Several people on this forum criticized (rightly) my posted fragments of "Lives in Time" with the common refrain of "show, don't tell!" Like many, I struggle with this. It's something I probably need to revise in my interpersonal manner as well; I'm wordy, and people get bored listening to me.
In an effort to resolve the situation, I took @Stormburn's advice and purchased and read a copy of "Understanding Show, Don't Tell: (And Really Getting It) (Skill Builders Series Book 1)" by Janice Hardy. It's a practical and pragmatic guide to finding and resolving instances of telling instead of showing in your fictional works.
Lucky for me, Scrivener has a feature where you can put a list of words into the search box and it finds all instances of those words in your work, highlights them, and makes a list of the documents that is easy to navigate through. In the appendix of the book, Hardy provides lists of words in categories. I used those lists to seek out opportunities for revision.
I did not, however, take her advice wholesale (and she doesn't expect her readers to do so). Sure, words like thought or realized are red flag words for places that can be revised, so this:
After the man had gone, Marko thought they ought to get to the safety of Pula's crowded streets.Becomes this:
After the man had gone, Marko wanted to get to the safety of Pula's crowded streets.
And this:
Becomes this:
Marko realized that, like him, she had come to accept that they, or at least one of them, was not dreaming.
Marko could see that, like him, she had come to accept that they, or at least one of them, was not dreaming.Small changes, but effective.
I find that leaving words like this in dialogue makes it seem more real. People don't speak formally, and wrenching streams of dialogue around so it always has that show, don't tell panache can strip it of a sense of realism.
Additionally, uses like, "Marko thought about the things that made a man civilized, and couldn’t find it in himself to set them aside" and "Now, at the docks of Rovinj, they realized that the sight of a man and a woman carrying a clearly heavy load on a pole through the streets would draw unwanted attention. appear, to me at least, valid.
In all, I found Hardy's recommendations very helpful, and look forward to reading the next book in her series. By title, at least, it appears I have need of every Skill Builders book she has written.
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