SHOW DON’T TELL

I said in an earlier post how I’d written the initial draft of this novel in 1st person, present tense. This was to enable me to get closer to the MC’s POV. Once I’d completed it, I changed it into 3rd person, past tense. Whilst I’d succeeded in my aim, I did manage to trip myself up. The problem was that the first draft resulted in a couple of events in which the MC wasn’t present. She learned about these events from a third person. This resulted in ‘telling’ not ‘showing’.

The first of these involved an incident which resulted in the MC’s nearest and dearest being arrested. I discussed in an earlier post how I’d rewritten this into a scene shown through the eyes of the most important character present.

The second occurred in Chapter Ten and involved an encounter with mysterious outsiders. The MC witnessed some of the other characters set off into the night and learned about their adventure when she visited a friend who’d been injured.

The third and fourth examples occurred in Chapter Twelve. The third involved the MC recalling some back story to explain why she’d hated another important character so much. The fourth was another character telling her that she’d been mistaken about another, more recent, event.

When I sat down to rewrite Chapter Ten, I saw an opportunity to get rid of the ‘telling’ writing in Chapter Twelve at the same time. In addition, the rewrite also provided a chance to solve another problem. This involved the MC who, from the midpoint on, had become less proactive.

The revised Chapter Ten now puts the MC at the heart of the action. She and the reader see at firsthand what happens when the mysterious intruders are encountered. In this scene she also learns that she was mistaken about another important character in a much better way. As a result of the rewrite, I decided to make a change to who got hurt. Instead of it being a friend of the MC it is now the person she has disliked. This helped to cement the change in their relationship and provided a basis for revisions to subsequent chapters. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

HOW I LANDED MY LITERARY AGENT

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES