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Writing Tip!

An easy way to tell if you’re showing instead of telling is how much you’re using is/was. My English professor explained this to me a few semesters ago, and while he just wanted varied sentence structure in my papers, it also works very well for creative writing. 

This isn’t to say that is and was are bad verbs, but rather that they are very basic and do not express anything beyond the fact that something exists. Sometimes, that’s all you need to know in a sentence, but often, the writer can make the story or the characters more engaging by explaining who someone is, what something is, where something is, when something is, why something is, or how something or someone is more powerfully by using one of a few tactics.

The first method is to use strong verbs. “Strong verbs” is a term that gets thrown around a lot, but a strong verb is simply a verb that explains what action is happening as clearly as possibly. For instance, when one “jumps” off the diving board, the reader doesn’t know how the person jumped, but the reader will be able to more clearly see the action if you write “she dove” or “he cannonballed” or “she belly-flopped.” Be aware of who is reading your writing and who the narrator is. In general, if your target demographic probably doesn’t know the word or if your narrator wouldn’t know the word, use a simpler, less precise verb and use adverbs to make it specific.

Another way is to show why the narrator was saying “it is/she was/there is” in the first place. Think of the is/was statement as the disease. You want your reader to guess the disease, so you start describing symptoms. For instance, “She is mourning her husband.” vs. “She stared at the empty seat at the table, unfazed by her mother’s repeated attempts to get her attention.” This way is more rambly than just swapping boring verbs for strong verbs, but it is a good way to show the narrator’s experience in life, the narrator’s biases, the narrator’s emotional state, etc. 

One other way is to make the object of the sentence the subject instead. This just means that whatever “is/was” is now what the sentence is about. This is a simple fix in cases when the object is doing something in the sentence. Instead of “There was a ball rolling past her feet.” write “A ball rolled past her feet.”

Let me illustrate:

How you can use varied word choice to show who is being talked about:

Bland: Jason’s dad was standing in front of Jason. 

Engaging: His dad loomed over him.

By using a stronger verb, the more hostile loomed, the reader gets a better idea of who Jason’s dad is and how Jason feels about him.

How you can use varied word choice to show who is talking:

Bland: Macy was sitting at the edge of her seat.

Engaging: Macy balanced very carefully at the very edge of the seat so her feet could touch the floor, because Macy was a very big girl now.

The POV character is a young girl at an age where she wants to be perceived as older than the height of chair legs and the lack of height of her own legs will let her be. She also refers unironically to herself as a big girl in her own thoughts, something grownups generally do not do. By expanding on the reason for the action instead of the action itself and with careful word choice, you can set the tone of the character and of the story.

How you can use varied word choice to show what something is:

Bland: That is a tree branch blowing against the window.

Still bland but better: A tree branch blew against the window.

Engaging: The branch smacked against the window. 

This is an example of taking the object (the thing in the sentence that the verb is happening to) in this case “branch” and make it the subject. In the still bland but better version of the sentence, the fact that the tree branch is blowing against the window is obvious, but that doesn’t tell us anything about how the narrator feels about what the tree branch is doing. That tells us what, but it does not tell us what the character feels about this thing. Smacked is a more violent, sudden, startling verb that communicates suddenness, surprise, and unease.

How you can use varied word choice to show where something is:

Bland: The phone was on the far side of the nightstand. 

Engaging: She flopped an arm blindly across the nightstand, but her fingers hit empty air just shy of the faint glow of her phone.

The engaging version of this sentence tells you more about the character’s mental state, fatigued, while also communicating where the phone is. Also, using a more descriptive word like flopped gives the reader a clearer mental image of what is physically happening in the scene.

How you can use varied word choice to show when something is set:

Bland: It was the early two thousands.

Engaging: Jana looked around the room and saw many a teenage male heinie, but not a belt among them.

Noting fashion trends, like sagging pants or hoop skirts, can reinforce the time period that you’re writing in and how the narrator fits or does not fit into that time period.

How you can use varied word choice to show when (what time) something is:

Bland: It was seven P.M. on a summer night.

Engaging: He watched the sun dip below the far reaches of the ocean as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

The engaging version of this sentence uses a few details to show about what time and when in the year this sentence takes place: it is sunset, so the exact time isn’t stated, but the rough time is implied; the ocean does exist at times of the year when humans aren’t on it as much (and here I though the entire state of Hawaii disappeared between September and April) but most readers will associate the beach with summer; and if the reader didn’t get the clue about the traditionally seasonal location, it is hot enough to make the main character sweat. 

How you can use varied word choice to show why the narrator believes something:

Bland: Kai is a good friend.

Engaging: Kai held her hair away from her face as she threw up into the toilet bowl for the fourth time that night.

Anyone can say anything about anyone else, but the best way to get a reader to like a character, an idea, or a thing is to show them why they should like that thing. Instead of making bland moral claims like “Love is stronger than hate.” tell me how the Samaritan stopped to save the Jew, or how the enemies put aside their differences to protect what they care about. Instead of saying “He was scared of his dad.” show me the beer cans and the slurred speech, show me the belt falling and the voice yelling. Show the reader why.

How you can use varied word choice to show how something is:

Bland: The woman was looking at him.

Engaging: The woman ogled him.

Strong verbs again! Use strong verbs that are emotionally charged when you’re talking about emotionally charged situations! Being ogled is an uncomfortable sensation for the person being ogled, and it also shows disrespect on the part of the person ogling. 

Keep in mind that these are guidelines! Sometimes is is the best word for the job, and don’t stress if you have a lot of is/was in your stories. Just because they’re bland doesn’t mean that sometimes you need bland verbs to communicate what you want to communicate. Still, you don’t want vagueness to be your crutch, either. Practice showing instead of telling when showing is more important, but have fun with it! Besides, you can always edit whatever you hate or are unsure of now sometime later. 

Don’t sweat! Go write awesome papers and stories!

It starts in Paris.

“You can’t steal things just because you like them,” Sam tells Bucky, feeling innately that this is a losing battle, and Bucky cocks his head to the side, considers Sam very thoughtfully.

“Really,” he says. “I’m stealing you, aren’t I?”

hello, here is that long painfully slow-burning Sam-centric fic that’s been killing me for the last month. 33.5k words spanning from post-Winter Soldier to… well, to A Time. featuring art theft, meaningful conversation in hotel rooms, burning undercurrents of tension, Steve Rogers being Steve Rogers, moments of softness and breathless stillness. have fun. I’m dead.

Outlining Resources

Nanowrimo Prep Workbook (outlining: session 3, page 19)

Choosing the Best Outlining Method for You

Outline Your Story Like a Subway Map

How to Build a Plot from an Idea

How to Build a Plot from Characters/Setting

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~Grand List of Writing Resources~

advice of the day: let your rough draft be shitty. Let it be full of corner notes of “I dont know what the fuck this means” and “expand on this later” let it have jumps and spelling errors and weird descriptions! It will help you get to that beautiful final draft so much more than getting frustrated and deleting all of it because you refuse to let yourself write “poorly”

dont get mad at cakebatter for not being a finished cake when you haven’t put it in the oven yet! It’s all apart of the process. 

Master List: Motivation

Guide: Dealing with Self-Doubt & Impostor Syndrome Guide: How to Rekindle Your Motivation to Write Guide: Filling Your Creative Well 5 Reasons You Lost Interest in Your WIP, Plus Fixes! Would Rather Be Doing Other Things Feeling Unmotivated with WIP Getting Unstuck: Motivation Beyond Mood Boards & Playlists Writing and Depression Trouble Getting Started Getting Your Writing Magic Back After a Break Building Confidence in Your Writing Even When You Suck Writer’s Block Have Plot, Can’t Write Concentrate on Quantity at First, Not Quality Want to Write but Can’t Come Up with a Plot How Do You Know if Your Story is Good Getting Excited About Your Story Again It’s Never Too Late to Become a Writer Comparing Self to Others, Insecure About Writing

Writing Related Fears:

Overcoming Embarrassment Over Own Writing Getting Over Fear of Comparison Diversifying a Story That’s Similar to Existing Story Stopped by Fear of Editing Worried About Writing Style Delaying Writing Out of Fear Finding the Courage to Share for the First Time Afraid of Looking Back and Seeing Bad Writing Afraid of Ideas Being Stolen or Copied Once Shared Afraid of Openly Sharing Writing

Creating Fictional Holidays

Every culture and society has holidays! They are often one of the most enjoyable parts of societies and bring people together despite all of their differences. For your story, they are a great way to take your worldbuilding to the next level and make everything feel that much more real. But, Ailey, why does my world even need holidays? Well, personally, holidays are so much fun to create. You can pretty much do whatever you want to do! And, holidays can often provide great opportunitiesfor plots and sub-plots in your story. Holidays can give your characters the opportunity to gather with family, remember the family they lost, get a great deal on a super cute maxi dress, go on a blind date, or go to an awesome costume party. We, as people, need holidays, and so do your characters! So here are some tips on creating holidays for your world. 

Basic Questions to Ask Yourself

What are the rituals/traditions of your holiday?

How long is the holiday (just a day, or a week, or a month)?

If the holiday is longer than a day, does it build up? Is there a most important day, and how does that look?

How does religion influence how your holiday is celebrated?

What food is traditionally served?

How do people decorate to symbolize the holiday?

Are there gifts exchanged?

Do people traditionally play games?

Getting Inspiration

The best place to get inspiration for the holidays in your world is by looking at the world around you. Maybe your family has a super cool and quirky tradition that you always wished was a holiday, tweak it a little to fit the circumstances of your world, and boom now it is. Those traditions are important to you for a reason, and often times, family traditions can eventually morph into a national holiday. Outside of that, I would look at the holidays of both modern and national holidays. Ancient Rome and Ancient Greek have plenty of holidays for you to get inspiration from, and there are so many cultures out there that have incredible traditions that you can most certainly turn into holidays! Almost every holiday is rooted in one of five things which we’ll get to next religion, a season, war, labor, and the government. Make sure that applies to your own world as well. 

 Types of Holidays

Religious Holidays: Your world probably has a primary religion or primary religions. Every religion has holidays that they celebrate to celebrate their god or gods and show their devotion to them. For religious holidays, sacrifice and atonement often play a huge role. Lots of religious holidays include fasting in some part of them. Maybe, there’s a holy person who founded the religion or did something super important and all the people love them. Well then they probably have a holiday or a feast of some kind in their honor. For example, in Catholicism, Saints have Feast Days! I don’t think anyone celebrates every Saint’s Feast Day because that would be like every day of the year. Some people, especially those who live in the Saint’s home town or an area which they are the patron of, have a parade or small festival in their honor on the Feast Day. On the Feast Day of my patron Saint, St. Francis de Sales, I normally will pray a novena which is a prayer you say for nine consecutive days timed so that it ends on his Feast Day, light a candle, say another prayer specific to him on the feast day and maybe bake myself a batch of cookies. 

Seasonal Holidays: Seasons are so important to our world, and lots of cultures celebrate them. Lot of important events rotate around the seasons: harvest, planting, fertility, hunting, hibernation. They mark our journey in life, year after year, and allow us to reflect on all of life’s changes. How your people celebrate seasonality is up to you. You could fashion it after holidays like the Summer and Winter Solstice or the Autumn Equinox. A holiday celebrating summer in my world takes some inspiration from May Day celebrations in England. The holiday could literally be as simple as a festival that celebrates the season’s arrival which could be really interesting if your world has different seasons than ours. Or the holidays could be more complex, tying in cultural values with the seasons. I, personally, would love to see a world with different seasons for a world that has more than four seasons because I think that could bring in some really cool holidays and festivals

War/Government Holidays:  There was most likely a war or a series of wars in the history of your world. People love freedom. It’s a core value for so many people and so many countries. Therefore, most countries like to have a holiday celebrating the day they won their freedom. Almost every country has some kind of Independence Day celebration. If your country has never had to gain their independence, they’ve probably still fought and won a war before. They may celebrate their victory and take the time to remember those who died during the war like many European countries on Victory in Europe Day to celebrate the End of World War 2.  Then you have your government holidays like Presidents Day in the US which isn’t really celebrated, but I do get a day off of school, so that’s always nice. Maybe the ruler of your country has decreed that their birthday is a national holiday in honor of them. Or going along with holiday’s celebrating independence, maybe the country celebrates the birthday of their founder every year in a national holiday! 

Labor Holidays: And lastly, we have our labor holidays, which are some of the best holidays in my opinion. Everyone needs a break at times. Labor holidays acknowledge that, and they give you the day off with absolutely zero strings attached. No church, no war to hold remembrance for, just a party with your friends, no school and no work. These holidays are not the best but also probably some of the most important. If the people in your world work five days a week (assuming weekends and a similar calendar schedule) without any long breaks, they are going to get burnt out. Burnt out people are easily irritable, and easily irritable people lead revolutions. Giving your people a holiday where they don’t have to think about anything else other than themselves is a great way to keep the people appeased! 

How do you find a balance between “show, don’t tell” and “readers might not catch/understand this subtle concept or showing it would be too convoluted or more open to interpretation than it needs to be”? It doesn’t help that everyone encourages more showing even if it swallowing little details that are supposed to stand out. Basically, I feel like I overthink my showing as being too tell-y even when it already has several layers of meaning and is already too dense for average readers.

“Show don’t tell” resources & advice...

I think people often mistake the advice of “show don’t tell” as being in the interest of making one’s writing more literary; more “high art” than candid prose typically is. The advice is intended to help one recognize when their prose is becoming dull or unengaging to the reader. Showing is supposed to promote an organically flowing reading experience, rather than turn the writing into a flowery, pretentious, and unintelligible mess. Finding a satisfying way to deliver information in the text that isn’t “I felt” or “I thought” is important. It should never dilute the information. Clarity comes first, and then one can configure the sentence to add as much richness to the reader’s ability to immerse themselves as possible. 

If the desire is to show that the character is sad, writing that “she looked down at the floor and wrapped her arms around her own waist” is not going to be any less indicative of that information than “she felt sad”. That is the point of this advice. It is not a way for one to convert information into a code that the reader must analyze in order to comprehend the basic idea of what the scenes are about. This isn’t 1597, and nobody is asking anyone to be Shakespeare. 

Density of a piece of writing does not give it inherent worth. Ease of comprehension doesn’t always have to be the number one priority, but it should be a considerable factor when one accounts for their audience and their subject matter. If one is writing a young adult fantasy trilogy, the density of the writing should be adherent to the demographic’s ability to comprehend certain writing styles. “Show, don’t tell” applies to all writing, but different writers interpret it differently, often based on who they’re writing for. If the concept you’re trying to convey to the reader in a subtle manner is not coming across without blurting it out in the text, perhaps the problem isn’t the way you’re describing it, but the concept is weak in its current state. 

Easily misinterpreted meanings or concepts are often not the victim of descriptive style, but being underdeveloped sub textually. No important concept can be described once within a dense text and expected to translate as intended into the reader’s understanding. If it’s important enough to the bones of your story and meaning, it shouldn’t rely on the manner of description to shine through. Sometimes the density of a text is a product of too much intentional symbolism or motif. It’s okay to allow some things to be meaningful purely in interpretation. It’s okay to acknowledge that you allowed something that obviously implies meaning to be prescribed its implications by the readers. 

Here are some of my other resources on the topic that you may find helpful:

Resources For Describing Characters

Resources For Describing Emotion

Conveying Emotions

All About Colors

A Writer’s Thesaurus

Showing VS Telling in First Person POV

Using Vocabulary

Balancing Detail & Development

+ When To Use “Felt”

Showing Vs Telling

How To Better Your Vocabulary & Description

Describing emotion through action

Improving Flow In Writing

How To “Show Don’t Tell” More

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Masterlist | WIP Blog

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Writing advice from my uni teachers:

If your dialog feels flat, rewrite the scene pretending the characters cannot at any cost say exactly what they mean. No one says “I’m mad” but they can say it in 100 other ways.

Wrote a chapter but you dislike it? Rewrite it again from memory. That way you’re only remembering the main parts and can fill in extra details. My teacher who was a playwright literally writes every single script twice because of this.

Don’t overuse metaphors, or they lose their potency. Limit yourself.

Before you write your novel, write a page of anything from your characters POV so you can get their voice right. Do this for every main character introduced.

Okay but why aren’t more people talking about that fact that it’s literally so helpful to put together a playlist based on whatever you’re writing?

It can help for multiple reasons; ones for me would be:

It helps me outline where the story is going

It makes it feel a little more official; like I’ve got my head in the game and there’s no point in turning back now

It gives me a little sense of accomplishment

It gives me something to listen to while writing that’s less likely to distract me; and if it does, the lyrics will only help me imagine the story more

Like- 10000/10 so helpful 100% recommended this, especially if you have attention span issues or if you end up giving up on something if dopamine takes too long to come from it