• One of the biggest challenges that writers encounter is the ever present "show don't tell." It's seen in almost every facet of life, where people say: "Actions speak louder than words."

    When you try characterizing somebody or attempt describing an action in your story, you have to do more than just throw the words out that say what you want the reader to think. For instance, if I said to you "Jon was a nice guy," what the heck does that mean? I can think of a lot of nice people, all of whom are nothing alike.

    Instead, you need to try and convince the reader that the person is what you want them to believe he is. Maybe we should go for, "Jon was a nice guy. He was the type of guy who would offer up his seat on the bus to you, regardless of if you were someone he knew, or a pretty face he wanted to woe. He would listen when you'd tell him a story, looking into your eyes and responding with real questions, not just nodding his head mumbling a 'yuh huh' while staring off at something behind you." Okay, so you probably wouldn't throw that all in at once. Instead, you would show these scenes in your story, and the reader would conclude on their own that John was a nice guy.

    The challenge that arises is that in your head, everything is envisioned. To you, these words describe the situation enough, but there's no problem telling you the story because you already know it. The trick is to convey the words so that your reader carries the entire picture in their mind, with as much vivid detail as you have in your own. That's why it's so important to revise your work with other people because only THEY can tell you what works for a reader.

    Another example of this is in a piece I recently wrote (which will one day come up on here when it's fully finished and I get "consent" *shivers*). In the piece, I describe a scene in which the mood is somber and the characters aren't acting like themselves. Instead, they are silent and lifeless, moving about without any vibrance or excitement for life. While there's a lot of great imagery in it, the reader loses a lot by not having that vision of what things are normally like. Unless the reader has an image of what these characters actions would normally be like, the reader won't be able to capture the full significance of the moment. As such, it's just as important to embody what's NOT there as what is, because the reader doesn't have the full background on the situation.

    A real example of this idea comes from Shakespeare. In Sonnet 130, Shakespeare describes his lover by what she's not.

    My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
    Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
    If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
    If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

    Shakespeare describes his love by bringing his mistress into reality. He describes her as being a woman with flaws which he can recognize and he concludes by recognizing this but saying she's still something remarkable which he loves dearly.

    And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
    As any she belied with false compare.