I think this week's blog will probably be on the shorter side; I don't feel like I have too much to share this week.
Last week's group meeting was very helpful because I got some really great feedback from Mia, Tessa, and Heidi on my first 10 pages. I think the common piece of advice from the three of them was to "show not tell." They were much more drawn into my actual scenes, as opposed to my omniscient narrations in the piece. I really need to work on letting the moments and the characters speak for themselves and let the reader see and feel things on their own instead of me kind of telling them how to feel and react. And this has been a common thread throughout all of my writings in the workshops I've taken. I do a lot more 'telling' than I do 'showing' in my pieces. I think I just get so focused on what I felt in certain moments or what my characters are feeling and making sure that the readers know it, that I tend to tell them exactly what is being felt so nothing gets lost in translation.
So that's going to be my main focus as I continue writing and revising more of my thesis in the coming weeks.
I can relate! I have a lot of moments in my thesis right now that Margaret pointed out were more like "placeholders" waiting for a scene to develop them. I have rather poetic writing that can be confusing for people to follow sometimes, so when I come to a plot point that's crucial for the story I tend to over-correct and tell rather than show. My revision process will also be a lot of bringing these too types of writing to a happy medium, the parts that are too showy and the parts that tell flatly.
ReplyDeleteI;m struggling with this this week as well! It's hard to balance the telling when part of the story is your own experience, one that maybe only happened in your head. How can you show what didn't happen but was thought? Tough stuff.
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