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.
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