Hey everyone! It’s so great to be back again for another weeks post. I’m glad that I was able to make another weeks post on time. I’ve been working on my buffer of posts so I’ll finally be caught up and even a little ahead on posts for the next little while. I hope that this will help me to remember to keep up to date. I’m also planning out schedules and notes for myself to help me remember when to blog and how to best blog. I can’t wait to get these posts out to you all. Don’t forget to subscribe, become a member, and share my posts. Without further ado …
Small Skills: Reveal, Don’t Describe
This week’s small skill is something that I like to call Reveal, Don’t Describe. I’m hoping nobody gets this confused with Show, Don’t Tell. It’s not quite the same thing. Show, Don’t Tell is more about the setting or scene of a story. You need to show the details and help the reader understand and not just tell the reader what it looks like. This concept is a little similar but it isn’t used for scene and setting. It’s used more for plot points and characters. So I’m going to explain the concept of Reveal, Don’t Describe in relation to each of those elements.
First, plot points. Basically Reveal, Don’t Describe essentially means plot twists. But not just plot twists. It means major plot twists. I once had plot twists explained to me this way. There are two kinds of plot twists. The first kind are called author made plot twists, the second kind are character made plot twists. Both are good and create interesting plot twists but only character made plot twists really follow the concept of Reveal, Don’t Describe.
First let me explain the differences between author made plot twists and character made plot twists. In author made plot twists they are a little more planned into the story. They are something that the author decided. Often, for plotters, these are plot twists they plan into the story early on to get to a different point that they want to make. Often, for pantsers, these are plot twists that they just decide need to happen because they lost the thread of the story. For example, maybe I’m writing a romance novel. I’m getting a little bored with the story. I’m not exactly sure where I’m going to take the story next. My characters have already gone through all the pre dating issues and they’ve recently gotten together. I need something new and exciting to do. Maybe I simply pull up my list of romance novel plot twists, pick a random one, and build the story around it. This is an author made plot twists. It’s thought of and written into the story by the author. These can still be done really well and I’m not saying that author made plot twists don’t work, because they do. These are 99% of the time the plot twists that I end up with. But these aren’t the skill that I’m trying to explain. That skill is Reveal, Don’t Describe. Following Reveal, Don’t Describe the plot twist would be something hinted at and then revealed slowly as the story goes along not simply something that happens and then the characters are trying to explain to the reader how that happened.
The second kind of plot twist is a character made plot twist. These are hard to predict and even harder to write. Character made plot twists are made by the characters. This might sound strange to some people. ‘Our characters are fictional people how can they create a plot twist?’ Well if we think about it logically we are trying to make our characters as human as possible. If our characters are human then there should be plot twists that are caused simply by human nature. Sometimes humans do unpredictable things. A character made plot twist, therefore, is a plot twist that is caused by the character doing something unexpected. By unexpected I don’t mean that they do something out of character because when it comes down to it, no one really does anything out of character. They need some form of motivation for it to happen. When I say unexpected I mean they did something to choose a third option in a situation that the reader didn’t see. I say that these are very hard to write because the writer has to think really hard. They have to think from outside the situation. Are there more than the 2 obvious choices to this situation? If there are, how can my character come to that conclusion and act on the third choice? How would they discover this third choice while still following their basic character motivation?
This kind of plot twist makes Reveal, Don’t Describe a little easier. Because you as the author aren’t creating the plot twist but simply discovering it there is no need to go back through the story and rewrite sections to hint at the new plot twist. Those hints already exist in some form or another because you aren’t creating a third option, you’re just discovering it. What makes this hard is being able to think in the subjective and objective at the same time to discover the third option or the plot twist.
The second element of a story that Reveal, Don’t Describe applies to is characters. To be honest, even after my hiatus I’m not exactly sure how to explain this one. Characters are complex, they need to be relatable, they need to be human, they need to be malleable for the writer. Characters need to be a lot of things some of them almost seem contradictory. One thing about a character is that things often need to be revealed about characters as you go along. When it comes to personality this is something that different authors reveal in different ways. As far as I can tell there is no pattern to how people reveal characters personalities. I would love to hear from anyone if they know of any specific examples of Reveal, Don’t Describe in a characters personalities that follow a specific pattern. When it comes to the appearance of a character this skill is easier to explain.
Have you ever read a story where the flow of the content is ruined by a misplaced description. The writer sticks in a long, paragraph, out of story description of a character. This paragraph is, when it comes to writing basics, something important to include. Your readers need to know what your characters look like. I have previously written a great example about this in an earlier post from my Secrets of Plot series and so I’m going to reuse this example.
Something hit me in the back of the head. I turned around to see Tom laughing, surrounded by acorns that had fallen off of the nearby tree. I stuck my hands on my hips.
“Rude!” I yelled at him
“Funny!” He yelled back as he ran past me and towards the school building.
I rolled my eyes. Ugh. Tom is so annoying. He’s too tall, he’s too strong and he’s too blonde. I on the other hand was a beautiful mixture of tan skin, dark auburn hair and striking green eyes. When I smiled I had small dimples that I thought were very cute. My clothes were always stylish. I looked down at my skinny jeans, band shirt and converse. Oh yeah. Always stylish. There were parts of me I didn’t like. My too long, too sharp nose. The freckles on the top of my nose and along the top of my cheek bones. My eyes drooped too much in the corners and my eyebrows never cooperated with my makeup. I shook my head, lifting myself out of my reverie.
This part of the story was important. We needed to get a feel for the basic personality types of our characters and their appearances so we could place them in our mind. It’s good, it’s done well. But what we really want is for the description of our character to NOT take us away from the flow of the story. This is hard to do (which is why I’m reusing a previous example and not writing a new one. Haha. 😊 ) But here is the better example of the same scene.
I looked up at the azure sky with the wispy white clouds floating across it. Autumn was my favorite time of the year. The leaves matched my auburn hair and my skin that had become a little darker than I liked over the summer started to mellow back out into a nice tan. I was so busy looking up at the sky that I missed the acorns scattered across the ground. I stumbled, catching a glimpse of my black converse as I fell, my body meeting the ground with a small thump. I didn’t have enough weight with my 4 feet 9-inch frame to make much more of a noise with my landing. I pushed myself up grumbling. I glanced down at my green skinny jeans and purple band shirt and groaned. A small berry had been squished onto my shirt. Great. My stylish outfit had been ruined.
Something hit me in the back of the head. I turned around to see Tom laughing, surrounded by the acorns I had tripped on.
“Rude!” I yelled at him.
He ran past me still laughing, his slightly longer blonde hair whipping in the air as he ran past. I would have grabbed a length of hair and yanked on it for revenge, but he was too tall. I couldn’t even reach his shoulder, much less his hair. Quarterbacks are so annoying.
“Funny!” He yelled over his shoulder as he reached the parking lot and jogged his way up the front steps. I sighed, my autumn day already not going how I wanted it to, and followed him into my fourth week of senior year.
It’s a little bit longer. But hey, it gets the point across better. The second example reveals. It doesn’t describe. It’s a much better written section and the flow continues without destroying our storyline.
Reveal, Don’t Describe is semi hard skill to master and it’s a skill that a lot of writers don’t really go in-depth into. I hope this was helpful and that you were actually able to understand what I meant and what I was trying to get to. I’m hoping that everyone is able to learn and grow from this series and try out and practice some new skills. I know that I super struggle with character made plot twists, I don’t spend enough time mulling over my story and seeing the third options. I hope to get better at this as the years go by.
Thank you all for tuning in. Don’t forget to pop by next week for my post on Hint, Don’t Explain. I’m hoping that these last few concepts are explained well and that you all find them just as interesting to read as I found them to write. That wraps up this post. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, comment, and share. And don’t forget…
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!
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