing rather than telling language, the easier it is to just write that way (just like when we learned to write in just one POV instead of head-hopping). Yes, when it comes time for edits, this is definitely where you want to spend time revising and rewriting. Yes, you want to make sure your draft is as well written as it can be . . . for a first draft. No, you should not beat yourself up nor give yourself writer’s block because you’re so intently focused on trying to “get it right” the first time. Your story and characterization will be stronger with showing rather than telling language, but the most important thing is to get that first draft finished!

Tomorrow, we’re going to continue this discussion with SMELLING, TASTING, and TOUCHING, and then on Wednesday we’ll KNOW, THINK, and WONDER.

But now it’s your turn. Rewrite one of these so it’s showing instead of telling (and be creative–don’t just go for the easy answer!):

1. I saw Raymond slip the cash into his pocket.
2. Desdemona heard a carriage rattle to a stop outside her window.
3. Michael watched in horror as the car crashed through the guardrail and over the cliff.

Remember, everyone who leaves a comment as part of this discussion will have his or her name entered in a drawing for a free copy of Stein on Writing, one of the best writing craft books available.

As a reminder, here are the three areas Sol Stein lists as vulnerable to telling rather than showing:

1. Telling what happened before the story began
2. Telling what a character looks like
3. Telling what a character senses (the 5 senses) and feels (emotions)

We’re going to tackle the last part of #3—Character Emotions. This is a hard one, but can be so rewarding when, for a brief moment, we grasp it and find ourselves showing what our characters are feeling without having to think about it.

As I mentioned, I feel there are two standard signposts of telling when it comes to descriptions, senses, and emotions:

Character WAS adjective. (Ned was handsome.)
Character FELT adjective. (Charlotte felt tired.)

This is the type of writing that comes natural to most of us. Starting today, however, train your brain to associate the word FELT with that heavy, scratchy, stiff fabric used for arts and crafts and not character emotions. Felt does not make comfortable clothing, so why “dress” your characters with it? (Ha! And I wasn’t even trying to come up with an analogy!)

One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever received was in a seminar in grad school: make the emotions DO something to the character. Make the emotion the subject of an active verb instead of just an adjective. (Get out your grammar book if you must.)

Which of the following sentences gives you the best visual of the emotion being experienced?:

• Molly felt scared.
• Fear made Molly’s skin tingle.
• Fear tingled on Molly’s skin.
• Fear ran down Molly’s spine like a hundred tiny mice with cold feet.

Yes, showing uses more words. But it also draws the reader into the story and is an opportunity for characterization. In which sentence do you feel like you know something about Molly? Also, don’t be afraid of similes, metaphors, or other symbolic language—just be sure to avoid clichés or dogeared language.

The most important question that must be answered when deciding how best to show your characters’ emotions is: What is your character’s internal vocabulary? In other words, in what unique way does your character view and label the world? Is she an introvert or extrovert? Optimist or pessimist? Cheerful or depressed? Realistic/logical or given to flights of fancy? What is his social background? What are the cultural/generational influences he grew up with?

Why?

Because a World War II veteran who helped liberate the concentration camp at Auschwitz is going to view things differently than a Gen-Xer who grew up in 1980s California. And by giving your POV characters unique internal vocabularies, you deepen the characterization and draw the reader further into your story.

In Brandilyn Collins’ excellent book on characterization, Getting into Character, she covers this at length in the chapter “Coloring Passions.” She writes, “If you want to portray a passion to its utmost, you must focus not on the passion itself, but on its varied components.” One of the best ways to do this is to contrast it against its opposite: “If your character is harsh, find what is gentle in him. If she’s selfish, find her generous side. If she’s self-confident, find her point of self-doubt. If he’s emotionally strong, find his weakness.” In other words, show all sides of the emotions—dig deep to find your characters’ full internal vocabularies.

Characters’ emotions should add energy and keep up the pace of the action in the scene instead of being like a FULL STOP of a telegram. Just as one of the best ways to give character descriptions is in the process of action, use the adjectives and descriptions of emotions to “paint” the landscape of the ongoing scene. If your scene takes place at night, use your character’s emotional vocabulary to set the mood:

• The hostile moon glared over the jagged wolf’s teeth of the mountains.
• The incandescent moon dangled like a diamond ring in the rosy remains of the breathtaking sunset.

Even though I haven’t mentioned a character, do you get a feeling for what someone in each circumstance might be feeling?

If you don’t yet have it bookmarked in your favorites or on your favorites toolbar, as soon as you finish reading this blog, go to www.thesaurus.com and bookmark it. Whenever you feel a “felt” coming on, go to the thesaurus and figure out how to come up with an active emotion.

Lady Caroline Lam wrote in her diary of George Gordon, Lord Byron, that he was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” For two hundred years since then, romance novelists have been “showing” what this means through their Fabio-esque bad-boy-who-must-be-conquered heroes. These three descriptors are a good starting point for brainstorming. If you are having trouble showing your characters’ emotions, I suggest reading poetry—yes, that’s right, I, the poetry hater, am recommending it! Poetry is an outflowing of emotion using descriptive, showing language. The poet does not write: Today I saw a bird. It made me happy. The poet shows the happiness through the use of descriptive and oftentimes metaphoric or symbolic language. For example:

George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron. 1788–1824598. For Music

THERE be none of Beauty’s daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmèd ocean’s pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull’d winds seem dreaming:

And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o’er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
As an infant’s asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer’s ocean.

How do you use something like this? Here’s an example:
She sang as she worked, the sweetness of her tone enough to still the ocean and lull the winds to sleep. How would he ever work up the courage to speak to her?

Get the picture? Here’s your assignment. Take an image from this poem (perhaps one of the colored portions) and apply it to the statement: George was in love, or share an example from your own writing of how you have used your characters’ emotional vocabulary to show how they are feeling.

When you see someone you find physically attractive, what is the first feature you notice? I personally am an eyes, smile, and height girl. (Hey, when you’re still single at 35, you’ve had plenty of time to learn these things over the years.) For me, the eyes are most important—a mouth can lie, but eyes always tell the truth—which is one of the reasons why many of my physical descriptions of characters in my writing center on the eyes and the expression conveyed by them.

Today we’re going to look at how we can describe other characters through our POV character’s eyes without reverting to telling.

Here’s an example of a “telling” description from Georgette Heyer’s Venetia:

He was a thin boy, rather undersized, by no means ill-looking, but with a countenance sharpened and lined beyond his years. A stranger would have found these hard to compute, his body’s immaturity being oddly belied by his face and his manners. In point of fact, he had not long entered on his seventeenth year, but physical suffering had dug lines in his face . . . A disease of the hip-joint had kept him away from Eaton . . . and this (or as his sister sometimes thought the various treatments to which he had been subjected) had resulted in a shortening of one leg. When he walked, it was with a pronounced and ugly limp . . . [skipping four LONG paragraphs of backstory] . . . Aubrey . . . let his coffee grow cold while he sat propping his broad, delicate brow on his hand . . . [and then it goes on for three more pages of backstory].

Yawn!

I bought this book because everyone keeps telling me how wonderful Georgette Heyer’s Regencies are—and since my historical is set in Regency England, I really should read them. I’m sorry to say I’m having a really hard time trudging through all of the telling narrative—especially in the first chapter which tells the heroine’s entire life history—and that of her two brothers—in addition to the longwinded description above. And the irony is: I still have no clear picture of what this “Aubrey” looks like—there is no hair color, no eye color mentioned. In this example, the author could have shown Aubrey’s looks through the initial interaction/dialogue he has with his sister—the bit about not getting to go to Eaton could have been remarked upon as they discussed the fact that even though he’s on summer holiday, he’s reading a Greek text. After the long paragraphs of backstory, he rises from his seat and crosses to a window—at which point the author once again describes the limp. That was where the idea that he has a limp should have been introduced. And, I believe, the hero is a stranger to the family who would know nothing about the hip disease. This is something that could come out in conversation between the heroine and hero (and perhaps does, but I haven’t gotten that far yet).

In Happily Ever After, here is how Susan May Warren shows the heroine Mona meeting the hero Joe for the first time:

She . . . squinted at the man. He had given his boots the once-over and obviously decided they were presentable because he stood there, all six feet of him, and grinned at her like a long-lost brother.

“Excuse me, but who are you?” Mona asked.

A reddish grizzle layered his chin, an interesting contrast to his short, tawny brown hair. He wore a jean jacket over a blue sweatshirt, the type her father used to wear in fall, and his faded Levi’s gapped with the comfort of wear. “I’m your new handyman.”

In this example, both the hero and heroine are given actions and expressions. She squints, he grins, they interact with each other. And, as is natural when meeting someone for the first time, she gives him the once-over as far as his appearance—six feet tall, red stubble, tawny hair, casually dressed. She also likens his appearance to her father—something that is important for the heroine who must, in the course of the story, come to terms with her father’s death.

Linda Windsor’s opening chapter of Along Came Jones deals with the aftermath of a car accident—the heroine has run her car off the road to avoid hitting a horse and she is disoriented:

Straight from one of those backwoods horror films was a character as unsettling in appearance as her circumstances—scruffy beard, dusty leather and denim, even his horse was patched. Whatever happened to those clean-cut, pistol-wielding heroes in the Westerns she’d watched with her dad as a child in Brooklyn? That’s what she needed now, not some backwoods nature freak in a beat-up Stetson—or someone even worse. She noted the lethal-looking knife sheathed on his thigh. Serial killer came to mind . . .

“Ma’am?” Although he seemed to be a polite serial killer. The concern etched on his shaded forehead by two arched brows seemed genuine. But were those rusty-looking stains on his worn jeans and shirt blood? . . .

At least he had all his teeth. And on closer look, his eyes twinkled beneath the dusty brown bush of his brow . . . Serial killers didn’t have twinkling eyes, did they? Criminals leaned toward those wild, elevator-doesn’t-go-all-the-way-to-the-top eyes. And their hair didn’t lie in rakish curls around their collars . . .

With a patronizing smirk surrounded by a week’s worth of stubble, he laid [the pistol] on the hood of her car. White teeth flashing as he untied the leather thong of his hunting knife, he put her in mind of a young Clint Eastwood—before a bath, shave, and much needed curbing of his swagger.

Not only does Linda show us what Shep looks like, but she also shows us Deanna’s disorientation and hysteria through her reaction to Joe’s looks, so the narrative here serves a dual purpose for showing. Not only are we seeing another character, but we’re learning about the POV character through the adjectives she uses, through the mental comparisons she makes, through the thoughts his looks generate in her head. Because this novel is a romantic comedy, even though she’s comparing him to a serial killer, the tone is light, funny. The adjectives (twinkling, rakish, patronizing, scruffy, nature freak) are lighthearted and show the reader that Deanna really doesn’t think Shep is a serial killer. If this were a romantic suspense or thriller, and Shep really were a potential serial killer but the heroine didn’t know it, using darker, more macabre adjectives would set a different mood: glinted or glittered instead of twinkled, twisted coils of hair instead of rakish curls, a menacing smirk.

All of the genres vary in the amount of physical description the writer should use. In romance, describing what the characters look like is a vital part of the genre expectations. In other genres, the descriptions can be more vague and given out in tiny increments throughout the first few chapters instead of close to the beginning, as it does in romance when the hero and heroine meet. Because I am not as familiar with the expectations of character descriptions in other genres, I recommend doing what I’ve done here . . . analyze recently published books by authors in your genre you think best represent the genre and see how much they describe the characters.

Okay, moment of truth for me again. Let’s see how I’ve done . . . here is when Charlotte sees Ned Cochrane in Ransome’s Honor, where I’ve tried to incorporate seeing the other character through action and interaction:

“Look out!”

Something hard and heavy hit Charlotte’s midsection. She flailed her arms against it as she crashed to the cobblestones. Not two feet away, an explosion sent shards of wood and glass flying.

She could not breathe. Suffocation darkened her vision. The heavy object still lay atop her making movement—and breath—impossible.

“Are you hurt, miss?”

The heaviness eased marginally and the blackness receded. The object atop her resolved into a chiseled face, blond hair, and the most mesmerizing gray eyes she had ever seen.

“Miss? Can you hear me? Are you well?” Concern creased the broad brow.

“I . . . I cannot breathe.”

“Do you think something is broken—a rib? Shall I send for a surgeon?” His panic would have made her laugh if she had access to air.

“Sir, you . . . are why . . . I cannot . . . breathe!”

“I—oh!” He pushed himself up and extended his hands. “I do apologize, miss. I meant no—but are you certain—?”

Charlotte drew in two gulps of air before taking the officer’s hands and being hauled to her feet. Sunlight glinted off the plain gold epaulette on his right shoulder just at her eye-level.

“The cargo net was not adequately secured—” He waved his arm toward the wreckage of what looked like had been a fine piece of furniture—exactly where Charlotte had been standing. A crane and ropes swung wildly overhead.

“I thank you, then, for saving my life, Lieutenant . . .?”

He doffed his pointed-brimmed, tall-domed hat. “Cochrane, miss. Ned Cochrane.”

Charlotte wobbled; the lieutenant dropped his hat and grasped her arms to keep her from pitching over into the water. “Not the Lieutenant Ned Cochrane who served as first officer of the Alexandra?”

He grew two inches and his chest swelled. “I still serve as first officer of Alexandra—or at least as soon as she comes out of dry dock.” He picked up his hat, dusted it, and replaced it on his head. “But you have me at a disadvantage.”

Charlotte flourished a curtsey. “I am Charlotte Ransome. It is very nice to make your acquaintance.”

The ruddiness vanished from Lieutenant Cochrane’s face. “R—Ransome? You are the captain’s—little . . . sister.” He groaned and covered his face with his hands. “I’m done for.”

Do you have an inactive character description that you can incorporate into an active scene? I’d love to see your excerpts!

As a reminder, here are the three areas Sol Stein lists as vulnerable to telling rather than showing:

1. Telling what happened before the story began
2. Telling what a character looks like
3. Telling what a character senses (the 5 senses) and feels (emotions)

In my experience, there are two standard signposts of telling when it comes to descriptions, senses, and emotions:

Character WAS adjective. (Ned was handsome.)
Character FELT adjective. (Charlotte felt tired.)

This time, we’re going to look at character descriptions.

If I write Ned was handsome, what does “handsome” mean? According to dictionary.com: “having an attractive, well-proportioned, and imposing appearance suggestive of health and strength; good-looking.”

As match.com and eHarmony would tell you, “attractive” means different things to different people. As regular readers know, I’m a huge proponent of using what I’ve coined Real World Templates for my characters when I write (for background on what this means, check out my series Be Your Own Casting Director). As a visually oriented person, I like to read physical descriptions of characters. I also like to describe my characters—probably too much.

In this day and age when the standard for fiction is to write with a limited POV—1st person or 3rd person limited (in the head of only one character for a scene)—describing what the character looks like is tricky. In 3rd person, it’s a little easier because you can “see” your characters from someone else’s POV. In limited POV, you can only show what your POV character sees, hears, smells, tastes, feels, and experiences. Now, most of us grew up reading YA fiction. In YA—at least from more than ten or fifteen years ago—it was not at all unusual to find out what the POV character looks like when she stands in front of a mirror and sees all the details of her appearance. But, I doubt even YA writers are allowed to do this any more. You also do not want your character to come across as egotistical by thinking about her gorgeous, thick, long blonde hair. Or his stunningly light blue eyes. So, how do we incorporate character description in a way that shows that feels natural?

You can involve another character who can ask questions like, “Since when have you been dying your hair red?” which could lead to a conversation about why your character colored his hair and how he feels about his physical appearance—keeping in mind it cannot just be an “empty” conversation to convey information. Every scene must move the story forward.

Here’s an example of the “mirror, mirror” description style from Amanda by Candice F. Ransome (a YA romance published in 1984):

Stooping slightly, Amanda caught her wavy reflection in the looking glass hanging over the heavy maple bureau. She noted automatically her smooth, pale skin and her eyes, golden-green and fringed with long black lashes. But her hair! Dark brown, waist-length, and naturally curly, it had always been heavy and unmanageable. Sometimes it took her half the morning to coax it into the required chignon. . . .

Yikes!

Just like all of the character’s backstory should not be revealed in the first chapter, you do not have to fully describe your character in the first chapter. In Susan May Warren’s Happily Ever After (Tyndale, 2003), she slips in character description almost unnoticed:

“The house is in rough shape, Mona, rougher than I thought. You have a lot of work ahead of you to be ready by tourist season.”

Mona flexed her arm. “I’ve got Norwegian blood in me!”

Chuck smirked. “That you do . . .”

While this doesn’t give an actual physical description of Mona, it gives the reader a hint of what she probably looks like—blonde and fair, and physically fit, since she’s indicating she’s strong enough to take on a house remodel project.

In Along Came Jones (Multnomah, 2003), Linda Windsor employs a similar technique. She also weaves in descriptive phrases that start building the image of the heroine (while the heroine is “seeing” the hero for the first time) through the action of the first chapter (the aftermath of a car accident):

• city born marketing exec (she’s cosmopolitan, usually polished, probably very concerned with her appearance)
• her companion swept her off her feet (she’s probably slender)
• “Manetti,” Deanna ventured. “Deanna Manetti.” (She’s Italian. Like the statement above, this gives the reader a general direction to start visualizing this character—dark hair, olive-toned skin, dark eyes.)
• Fourteen years since she got her driver’s license in New York City . . . (So, she’s probably between thirty and thirty-five, depending on the legal driving age in NY.)
• she sought the stirrups with the toes of her kiltied pumps. (A specific kind of shoe—she dresses not in sexy stilettos but in tailored loafer-like pumps)

Let’s see if the beginning of Happy Endings, Inc. passes the “showing” test:

• Her right heel skidded on the slate-like tile and she wobbled, her foot sliding half out of the black mule. Anne hated shoes that didn’t stay on her foot of their own accord, but they were fashionable.
• Walking through the packed restaurant behind the slender, petite young woman, Anne tried not to feel self-conscious. At nearly six feet tall and doing well to keep herself fitting into a size 18, she hated to imagine what others thought when they compared her to someone like this little hostess—five foot four-ish with a waist so small she could probably wear Anne’s gold filigree anklet as a belt. When working, Anne rarely thought about her stature or size. In public, though, all the comments and teasing she’d received when she’d reached her full height at age thirteen rushed back into her memory. If only she’d had some athletic ability, she might have been popular and not fallen for a man who’d strung her along until he didn’t need her anymore.
• This was the third time Jenn had set Anne up on a blind date and the third time it hadn’t worked out. Jenn had a habit of setting Anne up with men of Jenn’s taste, rather than Anne’s type. At five foot six, Jenn didn’t have to worry about towering over her dates. Five inches taller, however, Anne wanted to date someone who was at least six feet tall so she didn’t feel like quite such an Amazon beside him. But it seemed like tall, single Christian men over the age of thirty were hard to come by.

Okay, maybe a bit more telling than showing—but at least now I know what I need to work on! Next time, we’ll look at describing our characters from someone else’s point of view. But now it’s your turn for some Show and Tell—pull out some descriptions from your first chapter to share with us and define for us whether you think they “show” or “tell” what your character looks like.

Okay, so I’ve been reading all of the articles on how to promote our blogs, and I figure it’s time for me to act upon one of the pieces of advice.

I will collect the names of everyone who participates in the SHOWING VS. TELLING* discussion and at the end of the series, hold a drawing for one copy of Stein on Writing, the craft book that I constantly refer to on this blog.

THE WINNING NAME WILL BE DRAWN/ANNOUNCED FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2007

*Only comments on entries with the Showing vs. Telling title/tag and which are related to the subject will be eligible, starting with the Introduction entry.

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