Some People Think Writers Are So Eloquent And Good With Words, But The Reality Is That We Can Sit There

Suddenly I'm holding the world in my arms

Editing Tips: Watch Out for Tautology

When you say the same thing twice with different words, it's a "tautology". They make manuscripts wordy.

Examples:

He shrugged his shoulders. -> He shrugged.

She clapped her hands. -> She clapped.

Her feet stepped back. -> She stepped back.

He hand picked up the knife. -> He picked up the knife.

If a movement is necessary for an action, the movement is included in the action and doesn't need to be spelled out separately.

He reached out his arm and took the book from her -> He took the book from her.

She lifted the glass to her lips and drained it. -> She drained her glass.

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Drawing bases & pose references pt 46 ✨

There are 3 more poses for patrons today!

I’m sorry friends, but “just google it” is no longer viable advice. What are we even telling people to do anymore, go try to google useful info and the first three pages are just ads for products that might be the exact opposite of what the person is trying to find but The Algorithm thinks the words are related enough? And if it’s not ads it’s just sponsored websites filled with listicles, just pages and pages of “TOP FIFTEEN [thing you googled] IMAGINED AS DISNEY PRINCESSES” like… what are we even doing anymore, google? I can no longer use you as shorthand for people doing real and actual helpful research on their own.

The Legendary Scarlett and Browne SPOILERS

Let's gooooo!!!!!!

Shhh.. They're communicating..

tipping point kendal and erin are from @comicaurora

i loved your recent answer about pacing it was so helpful! it wasn’t my question but the advice was brilliant! not sure if i’ve just missed it but do you have a post on showing not telling? i’m not great with exposition and writing descriptions about things that matter in a scene! thank you :)

Guide: Showing vs Telling

I talk a lot about showing vs telling but I don't have a whole post about it, so here goes! ♥

"Showing vs telling" is one of those phrases that strikes fear into the hearts of newer writers, but it's actually very simple and nothing to worry about.

This quote, which is paraphrased from something once said by writer Anton Chekhov, is the absolute best illustration of showing vs telling.

...

Telling: Sally walked outside and saw the moon was shining.

Showing: Sally walked outside and carefully stepped over the puddles of moonlight left behind by the evening's rainstorm.

...

Telling: It was a long walk to the road.

Showing: Sally skirted the shadows as she traversed the muddy distance between the house and the road.

...

Telling: Sally was mad.

Showing: She clenched her fists and gritted her teeth, her nostrils flaring as her mind raced through every mean word Harold had said.

...

Humans are pretty good at interpreting sensory details. If it's night and we see light shining in a puddle, we know that light is coming either from the moon or an artificial light. We can look up in the sky and see whether it's the moon or whether there's an artificial light nearby. If we suddenly find ourselves standing in a forest and hear wolves howling nearby, we can probably guess we're in a remote location and are possibly in danger. If we go outside and smell wood burning and see black smoke, we can guess there's a fire. If it's cold outside and there are homes with fireplaces nearby, we might assume someone has a nice fire going in their fireplace. If we're in the middle of nowhere, we might guess it's a campfire. If it's the middle of summer, we might worry that there's a wildfire or wonder if a neighbor is burning yard waste.

Showing vs telling is all about taking the direct thing you want to tell the reader--Sally was mad--and thinking about the sensory details that would illustrate that thing for the reader. What can be seen? What can be heard? What can be smelled? What can be tasted? What can be felt?

You don't have to pull every sense into your description, though. Only the ones that best convey the thing you're trying to convey. In the case of "Sally was mad..."

What can we see? Her fists are clenched, her jaw is tight, her nostrils are flaring.

What can we hear? She is grunting, spitting through her teeth when she speaks, she's breathing heavily.

What can we smell? Well, in the case of anger, we generally don't smell anything. Though, if the thing she's angry about has any smells associated with it--like being mad about burning some cookies--that is certainly something to consider.

What can we taste? A third-party observer might not taste anything, but Sally might taste the char of the burned cookies. Or she might taste bile in her throat that resulted from anger-related stomach upset.

What can we feel? Again, a third-party observer might not feel anything associated with someone's anger--unless it's the vibration of a tapping foot of the hot breath of someone's angry words--but Sally might feel her heart racing or heat rising into her cheeks. She might feel the grit of the burned cookies in her mouth.

Showing vs telling means looking at those possibilities and choosing a few that can be combined to create the impression you want to give.

However, sometimes--for the sake of pacing, scene transitions, exposition following a time jump, and for other reasons, telling can actually be the better choice.

Here are some situations where telling is better than showing:

1) When something happened but it isn’t critical for the readers to see the thing actually play out. If the burned cookies played only a small role in Sally's anger, it may not be important to show how the burned cookies affected her. It might just be better to say, "The burned cookies only added to Sally's fury."

2) When clarifying less important things that happened during a “time skip.” If the situation that caused Sally's anger happened off the page, that might be a good time to tell rather than show. Otherwise, you have to do a little flashback to show the thing happening, but that might not make sense to do, especially if the thing that happened wasn't as important as the fact that she's in a bad mood when the new chapter begins.

3) When you need to make a long conversation, speech, or description a little bit shorter. The last thing you want to do is overwhelm your reader with page after page of description, so sometimes it makes more sense to tell things directly to the reader rather than to show them. Any time you get to something that can be told or shown, ask yourself if this is an opportunity to bring some description into the story, or whether "showing" the thing would slow things down or clutter up a section that already has a lot of description.

4) When you need to deliver back story or other important information. If Sally being angry about the cookies preceded an event that was important to her backstory, and this story is being told by one of Sally's acquaintances to another character in the story, this might be a time when it's better to just say, "She was angry about some burned cookies, and that's why she stormed into the village and accidentally bumped into Lord Rotherwell." Otherwise, you once again get into sort of a flashback type situation, which might work in some backstory explanations but not others.

I hope that helps! :)

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Hey! Asking for some writing advice here.

How does one write a villain exactly. In a very simple world with no superpowers and stuff how do you give them motivation. How do you make them slowly descent into villainy. Somehow when the villain actually thinks they're doing the right thing until the very end?

Thx love

There are a few different questions here that I'm going to try to to unpick.

I'll start with a brief overview of the connections between protagonist + antagonist, just because recognising them can be really useful in shaping your own ideas. Then I'll dive into motivation. So.

Antagonist + Protagonist = CONFLICT

If you know your protagonist well, then you have all the ingredients you need to write a great villain/antagonist for them too. Here is why.

Your villain/antagonist is, at the most basic fundamental starting point, something that is between your protagonist and what the protagonist wants/needs. As a very simple example, if your protagonist wants to make sure that everyone is free, then your antagonist is going to in some way be involved with making sure they are not free. Once you know what your antagonist needs to do in a story, then it's a lot easier to pose the question to yourself of 'okay, why would someone do that?'

Villains often reflect an opposite or warped view of the values and motivations that your protagonist has. They mirror or foil your main character. So, your antagonist's motivation will often be either opposite to the protagonist (e.g, your protagonist is motivated by selflessness, so your antagonist is motivated by selfishness in some way) or they will be the same motivation or value gone twisted (e.g. we both have people we love who we would do anything to protect...it's the villains way of acting on that motivation that makes them the villain, not the motivation.)

Of course, you can not have your antagonist + protagonist connected in this way. This is often the case if the source of conflict in your story is not another actual character or if you have a more generic villain. Lots of great stories have generic villains. It typically just means the villain is not a focus. It might be, like, about the friendships made in the journey instead.

Motivations:

I find it helpful to think of all my characters having two motivations.

The external story-specific motivation. This is whatever the antagonist is trying to achieve in your particular story and where things like genre and superpowers etc come into play.

The internal motivation that is more universal. The internal motivation is, while still specific to the character, the driving emotions and values. With a villain, that is often hatred or fear or lust for power because they're villains, but as noted earlier it can be a twisted form of love, or a strong sense of an injustice committed against them. This shapes the external motivation (e.g. 'lust for power = I want the throne, 'fear' = I'm going to kill or belittle or control what scares me so I don't have to feel scared anymore', justice might equal revenge or gaining power to ensure that a wrong is corrected. ) It could also be a bias or a prejudice that they're raised on driving them, that they genuinely believe in. Lots of possibilities!

I think this is true of people as well. We have our foundational core beliefs and desires (to be loved, to succeed, to be accepted whatever) and then we have the things we try to get in the real world to meet those needs (whether they really will or not).

Either way, it's the second one that comes into play with the slow descent into villainy and the villain thinking that they're doing the right thing until the end. Because, initially, their heart genuinely is not in a villainous place. They may actually be doing the right thing at the start. And then bad things happen. They are changed by the journey. They are a protagonist gone tragic.

We all experience emotions that can drive us to behave poorly; the desire for revenge or recognition, to ensure that the people we care about are safe, to get money so that we can provide for ourselves and others etc. None of us are without prejudice or privilege. Those things do not make you a villain, but they can be an excellent starting place for one.

Think about times when you've messed up. A villain is often an exaggerated version of that. You start pushing your own boundaries because there is something you really want/need and, depending on how far you push that...do you feel like you can still go back? Or do you feel like you might as well finish it after everything. At what point do you breathe for air, look up at what you've done, and go shit.

That's the villain who realises way too late that they're the villain.

Final note: I've been using antagonist and villain pretty interchangeably here...but they have slightly different connotations. Your antagonist does not have to be a villain to be effective. They just have to be an obstacle to the protagonist. E.g. if two people are going for the same dream job or trying to win a competition, the other competitors are antagonists to a certain extent, but that doesn't mean they're villainous or bad people. Whether you have an outright villain will depend on your story.

I hope this helps!

Some going further questions to take with you.

Is your villain trying to stop your protagonist from reaching their goal? Or is your protagonist trying to stop the antagonist from reaching their goal?

How does the villain's external goal in the story reflect the inner need? Note. They are aware of their external goal. Most people are not aware of the inner goal in the same way.

Do you know what you want your stories themes to be? (This doesn't have to be complicated and it's fine if you don't, that's what editing is for). Your protagonist and antagonist often weigh in on these themes. For example, your antagonist might be a path the protagonist could have gone down, if they made a different choice or something happened differently in their past.

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