Show, don’t tell—which author hasn’t heard of that? But then comes the question of how: how do you show? English teachers make it sound easy-peasy; they tell you to use creative verbs and detailed descriptions. But simply upgrading every verb and incorporating literary devices never do the trick; it only creates a word jumble. For us authors, when every character, every dialogue, and every setting makes perfect sense in our head, how do we access the readers’ perspectives and make them see the same thing?
The answer is you don’t. Now, please don’t let that destroy your self-confidence. Allow me to explain.
When Khaled Hosseini, one of my favorite authors, wrote in The Kite Runner:
“A broad entryway flanked by rose bushes led to the sprawling house of marble floors and wide windows. Intricate mosaic tiles, handpicked by Baba in Isfahan, covered the floors of the four bathrooms”
I see something different from what he intended. Another reader would see something totally different as well. Hosseini did an incredible job depicting the setting, but these two sentences are not the same as a photograph of the scene.
Having said that, what a photograph cannot capture is emotions. Hosseini couldn’t possibly make me see the same as what he imagined because we are not even twins, but he definitely elicited that childlike fascination and tingling wonder from me.
Feel, don’t see—that should be the authors’ new mantra. This rule applies to both the readers’ and the authors’ perspectives.
Feel it to write it
In my debut novel, The Oracle, it took me a month to describe Lyra climbing up to her broken chariot, but the end result was no more than 1,000 words long. Because I have been a big movie fan since I was little, I wanted to see every chapter of my book in motion—the disintegrating chariot, the neighing horses, the sweltering heat and the protagonist’s hissing wounds and pounding heart. That was a mouthful, and I realized too late that my talent was in writing and not filmmaking. I was toiling for the wrong thing.
Flat characters emerge when we only try to use visual cues, mentioning their hair color, eye color and skin color, but we avoid their idiosyncrasies— either flaws or perfections. In order to construct a full protagonist, though, we have to feel them inside of us. Lyra was a part of me for the two and a half years I spent writing this book. In that chariot race, her carelessness was me, but her stubbornness was also me. You can’t see yourself without a mirror or other method of reflection, but you can feel yourself (most of the time).
Focus on what you have access to, and this speaks also to the other characters. When so-called characterization feels like breaking yourself into fragments and sticking a piece onto every character, then you are doing it right.
The English teachers didn’t lie entirely with their “show, don’t tell” strategies. A good writer’s description varies in imagery, defined as the literary device that appeals to one’s senses.
When we place ourselves in the narrator’s shoes, we document not just our eyes’ observations but the physiological and intangible responses of our entire collection of sensory organs. There is a reason why creative writing is different from argumentative or informative writing; it requires more work from the heart rather than from the brain. When we try to rationalize the story, everything goes awry because a story isn’t supposed to and will never make 100% sense.
Go for the heart
After we’ve discussed the author’s mentality when writing, we then tackle the readers’ prospective reception. This circles back to our true occupation: a writer or a movie maker. If we are sure who we are, then we know we possess something no other art forms do: the inroads to the deepest darkest corners of human hearts.
A movie creates continuous artistic scenes; a painting shows an eternalized instant; a piece of music titillates the ears and other motor senses. Not to criticize any other forms of art, for my sister is an exceptional painter, but writing does have its special place, its niche. And though most readers can’t understand, we the producers of fictional books ought to.
Using the first line from my own book, “Icy water. Biting zephyr. Stinging eyes. Numb Skin” as an example, no reader can conceptualize a well-developed image from that, but they can feel the pain and distress of this nameless character. Eight words. That’s when we strike their heart instead of their shifting eyes.
Readers would be impressed by a nice blurb of screenwriting-style description, but they get tired after a page, a chapter, or two chapters of verbiage requiring them to visualize. Writing is never what we do for ourselves; we have diaries for that. Since we have to put the readers into consideration, let’s give them what they asked for—a serious relationship in roughly 200 pages and not a fling with cinematography.
How I blindfolded myself
For me, due to my love for movies, I struggled to obey my heart and ignore my eyes. Consequently, I started writing The Oracle when I was in eighth grade, spent over three hours every day, and finished this 85,000-word beast only after tenth grade. Even though I am still just a junior, the best advice I can give you is below:
Remember your inspiration
I had the idea for my book after watching 300; I wanted to give the beautiful oracles who gave the king prophecies a voice. With some research, I found out that the reason for their “divine ordinances” was from inhaling sweet-smelling fumes, and shortly after, when they pass out, ephors—the grotesque overseers—would then take advantage of them. That was a roundabout way to say that I had a nuanced, emotional story lodged in my throat.
Use books as research
Feelings are not permanent. When I’m writing about an ancient world foreign to my knowledge, I try to avoid searching up an image on google of “Athenian temple” and then referencing the picture. Instead, I went and checked out Anthony Everitt’s The Rise of Athens: The Story of the World’s Greatest Civilization from the library. Although nonfiction generally has longer passages of descriptions, I couldn’t see the actual Athens the book described, but I could feel its majesty and grace.
Write first, revise later
Many authors, including myself, are perfectionists. We ruminate over a single word for an hour, choose one reluctantly and change it again the next day. We are too focused on painting the wrong picture and confusing the readers that we neglected the “word of the moment.” In the second half of my writing, I’ve figured out what works for me—finish everything and then go back to the beginning for revisions. If I stop constantly to make edits, I forget the sudden inspirations, and frankly, I’ll never finish the book.
More about me
My name is Elaine Gao, and I am a junior in a high school in Oklahoma. Although I only moved to the US four years ago, English has always accompanied me like a mother language. From elementary to middle school, I was in a stage where I read 400 pages a day, all young adult fiction novels.
But at one point, I just stopped. I realized that almost all the books in these genres were written by adults trying to imagine the mindset of an adolescent. There wasn’t anything wrong with that, but I knew it was my calling to begin writing YA as a young adult.
Finishing my first book was the hardest and most beautiful task in the 16 years of my life. Sure, there were a lot of moments where I doubted myself to the point that I’d select my entire manuscript and hit “backspace” only to scramble for “undo” the next second. Somehow, though, I did it.
I know my book isn’t the next Harry Potter because I have grammar mistakes, and my pacing is spotty from time to time, but I still wish that my book and my experience can motivate the other young writers out there to give it a go.
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Love this awesome read and especially the author’s reason for writing this book!
Thanks for reading!
Elaine Gao is the type of girl that I want Ava to look up to! Congratulations Elaine on your debut novel.
She’s really hitting the ground running in her writing career.