Although writing is often called story-telling, it should actually be renamed story-showing. And that’s done through dramatization, so that the reader has a sense that he or she is living the experience instead of just reading about it. We need to drop into your characters and experience the world and their reactions to it as they do.
As Oakley Hall says, “What is not rendered, dramatized, is merely reported. Thus it is secondhand. It does not happen before the reader. He is only told about it after the fact. What is not shown is merely told. What is rendered will sprint to life off the page and capture the reader’s emotions. What is merely stated, reported, told, is inert, dead matter.”
How do you allow the reader to share an experience with you and bring it to life instead of simply reporting the experience? You make the scene active.
One way to do that is through dialog.
Another is through action.
A third is through detail, both in terms of descriptions and in terms of characters’ emotions. You want to emphasize the details and let them speak for themselves. Writing that a mother disapproved of her daughter’s hair, for example, is not as strong as showing that disapproval—the emotions that crossed her face, the way she tugged at the girl’s hair as she wrestled it into the rag curlers, etc. Similarly, writing that a man felt unaccepted by his peers is not as strong as letting the reader share his loneliness and feelings of rejection.
In short, telling your readers that something is painful evokes nothing—no image, no reaction. Describing that pain—or any other physical or emotional state—in a way that readers can experience and/or relate to allows them to participate and become part of the story instead of simply being spectators.
So remember this simple rule when writing fiction: Show Don’t Tell. When you write your story, don’t just settle for story-telling. Go for story-showing.
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