The number one piece of feedback I give writers regardless of where they are in the writing process is:
BE SPECIFIC
Often, a sentence or a scene or the protagonist’s stakes are entirely too vague.
Vague writing only leaves readers confused, disengaged, or having to fill in the blanks based on their own experiences which may or may not be at all close to what you intended.
Specifics allow you to more accurately create emotional resonance and understanding in your reader because they can take the scene you’ve written and more accurately compare it to something in their own lives.
For instance, I may never have jumped out of an airplane, but describing what it feels like to give up control, trust the tandem diver, see the world spread out in an unnatural way before our eyes, and simply leap feels a little bit like the time I decided to move to a new town with no support system beyond my new husband because I thought it might be the right move for my career. I felt safe enough, but not truly safe. And the year that followed definitely had my world tilted.
I may also not know the physical feeling of free falling through space, but detailed descriptions may be enough for me to compare it to that roller coaster ride or turbulent flight experience. Some kind of physical touchstone I can imagine and viscerally engage with as I’m turning the pages.
But if your story says only: “Sophie jumped out of a plane on her 40th birthday,” the reader misses all that nuance and relevance and, most importantly, meaning.
Showing doesn’t necessarily mean literally showing a scene with no context (the most common mistake I see from writers who have been given the show don’t tell advice). It means using specifics and details to color in the meaning for your reader.
I know, this gets tricky. That level of showing feels like telling.
Let’s try an example:
Sophie went skydiving for her 40th birthday.
To the point. Fine. But maybe a little pedestrian. And it doesn’t show us anything about Sophie. It simply tells us what she did. We don’t know why it matters or what it means to Sophie.
What if we tried:
Sophie’s husband laughed when she announced she planned to jump from a plane for her 40th birthday. Her thirteen year old daughter barely lifted her head from her phone. Her mother insisted it was a phase, after all, remember how she’d panicked at the top of the high dive forcing her father to climb up the hot metal ladder to help her back down? But here Sophie was, strapped back to chest to a rather good looking, very blonde, muscular younger man in a black flight suit and helmet adorned with stickers to what she assumed were band names she wasn’t familiar with about to fall twelve thousand feet to the patchwork Earth below.
Better. We’ve got context. We see that maybe she’s not really being seen by her family, or at least respected. We’re told a lot, but all that telling shows us something about Sophie and maybe why she’s going skydiving.
Let’s try another example I see a lot.
“What are your plans for your birthday?” Mom asked.
“I am going skydiving,” Sophie said.
“Skydiving? But honey, you hate heights. Remember when your dad had to rescue you from the high dive in front of all your friends at Molly’s tenth birthday party? And now you are going to jump out of a plane?”
Tears pricked her eyes. “Never mind, mom. How are you?“
We can infer from her change of subject and mom’s immediate disbelief that they have a strained relationship, BUT what do Sophie’s tears mean? Is she upset at the memory of the story? Or at the lack of support from her mom? Or is the fear of heights enough to drive her to tears? There are so many blanks to fill in here and the reader doesn’t know enough to fill them in. Not even with the conversational context clues. There isn’t enough to know if she’s embarrassed, defeated, having second thoughts, or something else entirely.
What if it read something like this:
“What are your plans for your birthday?” Mom asked.
Sophie took a deep breath and announced with as much courage as she could muster: “I am going skydiving.”
“Skydiving? But honey, you hate heights. Remember when your dad had to rescue you from the high dive in front of all your friends at Molly’s tenth birthday party? And now you are going to jump out of a plane?”
Her father had rescued her. But he’d been kind, reassuring her not jumping was just as brave as jumping and backing down the ladder first as she climbed down so she was protected in the makeshift cage of his arms.
Tears pricked her eyes. Dad had been gone well over five years now and she still missed his unwavering support. He would have called her brave and wanted to be at the landing spot to greet her. Probably in a cheesy t-shirt with a target on it or something.
“Never mind, mom. How are you?“
Now the tears show us more about Sophie and where she is in life and what she may be lacking, not just that she’s feeling emotional.
Finally, here’s an example from the planning stage that may also apply to when you’re writing your query or synopsis. When I help writers plan, we dive into questions about the protagonist’s goals, motivation and stakes (hint: something you also need to be clear on in your query/synopsis). One thing I see a lot is responses like:
Joe faces a decision and is forced to change.
Ack! All the vagueness! What does any of that mean?!
What type of decision? To sacrifice his first born or to have pizza for dinner instead of chicken? Change how? His outlook, his underwear, his job? And why is he “forced” to change? Does he have a gun to his head or will lose the love of his life or his integrity?
Readers want to know. Readers need to know.
And the more specific you can be about this protagonist as a person with unique wants and needs and stakes, the better.
Do not be afraid that a unique problem will scare off a reader or not be universal enough. I don’t think many kids are getting letters from Hogwarts on their 11th birthdays revealing they are a wizard, then growing up to defeat the villain who killed their parents in order to save the world. But a whole lot of people (young and old) read, loved, and felt seen in the Harry Potter series.
Throughout the process ask yourself these questions:
- Who is your protagonist?
- What do they want?
- What do they need?
- What stands in their way?
- What is at stake if they don’t get it?
Continue to come back to them and shore them up with more specifics as you write forward and discover more about your characters. Look at your dialogue, your descriptions, your protagonist’s actions and make sure they are acting in specific ways that reveal or show the answers above.
Practice being specific from your planning to your drafting and it will make shining up those beauties in revision much easier.