Gary Bonn's Blog - Posts Tagged "show-and-tell"
Stop Indoctrinating Writers! (Or Die)
I’m really going to scream if I read another set of misleading instructions on how to write well – especially those intended to educate new writers.
As the best selling author Stephen Godden used to say (while beating me over the head) ‘There are no rules in writing – just things you can get horribly wrong!’
There are a lot of doctrines whizzing around at the moment.
‘No head-hopping! People will say you’re a poor writer and you’ll sell nothing.’
Hmm... That makes Mervyn Peake and Sir Terry Pratchett poor writers who sold nothing. Let’s chuck that rule in the bin straight away.
Never use ‘alright’.
Alright – I’ll tell the Oxford English Dictionary they’ve got it alwrong.
Don’t use adverbs.
We all hate to see adverbs used gratuitously, overly liberally and frequently. You still reading? well, you survived that sentence. Bin time again.
Seriously, (lol) I once had to disabuse one writer who thought she couldn’t even use them in dialogue.
Use show not tell
This is probably the very worst of the lot. Young adults are rumoured to like the immersion it encourages – but they’ll happily read a good story with good characters even without much in the way of show.
In ‘Expect Civilian Casualties’ I used lashings of it because Jason is an extreme and unique person and the whole point was to get inside his head and find out what was going on in there.
Ernest Hemingway wrote a whole book in which you only saw the heroine’s arm once, her hair once and that was all. I’m quoting (possibly slightly misquoting) a trusted friend here. I have no idea to which book she referred but we can probably rule out explicit erotica.
Write what you know.
So … who actually knows a pixie? OK, I know … just saying.
Right – that’s the bin full for the moment :) See you soon!
As the best selling author Stephen Godden used to say (while beating me over the head) ‘There are no rules in writing – just things you can get horribly wrong!’
There are a lot of doctrines whizzing around at the moment.
‘No head-hopping! People will say you’re a poor writer and you’ll sell nothing.’
Hmm... That makes Mervyn Peake and Sir Terry Pratchett poor writers who sold nothing. Let’s chuck that rule in the bin straight away.
Never use ‘alright’.
Alright – I’ll tell the Oxford English Dictionary they’ve got it alwrong.
Don’t use adverbs.
We all hate to see adverbs used gratuitously, overly liberally and frequently. You still reading? well, you survived that sentence. Bin time again.
Seriously, (lol) I once had to disabuse one writer who thought she couldn’t even use them in dialogue.
Use show not tell
This is probably the very worst of the lot. Young adults are rumoured to like the immersion it encourages – but they’ll happily read a good story with good characters even without much in the way of show.
In ‘Expect Civilian Casualties’ I used lashings of it because Jason is an extreme and unique person and the whole point was to get inside his head and find out what was going on in there.
Ernest Hemingway wrote a whole book in which you only saw the heroine’s arm once, her hair once and that was all. I’m quoting (possibly slightly misquoting) a trusted friend here. I have no idea to which book she referred but we can probably rule out explicit erotica.
Write what you know.
So … who actually knows a pixie? OK, I know … just saying.
Right – that’s the bin full for the moment :) See you soon!
