A Goodreads user
asked
Jessica Bell:
Hi Jessica! I found your profile from your review of The Slap. (I'm a teen) who's always wanted to be an author (14 now). And I have always felt a connection to "real/contemporary" books. What advice do you have for aspiring writers, improving my writing, and making these "real" themes, in my novel, more touching? Thanks
Jessica Bell
Hi Lorenzo,
Good question! I'd say the best thing to do is to study up on the "show, don't tell" technique. Through showing rather than telling, you enable readers to actually FEEL what is going on, instead of just reading about what it going on. For example, notice the difference between the following examples:
Telling:
My mother got drunk again last night and passed out on the sofa. She looks like a disgusting street bum and the house smells like vomit and cigarettes.
Showing:
I watch a glob of drool vibrate in the corner of my mother’s mouth with every breath of air that struggles through her sticky cracked lips. Strands of stiff bleach-blonde hair, clumped together and matted below her ear, look petrified with dried vomit. Her fingers twitch. She has two black nails from when she jammed them in the hinge of the alcohol cabinet door. She groans. One eye opens. A vibrant crystal blue bordered with a yellowy, bloodshot white. Her eye closes, and she sits up, blindly reaching toward the coffee table for her pack of 50s. It’s empty. She scrunches the packet and throws it across the room. It lands between an urn and an empty bottle of gin on the mantle. She opens and closes her mouth in what seems an attempt to rehydrate it, and clicks her tongue, as if tasting something foul.
Hope that helps!
Good question! I'd say the best thing to do is to study up on the "show, don't tell" technique. Through showing rather than telling, you enable readers to actually FEEL what is going on, instead of just reading about what it going on. For example, notice the difference between the following examples:
Telling:
My mother got drunk again last night and passed out on the sofa. She looks like a disgusting street bum and the house smells like vomit and cigarettes.
Showing:
I watch a glob of drool vibrate in the corner of my mother’s mouth with every breath of air that struggles through her sticky cracked lips. Strands of stiff bleach-blonde hair, clumped together and matted below her ear, look petrified with dried vomit. Her fingers twitch. She has two black nails from when she jammed them in the hinge of the alcohol cabinet door. She groans. One eye opens. A vibrant crystal blue bordered with a yellowy, bloodshot white. Her eye closes, and she sits up, blindly reaching toward the coffee table for her pack of 50s. It’s empty. She scrunches the packet and throws it across the room. It lands between an urn and an empty bottle of gin on the mantle. She opens and closes her mouth in what seems an attempt to rehydrate it, and clicks her tongue, as if tasting something foul.
Hope that helps!
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