Show and Tell

One of the most consistent mistakes I made, as I wrote The Prophecy, was telling and not showing. Of course I wasn’t aware of this until I started working with my editor. It is a trap that is easy to get into because as a new author I was in such a hurry to tell you my story. It was also a pitfall in the way I write, in that the movie is playing in my mind and I am just trying to stay up with the story. I hear the dialogue but instead of putting the dialogue on paper, I would have the tendency to tell you what they were saying. (I really just didn’t want you to miss anything.) Unfortunately, as I later learned, you were missing everything.
For example:
Anaterri could sense that something was wrong with Leandro. He’d been unusually quiet during their walk. Not sure if she’d upset him or if his injuries were being troublesome she continued on. (This was the whole scene as it was initially written. Now that tells you something about their walk and you certainly get the picture that Leandro is bothered. But what if it went something more like this:)
Anaterri could sense that something was wrong with Leandro. “M’Lord, you are unusually quiet today, is there something wrong?”
“I have been thinking of how to present you to my parents,” he replied quietly.
“That is not necessary, M’Lord. I can return to my cottage and you can return to the castle.”
“No,” he snapped, “I won’t live without you. It’s…it’s just what to tell them.”
“The truth, M’Lord,” she responded as she turned to him.
“The truth?” he quipped, “Oh yes, the truth. Mother, Father, I would like you to meet Anaterri…sorry I don’t know her last name…”
“Strayarth, M’Lord. My last name is Strayarth.”
“Uh, yes. Anaterri Strayarth, she is the one that saved my life. She is a blue dragon that gave me her blood and now I am a dragon too. Gosh, that was simple.”

And of course the scene continues on. It was only until my editor pointed this out, sometimes time and time again, that I was able to start thinking in the mode of showing and not telling. Again, the value of a good editor is not only to help you with the common mistakes but, in the case of a new author, to also help you develop from being a story “teller” into someone that can show the story through the eyes of your characters.