Want to draw your reader so far into your story they are living it with you . . . not just reading about it?
This is how you do it.
Develop your ability to turn words on a page into pictures in your reader’s mind. My writing teacher, Bill Manville, was like a high-flying hawk spotting a field mouse below . . . swooping down to devour a “telling” phrase in my manuscript. “Show. Don’t tell,” he’d say, then give me the showing words to use.
SOME EXAMPLES:
TELLING: “The old man behind the counter . . .”
SHOWING: “Standing behind the counter, the man with strands of gray hair that failed to hide his baldness, and shoulders stooped from a lifetime of pouring over account books, smiled a tired smile . . . ”
TELLING: “The bedraggled cat . . .”
SHOWING: “The one-eyed cat with fur as matted as unfettered crab grass that couldn’t hide its bony frame.”
TELLING: “The dilapidated house . . .”
SHOWING: “Well past any hope of being properly advertised as a fixer-upper, the once-proud columned porch sagged so deeply, I feared that given the gentlest breeze, the entire house would dissolve in a heap on the surrounding dirt and weeds.”
Once Bill made me aware of the show, don’t tell writing skill, I began to not only notice it, but appreciate the writer’s skill. Finding words to describe emotions, moods, attitudes, and all the 5 senses required upping my pay attention ability.
Paying attention is work that requires concentration and patience. Pay attention to your surroundings, and the people in them. Turn what you observe into words that describe what you see, hear, taste, touch, smell, and feel.
Your imagination is your most valuable writing companion. The more you use it, the more it willingly conjures for you those vivid word-pictures that magnetically draw your reader out of their reality into yours . . . and keeps them there to the end of your story.
RECOMMENDATION: Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively, Rebecca McClanahan.
What do you think? Leave a comment and let me know. Most of all keep writing!