Do you scratch your head when someone tells you that you need to “show, not tell”? It’s the key to writing compelling commercial fiction, but an often difficult concept to grasp in all its nuances. Today I’m going to share with you some simple ways to…

“Show” emotion without naming it

The trick is in word choice. Each scene in a piece of fiction should be from the point of view (POV) of one character. That character should have a goal, face obstacles to that goal within the scene, and ultimately end up at an impasse where a decision needs to be made.

What I want you to do is look at a scene or story you’ve written and define the mood of your POV character.

Stop reading this post, pull out some of your writing, and try it. Is your hero angry, irritated, frustrated? Is your heroine confused, excited, panicked?

Now, write down some strong nouns and verbs that convey that mood. I emphasize nouns and verbs, because strong writing doesn’t need many adjectives and adverbs.

For example: a character who is angry won’t walk across the room. He’ll storm across the room. He won’t glance at the person he’s talking to. He’ll glare at her. He’ll jab the numbers on his cell phone. He’ll slam the car door.

Next, look at your setting details. Word choice in setting descriptions is a subtle, but powerful way to enhance the emotion of the scene. If your hero is angry, thunderclouds may be piling up on the horizon. If your heroine is wary or confused, dark clouds may bruise the sky. See how the italicized words subconsciously convey a mood?

Here’s one of my favorite examples (from the opening of Deep Cover) of how I use scene description to convey the hero’s mood:

A lone backhoe loomed on the horizon, silhouetted against the steel gray sky, its tires caked in mud. Too bad the machine wasn’t big enough to dig him out of this mess.

Notice how the final sentence is backloaded with the word “mess”.

In the next lesson we’ll look at how to use metaphors and the five senses to empower your writing.

A Challenge

Learning a new writing technique won’t help you if you don’t apply it. So if you want to become a stronger writer try this exercise.

Exercise:

• Read through a page of your writing and underline all the nouns and verbs. Now, go back and try to replace the weakest ones with stronger words that also convey the mood of the POV character. If you have an adjective helping to describe the noun, or an adverb helping to describe the verb, strive to make it obsolete.
• Share your favorite before and after examples in the comment section.
• One more hint for extra power: Look for the strongest word in your sentence. See if you can rewrite the sentence with that word at the end for a stronger emotional punch.

Bio:

Author Sandra Orchard home educated her three children from kindergarten to grade twelve. Her youngest daughter has followed in her footsteps, writing award-winning short stories and articles for The Canadian Horse Journal and CinchMagazine.com, an Ezine which she also co-edits. Sandra took her first writing course after her first baby was born but for many years wrote only curriculum for her personal use and articles and book reviews for a local homeschooling newsletter. Then, as her children’s learning became increasingly independent and a back injury sidelined the home renovations that had usually filled her free time, she began writing novels. Sandra received news of her first book contract with Love Inspired Suspense (formerly Steeplehill) on her “home school graduation day”—her youngest daughter’s first day of college. What an exciting launch to this new phase of life!

Deep Cover, the debut novel in Sandra’s Undercover Cops series released in early September. Shades of Truth will follow in March 2012. Passionate about helping aspiring fiction writers strengthen their writing, Sandra judges writing contests and is active in several online writing groups such as ACFW and The Word Guild. Her website www.SandraOrchard.com features reviews on numerous topnotch books for writers, as well as inspiring stories of authors’ writing journeys that encourage aspiring writers to persevere in pursuing their writing dreams and to find joy in the journey.

I’ve noticed lately how many best-sellers are written in 1st person point of view–especially young adult novels. When a story is written in 1st person, the author writes as if they are the main character, telling the story in their own words. (As opposed to 3rd person, where the author tells the story as if they were watching the action unfold.)

We’ve talked before about the need to show a story rather than simply “telling” it–to put our readers inside the character’s head so that they see what the character sees, feel what they feel. This can be done very effectively in either 1st or 3rd person. It is also possible to “tell” from either viewpoint.

Sometimes it helps me–even if I am writing in 3rd person POV–to switch into 1st person as I experiment with how to write a scene. When I pretend that I am the character, telling my own story, I see things I didn’t notice before. I tend to think more about how I would move, what I would feel, how I would react to the action and dialogue. It seems easier to put myself into the scene and become aware of the sensory elements–smells, sounds, textures–that it’s easy to forget about.

Exercise:

• Look at a few books you’ve read recently and really enjoyed. Are they written in 1st person (I, me, my) or 3rd person (he, she, his, her, they)?
• Read a few paragraphs. Does the author seem to be telling you a story or showing you what happened?
• Which books made you feel like you “became” the character? Were they all 1st person? All 3rd person? Some of each?
• Select a scene from a story you are writing. If you write in 3rd person, try writing a draft in 1st person (or vice versa). Did you gain any insights into your characters?
• If you made the switch primarily by changing the pronouns, try writing the scene again. This time, dig deeper. As if you were a method actor, get into the role until you “become” the POV character. Now close your eyes and relate what happened. (You know the scene well enough by now.) Tell not only what you saw, but what you smelled, tasted, and felt.
• Compare the new scene to your original. Draw from the new material to make your original scene richer.

1. POV slips

Nothing bothers me quite so much as hopping from one person’s head to another in the same scene. Just when I think I’m in Jane’s head, seeing the world through her eyes—bam. The writer jumps to Billy’s head, and that changes everything. Billy thinks differently from Jane about the weather, the people, the emotions—everything really. It’s okay to have multiple points of view when writing in third person, but stick to one person per scene. In my opinion, head-hopping keeps the reader from getting emotionally involved in the scene.

2. Being verbs

When writers pile on the being verbs, they rob their prose of it’s most vibrant element. Let me clarify—just in case someone’s wondering—the verbs I’m talking about. (Am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been.) These static verbs don’t do anything. They just sit there. If you rework your sentences, most of the time you can replace these weak verbs with vivid action words. Simple example: There was an oak tree in the yard. (Weak.) An oak tree shaded the lawn. (Stronger.)

3. Too many adverbs

I remember one story I read that had an –ly adverb in almost every sentence. Everything went sweetly, quickly, softly, and nauseatingly along. Instead of walked swiftly, try rushed, hurried, or scrambled. Go on an –ly hunt and consider every one guilty until you rid your prose of these bland thieves. After you’ve learned to write without them, you may find a time to work one or two necessary ones back into your writing.

4. Labeling with adjectives instead of word painting

Sometimes we label the things we want to describe instead of taking the time to use an artist’s eye to paint them. We write about a “beautiful sunset” or “ugly frog”.  Instead of using the labels of “beautiful” and “ugly”, take the time to observe unique details—even if it’s in your imagination. Maybe the sunset isn’t so beautiful. On a day when everything’s gone wrong for your hero, maybe the sun bleeds it’s orange rays across the sky. Look for the flaw in something beautiful or a redeeming quality in something ugly. You just might come up with a sentence we all wish we’d written!

5. Filtering through the consciousness of a character

This concept might sound hard to understand, but a few examples will clear it up. Avoid phrases such as: he thought, noticed, wondered, realized, noted, considered, realized, etc. Here’s an example: “He noticed a mockingbird entertaining the neighborhood from its perch in a tree.” Remove the filter and move deeper into his point of view. “A mockingbird entertained the neighborhood from its perch in a tree.” If you’ve stayed true to No. 1 above, we’ll know that he noticed it, and we’ll feel more like we’re in his skin.

6. Lack of inner journey character arc

Some stories I’ve read have a great outer journey for the character with a tangible goal and a compelling motivation, but the inner journey of the character is lacking. Jeff Gerke, quthor of How To Find Your Story, goes so far as to say the story is really 75% about the inner journey. Also, know your character’s inner goal and motivation. If you think about it, even all the animated movies have an inner journey. Think about Shrek. We see what’s going on inside him, and that’s why we care about whether or not he succeeds.

7. Episodic writing

In episodic writing, lots of things happen to the hero, but he just goes through his day reacting to everything. Usually in these stories the character’s goal is weak so he doesn’t have anything that he must achieve, or maybe the stakes aren’t high enough. So what if he doesn’t get it? If the character has a strong goal and the stakes are high, he’ll take steps to reach the goal and won’t wait around for something to happen.

8. Lack of motivation for characters

Most of the time your heroes and heroines can do just about anything—as long as they have a strong motivation. If they don’t have a proper motivation for what they do, they will appear too stupid to live. Why does your hero want that? Why will he go to the extreme to get it?

9. Characters who are too perfect

Yuck. I don’t care to spend hours and hours reading about perfect people. As my friend Shelly Dippel says, “They’re too good for earth. Send ‘em on to heaven!” What flaws do your characters have? What lies do they believe? What mistakes do they make? What hot buttons do they have? Do they sometimes mouth-off when they should keep silent? And while we’re at it, give your villains depth by bestowing upon them a couple of good qualities.

10. Going overboard

Sometimes when I teach a new concept, I find that my students get so enthused about it that they go overboard. I teach about metaphors, and the next chapter has so many metaphors that the good ones are hidden among the mediocre ones. Or I teach about using vivid verbs, and the student writes a twisted sentence just to avoid a being verb. Use common sense, and don’t take any of these tips to the extreme!

Exercise:

Go over a scene that you’ve written and see if you can find any of these things that weaken your story. Rewrite!

I’d like to introduce you to a term, if you aren’t familiar with it already, called “author intrusion”. You have author intrusion when you’re reading a story and all of a sudden something is said in a way that pulls you out of the “zone” your imagination is in. It might be a really fancy or strange word that causes you to lose the flow of your reading. Flowery writing – the use of excessive adverbs and adjectives is also distracting. It might be a mistake in tense; an author may accidentally switch from past tense to present tense or word things in such a way that it sounds like they’re going from 3^rd person to 1^st person. Another blunder—which happens too often, strangely enough—is when an author suddenly changes point of view, giving us the thoughts of a character who’s head we’re not supposed to be in. We call it “head-hopping” (another term to know). And what I think is the most disruptive type of intrusion—when an author may suddenly dump a lot of information in the narration that sounds like he’s explaining something from a text book. (The term for that is called an Information Dump, by the way.)

Here’s an example of an information dump.  Say you’re reading a story about a young person who is torn between accepting a scholarship to attend their dream college or taking two years off of school altogether to pursue another dream of making it to the Olympics. Suddenly, the author veers away from the meat of the story to insert a long paragraph or two about the important history of the college or what another individual had to do to overcome a similar situation. (He’s letting us know how well he researched his story and wants us to be proud of him. Blech!) Narration like this can suddenly make you disconnect with the story as you become immediately aware that the author is trying to teach you something.

…and How to Avoid It

All of the above are ways that the author intrudes into the story. There are several things you can do to avoid author intrusion in your fiction writing and remain invisible to the reader.

• First, don’t set out to necessarily “teach” a lesson, or make a moral point in your fiction. You will likely have a lot of research and knowledge built into the topic you’re writing about, but you can’t include it all. That which you do include must come out as being natural to the telling of the story, or you will be in danger of creating information dumps. Most of the time, a lesson or moral will end up being innately ingrained in a story by its plot or how characters behave without the author pointing it out.
• Don’t use extravagant vocabulary words where a simple, clear one will do. Otherwise you’ll be guilty of stepping into the spotlight, saying, “Look! I’m here. I wrote this. Don’t I have an expansive vocabulary?” You don’t want to be the reason readers become distracted from the story you’ve worked so hard on. Also, clean out as many adverbs and adjectives as you can.
• Pay close attention to grammar. Be sure your verbs always agree with your subjects so that you don’t make the mistake of changing tenses mid-step. That can sometimes sound like the author is suddenly there in the story, mingling with the characters.
• Always stay in only one character’s head (POV) per scene. Observe everything that happens through the filter of that one character.

EXERCISE:

Look through your manuscript for creeping author intrusion.

• Does any scene suddenly sound like a Wikipedia description?
• Are you watching those noun/verb agreements?
• Is your vocabulary sufficient but not flowery?
• Are there too many adverbs and adjectives instead of strong verbs and specific nouns?
• Have you head-hopped in any one scene?

Edit for these problems.

When you and your sibling have a disagreement and tell your stories to a parent, you learn firsthand the difference someone’s point-of-view can have on the way he or she sees the same basic set of events. Your brother’s version of how grandma’s prized antique vase got broken may not be the same as yours – even if the two of you were practicing football tackles together in the living room where the vase was displayed.

Using the power of point of view can make your writing jump off the page – and may give you an “ah ha!” as you dig into your characters’ motivations. Here’s a great point of view exercise you can try to explore the “why” behind a sibling conflict of Biblical proportions.

• Read Genesis 37 several times in order to become familiar with the flow of the story.
• Choose one of the three primary characters in the story (Joseph, Reuben or Jacob/Israel) and list the things that happened in the story from his perspective. Pay close attention to what your character knew and did at this point in his history. For example, Reuben didn’t know that Joseph had wandered looking for them from Shechem to Dothan. Joseph, of course, had no idea that his brothers were going to jump him and dump him into a pit.  Jacob, also known as Israel, never would have imagined that his brood was capable of such treachery. 
• Use your outline to write a first-person account of the events of Genesis 37, having your character (Joseph, Reuben or Jacob/Israel) tell the story from his perspective. Make sure he is only telling about the events in which he was directly involved in the chapter. Remember, these characters didn’t know at this point how this story was going to turn out like we do!   

This exercise is even more useful if more than one person does it. If you have a sibling, a friend or even a co-op group each willing to do take different characters from the Biblical account and write about the events of Genesis 37, you’ll have an opportunity to hear the difference a point-of-view can make in a story.