MAKE YOUR NOVEL DANCE OFF THE PAGE AND INTO THE READER'S MIND

SHOW THE READERS EVERYTHING----TELL THEM NOTHING
Ernest Hemingway

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I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve learned “show don’t tell” takes practice, practice, practice. Every fictional author’s biography shares one message in common. A single thread that will help every other aspiring author and that is read a lot.

Over the years I’ve read numerous books, but it was only until recently when I myself started writing that I questioned why certain books I’ve read have stayed with me for decades while others have not.

I went back into my overstuffed with nonsense closet and pulled out a box of books I never gave away. I try to read 3-4 books simultaneously. A chapter in one, put it down, a chapter in another, put it down, and so on, and so on.

I grabbed 3 books from my “refuse to dispose of box.” Each was a bestseller in their time and each became hit movies. WHY, I asked. So, I started reading them and paid close attention to the writing.

MAY I SUGGEST:
I keep a pad and pen with me while I’m reading for one specific reason. When I find a sentence that stands out and fits into “show don’t tell” I write it down. Every day I re-read my growing list to help me develop what I call a descriptive mind.

The following sentences are some I have found interesting and helpful. I’m sure you will find equally interesting sentences in the books you read.

• A single star shone in a wedge of deep blue above the woods.
• He lay in long grass listening to distant voices he fancied only he could hear.
  
• Crusted shoes caked with debris of the pain of living.
  
• It was a mere tip of a long seam of guilt that snaked its way back through the thirteen years her daughter had been alive.
  
• A moon nearly full was coming up the eastern sky, which had turned azure with the sun just under the horizon.
  
• They brought her remains to an ending in the crowded cemetery where the gravestones cried for breath. He watched them lower her into the dark of a world without windows
  
• The ice cream had melted and leaked and was dripping off the table into a small pink lake on the floor.
  
• He avoided those eyes that were wells of sorrow.
  
• Clouds had moved up in the west, splitting the sun into rays that splayed in several directions.
  
• Overhead was one long canopy of snowy fragrant bloom. Below the boughs the air was full of a purple twilight and far ahead a glimpse of painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a cathedral isle.  
  
• The whitewashed walls were so painfully bare and staring that she thought they must ache over their own bareness.
  

                                       from: Anne of Green Gables, The Horse Whisperer, Bridges of Madison County, The Exorcist

              Don't tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass.
                                                                                Anton Chekhov