Sharing this for all of my writing friends… May it help in your quest to convey as much as possible in as few words as possible. 🙂
One of the things they always tell writers to do is show and not tell. “Don’t Tell Me the Moon Is Shining; Show Me the Glint of Light on Broken Glass” to paraphrase playwright Anton Chekov. Chekov was talking about describing the world, but here’s another way you can use that show-not-tell: to describe your characters using only their dialogue and body language.
It’s certainly one of my favourite ways of doing it. Here are some snips from my own Eight Mile Island:
Mum comes out onto the deck from the cabin behind me and weaves along it towards me. …
“Dylan?”
I ignore her for a minute, pretending not to hear my name until she says it louder. I turn from the waves and face her. “What?”
“You’ve got to come inside. You’ll be washed away.”
“So?”
“Please, Dylan. Don’t start. Not today.”
And these are the first…
View original post 1,143 more words
K.E. Wilkinson 