Send up the (Red) Flag: Telling Words That Often Spell Trouble in Our Writing

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

This week's refresher Friday revisits (and updates) one of my favorites--locating red flag words for telling, not showing. Enjoy!

Show, don't tell is one of those pieces of advice that nearly every writer hears at some point, and not just when we're just starting out. Even when we know how to fix it (use strong nouns and verbs), we can't always find the problem in our work to fix it.

This frustrated me back in the day, and I set off to figure out how to find told prose. After a lot of study and analyzing, I found a series of "red flag words" often found in told prose. Not every word found meant the prose that contained it was told, but when I received feedback that a section sounded told, one of these red flag words almost always appeared.

Let's look at a quick round-up of the different types of red flag words commonly found in told prose.
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com