Showing not telling, rewrite and word counts

11 July

There’s a saying within writing circles that goes, ‘show, don’t tell’ your story. I have been really struggling with this one, simply because I can’t seem to get my head around the difference between them. Let’s face it, a story teller ‘tells a story’, so surely that is exactly what a writer does, yes? No actually, it seems that is not what a writer does. And there lies my confusion; so yesterday I asked on Facebook about it. Here’s the first reply from Janet Scrivens …

‘This is telling:- Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. This is showing:- Jack gently took hold of Jill's hand and led her up the rocky path towards the well. He felt the softness of her skin and smelled the perfume from her beautiful blonde hair as it wafted in the breeze …’

This is going to cost me a lot of time in re-writes I think. But I wonder; where have I actually seen writing like this anywhere? I can’t actually remember seeing any. Right now for instance, I’m halfway through Galbraith’s The Silkworm, and I don’t remember any such writing in there. I’ve just pulled a Rankin of the shelf that I read years ago and quickly scanned the first few wrodpages, and didn’t find any. And here’s another for instance …

My first novel, The Mission was read through by an editor who made no mention of telling and showing. Even so, he rated it as either a 4 or 5 star novel. He didn’t mention a couple of items which I have corrected though.

You non-writer readers might be wondering why I’m asking; well, it was something that was picked up in the free extract edit I had done. The result of that is that edit I read through the whole thing again, and still didn’t pick up any of it. What I was doing was correcting the other items they had picked up. Now I shall have to go through the whole thing again.

The other thing I am thinking about with this issue, is the word count. Shipshape is currently at 53,000 words. That will more than likely increase a goodly amount by a rewrite. The base 50,000 words was my NANOWRIMO effort from last November (this is a challenge to write a novel of 50,000 words during November.) I suppose I shall have to go back to it again now if I really want it to go anywhere.

Yesterday I mentioned that a store in the town centre was the scene of a fire the other day. It seems that it was arson; a 15 year old girl has been arrested for it and bailed until 30 August. We were on town yesterday, right opposite the store and I forgot all about. The result is that I didn’t get any photos of the state of the building as it currently is. The pub next door has been forced to close as well because of the fire. What is it about these nutters that causes them to set fire to things?

So today’s photo then is … 

An angle iron church in the centre of Glastonbury.

And today’s funny …

When I was in high school I was shocked when my uncle passed away so suddenly in his prime. I was telling my friend John, how hard it was that it happened so suddenly, when he tells me, “oh, my uncle knew exactly what day and what time he was going to die!!!” I ask, “wow, that’s so cool how did that happen?” He smirks and replies, ” the judge told him!!!”