T.D. Severin - Award-Winning Medical Thriller Author

  This one is an axiom for all fiction writing, regardless of genre. Show Don't Tell. I fall into this trap more often than I'd like to admit, and it rears it's ugly heads in a number of ways. Narrative exposition Overuse of adverbs Horrible dialogue tags All of the above take the reader out of the story as the author insists they step in and make a point. At my writing group last night Les pointed out that three times on the first CD of the Iris Johansen book he was listening to she wrote, "She nodded her head jerkily." I don't think I've ever nodded my head jerkily. That is lazy writing. That is the author (a mega-bestseller) not taking the time to show us an action, or create a visual through her use of action, and instead relying upon the most clumsy adverb I've ever seen. Usually, Show Don't Tell, is a corollary to the first point of our Ten Point Revision Strategy; RUE, Resist the Urge to Explain. It is the author feeling that the reader is t...

For the next few posts, I wanted to go through the Ten-Point Revision Strategy, point by point, try and highlight some basic concepts and throw the whole thing open to discussion. This is my strategy, created out of need to make my novel better, but that doesn't mean it's the only strategy or necessarily complete. I'm open to amending it, changing it, rearranging it. Whatever. The goal is simply to write the best fiction we can. So once again, here's my current strategy, the one I'll be implementing as soon as I finish this post. (I'm on chapter 8 of the current re-write, by the way. I'll keep you posted of that progress also.) I want to emphasize that this applies most to the writing of thrillers and similar works, where story movement is key. Writer's of literary fiction may have different guidelines. I write about this as much to help anyone who can benefit from all that I've learned as to help myself. By going through this strategy (or any other ...