Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation

Talking about show vs tell at the scene level is a little bit harder than talking about it at the paragraph and scene levels.

But it’s also a tiny bit easier.

When you’re looking for telling at this level of the story, what you’re looking for is a couple of things:

You can have bits of these things in your stories. Where us authors get into trouble is when we have a lot of it and we have a lot of it in telling language.

So, that really happens when we do this:

Bud Godzilla looked down on his sweet friend turned zombie. They’d been friends forever, so this hurt. Three page description of how they met – info dump or backstory

Or:

Bud Godzilla looked down on his sweet friend turned zombie. They’d been friends forever, so this hurt. Three page scene of how they met – flashback.

You usually want to limit these places and instead sprinkle in action/dialogue/details throughout to help the readers understand that the characters have history or the world exists before the book begins.

There’s a balance between telling too much and too little. You want the reader to anticipate that something cool is going to happen or has happened, but you don’t want to leave them confused or knowing way too much.

You know how sometimes you’ll be on the plane and the person will not stop talking for six hours about their boil, their aunts’ piano obsessions, their dinner plans while you just want to finish watching the inflight movie? That’s what happens with those paragraphs of backstory, flashbacks and info dumping.

Everything is paused. The stakes are gone. And when that happens? You risk losing your reader completely.

Pogie says keep your eyes on the prize, my friend, and laugh.

This comes from the Writing Cooperative and it's really about how to spot your info dump, which is an exercise.

"Once you spot an info-dump, ask yourself the following questions:

The Blue Mountain Review launched from Athens, Georgia in 2015 with the mantra, “We’re all south of somewhere.” As a journal of culture, the BMR strives to represent all life through its stories. Stories are vital to our survival. What we sing saves the soul. Our goal is to preserve and promote lives told well through prose, poetry, music, and the visual arts. We’ve published work from and interviews with Jericho Brown, Kelli Russell Agodon, Robert Pinsky, Rising Appalachia, Turkuaz, Michel Stone, Michael Flohr, Lee Herrick, Chen Chen, Michael Cudlitz, Pat Metheny, Melissa Studdard, Lyrics Born, Terry Kay, and Christopher Moore. bluemountainreview.submittable.com/submit

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

https://gizmodo.com/another-ufo-report-is-a-bust-so-why-do-so-many-people-1851331674

https://www.singularfortean.com/news/2024/3/7/search-for-crashed-object-is-one-of-the-largest-ufo-search-operations-in-the-history-of-norway-investigator-says

Babe,

I know you don’t want to talk about showing vs telling any longer, our massive series, but it’s really really important. It’s sunk many a cool book idea, stopped others in its tracks. It is a chaos agent in the life of many a good writer. And there are so many damn facets to it. I could fill a year of podcasts talking about it.

Don’t worry, I won’t.

But I would be remiss—no, we would be remiss—if we didn’t give people a couple more hints about how to locate told prose in their own text.

Here’s the thing. Told prose happens at three major levels:

And there’s different ways of hunting it out for each type.

Let’s talk about the sentence level. At this level, telling language is usually explaining language. The question most writers have is how to find it. Janice Hardy wrote Understanding Show Don’t Tell and she has a lovely breakdown of this at the sentence level.

Explains why a character is motivated to do something.

Words to look for: to, when, because

Example: Bud Godzilla ran over to Hammy the Hamster because he loved Hammy so much and wanted to hug him.

How to revise it: “I love you!” Bud Godzilla screamed, running to Hammy. “Let’s hug!”

Explains that a feeling is happening, usually by saying the feeling itself.

Words to look for: Any emotion words; felt

Example: Bud Godzilla felt pretty darn happy to see Hammy.

How to revise it:  Bud Godzilla’s heart pitter pattered. Hammy was here! Right here! With him!

Explains thoughts without being immersed in the thought itself.

Words to look for: realized, believed, hoped, wondered, thought

Example: Bud Godzilla believed that if he could just hug Hammy gently enough and maybe give him some pizza, Hammy would love him, too.

How to revise it:  He’d hug Hammy gently. Maybe give him some pizza. Then, Hammy would love him, too.

Explains stuff before it happens or is just a little too detailed about what’s happening.

Words to look for: by, since, before, after, when.

Example #1: Before Bud Godzilla could hug Hammy, Hammy coughed up phlegm all over the floor.

How to revise it:  Hammy’s body heaved, shaking. “Bud! Don’t come closer!”

Bud stepped forward, arms open. “But, what’s—”

Phlegm spewed out of Hammy’s mouth. “Told you. Zombie bit me. Two hours ago.”

Example #2: Bud Godzilla sat in the car while Hammy got out of it. Hammy shut the door behind him, walked around the front of the car, hit the key fob to unlock Godzilla’s door, then reached out his hand and pressed the door handle, pulling it up and also pulling the door toward him so that it would open and Godzilla could get out.

How to revise it:  Hammy and Bud got out of the damn car. I have no idea how Godzilla fit in it or how Hammy touched the wheel but whatever.

Explains what’s about to be sensed. I usually call this distancing language.

Words to look for: saw, heard, felt, smelled, watched, seemed, looked, ah, so many!

Example: Godzilla could see that Hammy had turned into a zombie. Godzilla felt sad.

How to revise it:  Hammy’s mouth gawped open. “Brains. Need more brains.” 

Live in passive sentences. What’s that? It’s when the subject of the sentence isn’t doing the important work of the sentence.

Words to look for: was + verb; is being + verb, by (sometimes)

Example: Hammy was pushed into the roadway by the radioactive pepperoni pizza breath of Godzilla.

How to revise it:  Godzilla’s radioactive pepperoni pizza breath pushed Hammy into the roadway.

Whew! That was a lot. Carrie will be talking about this more on her substack, LIVING HAPPY AND WRITE BETTER NOW tomorrow.

Dogs are all about showing, basically because they can’t talk. Channel your inner dog, show people you love them.

"However, my favorite passive voice exercise is “the zombie test.” If you aren’t sure whether your sentence is active or passive, add “by zombies” after the verb. If the sentence still makes sense, then it’s passive. If it doesn’t make sense anymore, then it’s active."

Click Here to Read the Rules

Click Here to Enter the Competition

Chickensandmore!

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Babe,

I know you don’t want to talk about showing vs telling any longer, our massive series, but it’s really really important. It’s sunk many a cool book idea, stopped others in its tracks. It is a chaos agent in the life of many a good writer. And there are so many damn facets to it. I could fill a year of podcasts talking about it.

Don’t worry, I won’t.

But I would be remiss—no, we would be remiss—if we didn’t give people a couple more hints about how to locate told prose in their own text.

Here’s the thing. Told prose happens at three major levels:

And there’s different ways of hunting it out for each type.

Let’s talk about the sentence level. At this level, telling language is usually explaining language. The question most writers have is how to find it. Janice Hardy wrote Understanding Show Don’t Tell and she has a lovely breakdown of this at the sentence level.

Explains why a character is motivated to do something.

Words to look for: to, when, because

Example: Bud Godzilla ran over to Hammy the Hamster because he loved Hammy so much and wanted to hug him.

How to revise it: “I love you!” Bud Godzilla screamed, running to Hammy. “Let’s hug!”

Explains that a feeling is happening, usually by saying the feeling itself.

Words to look for: Any emotion words; felt

Example: Bud Godzilla felt pretty darn happy to see Hammy.

How to revise it:  Bud Godzilla’s heart pitter pattered. Hammy was here! Right here! With him!

Explains thoughts without being immersed in the thought itself.

Words to look for: realized, believed, hoped, wondered, thought

Example: Bud Godzilla believed that if he could just hug Hammy gently enough and maybe give him some pizza, Hammy would love him, too.

How to revise it:  He’d hug Hammy gently. Maybe give him some pizza. Then, Hammy would love him, too.

Explains stuff before it happens or is just a little too detailed about what’s happening.

Words to look for: by, since, before, after, when.

Example #1: Before Bud Godzilla could hug Hammy, Hammy coughed up phlegm all over the floor.

How to revise it:  Hammy’s body heaved, shaking. “Bud! Don’t come closer!”

Bud stepped forward, arms open. “But, what’s—”

Phlegm spewed out of Hammy’s mouth. “Told you. Zombie bit me. Two hours ago.”

Example #2: Bud Godzilla sat in the car while Hammy got out of it. Hammy shut the door behind him, walked around the front of the car, hit the key fob to unlock Godzilla’s door, then reached out his hand and pressed the door handle, pulling it up and also pulling the door toward him so that it would open and Godzilla could get out.

How to revise it:  Hammy and Bud got out of the damn car. I have no idea how Godzilla fit in it or how Hammy touched the wheel but whatever.

Explains what’s about to be sensed. I usually call this distancing language.

Words to look for: saw, heard, felt, smelled, watched, seemed, looked, ah, so many!

Example: Godzilla could see that Hammy had turned into a zombie. Godzilla felt sad.

How to revise it:  Hammy’s mouth gawped open. “Brains. Need more brains.” 

Live in passive sentences. What’s that? It’s when the subject of the sentence isn’t doing the important work of the sentence.

Words to look for: was + verb; is being + verb, by (sometimes)

Example: Hammy was pushed into the roadway by the radioactive pepperoni pizza breath of Godzilla.

How to revise it:  Godzilla’s radioactive pepperoni pizza breath pushed Hammy into the roadway.

Whew! That was a lot. Carrie will be talking about this more on her substack, LIVING HAPPY AND WRITE BETTER NOW tomorrow.

Dogs are all about showing, basically because they can’t talk. Channel your inner dog, show people you love them.

"However, my favorite passive voice exercise is “the zombie test.” If you aren’t sure whether your sentence is active or passive, add “by zombies” after the verb. If the sentence still makes sense, then it’s passive. If it doesn’t make sense anymore, then it’s active."

Click Here to Read the Rules

Click Here to Enter the Competition

Chickensandmore!

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Award-winning author of YA novels? Check.

Printz honor author, ALA Best Book winner, National Book Award finalist? Check.

Has a middle grade coming out March 11 that's about to rock the world? Definitely.

Was so cool that Carrie was afraid to talk to him back in 2005 or 2006 or something? You know it.

Chris Lynch, award winning human and ridiculously gracious interviewee, graced Dogs are Smarter Than People with an author-to-author interview with Carrie Jones this week. He ignored Carrie's frazzled face, vaguely sweaty hair, and minor emergency to be one of the kindest, loveliest interviews ever.

Chris is the author of middle grade novel Walkin’ the Dog. He holds an MA from the writing program at Emerson College. He teaches in the creative writing MFA program at Lesley University. He lives in Boston and in Scotland.

And his book? It's amazing. You need to get it.

To find out more about Walkin' the Dog, click here.

More about Chris here.

Hey! Welcome to our series of podcasts and posts all about showing vs. telling, which we are on fire about right now, right Shaun?

Growls.

You can check out the rest of the series on Carrie’s Substack Write Better Now or just the podcast episodes on her blog, https://carriejonesbooks.blog/

So, a lot of my writers have a brain like mine, which is sad for them. Just kidding! Just kidding! A lot of them do better when they see an explanation of show vs tell rather than just having their editor or writing coach shout, “SHOW DO NOT TELL!”

So, here’s a paragraph that maybe could be tweaked for a little too much telling.

Once they reached Gwenda the Gerbil’s cage, Ham-Ham shoved himself inside before swiftly closing the trap door, notching it. He took a second to breathe while Gwenda stepped onto the hamster wheel. She sighed, and suddenly he felt her staring at him.

This is what happens when you immerse yourself in the scene a bit more.

Ham-Ham scurried into the cage, Gwenda following. This was bad.

“Latch the door!” she demanded, hopping to the wheel.

“I’m trying!” It clicked and his breath whooshed out, smelling of stolen dog food.

“They’ll never know,” Gwenda whispered, “come run up here with me before the human comes.”

“You have kibble on your fur.”

Not only is it less telling, but it’s in scene and we have a lot more context than just getting somewhere, closing a door, sighing, breathing and staring, right? One reads like blah. One reads like you’re in the moment (even though it’s in the past tense). One is flatter. One is more dimensional.

Look, you want to live your life in the moment, not have those moments told to you or via other people's/dogs/hamsters moments.

This is from WillowWrites:

"Write a scene where two people are arguing. Show the anger and frustration without using the words angry or frustrated."

NEA Literature Fellowships  sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Genre: Poetry. 

Prize: $25,000 grants to published creative writers that enable recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement. 

Deadline: March 13, 2024.

Savage Mystery Writing Contest. 

Genre: Mystery short story. 

Prize: Winning stories are published in Toasted Cheese. If 50 or fewer eligible entries are received, first place receives a $35 Amazon gift card & second a $10 Amazon gift card. If 51 or more eligible entries are received, first place receives a $50 Amazon gift card, second a $15 Amazon gift card & third a $10 Amazon gift card. 

Deadline: March 24, 2024. Opens March 22.

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

Hey! Welcome to our series of podcasts and posts all about showing vs. telling, which we are on fire about right now, right Shaun?

Growls.

You can check out the rest of the series on Carrie’s Substack Write Better Now or just the podcast episodes on her blog, https://carriejonesbooks.blog/

So, a lot of my writers have a brain like mine, which is sad for them. Just kidding! Just kidding! A lot of them do better when they see an explanation of show vs tell rather than just having their editor or writing coach shout, “SHOW DO NOT TELL!”

So, here’s a paragraph that maybe could be tweaked for a little too much telling.

Once they reached Gwenda the Gerbil’s cage, Ham-Ham shoved himself inside before swiftly closing the trap door, notching it. He took a second to breathe while Gwenda stepped onto the hamster wheel. She sighed, and suddenly he felt her staring at him.

This is what happens when you immerse yourself in the scene a bit more.

Ham-Ham scurried into the cage, Gwenda following. This was bad.

“Latch the door!” she demanded, hopping to the wheel.

“I’m trying!” It clicked and his breath whooshed out, smelling of stolen dog food.

“They’ll never know,” Gwenda whispered, “come run up here with me before the human comes.”

“You have kibble on your fur.”

Not only is it less telling, but it’s in scene and we have a lot more context than just getting somewhere, closing a door, sighing, breathing and staring, right? One reads like blah. One reads like you’re in the moment (even though it’s in the past tense). One is flatter. One is more dimensional.

Look, you want to live your life in the moment, not have those moments told to you or via other people's/dogs/hamsters moments.

This is from WillowWrites:

"Write a scene where two people are arguing. Show the anger and frustration without using the words angry or frustrated."

NEA Literature Fellowships  sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Genre: Poetry. 

Prize: $25,000 grants to published creative writers that enable recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement. 

Deadline: March 13, 2024.

Savage Mystery Writing Contest. 

Genre: Mystery short story. 

Prize: Winning stories are published in Toasted Cheese. If 50 or fewer eligible entries are received, first place receives a $35 Amazon gift card & second a $10 Amazon gift card. If 51 or more eligible entries are received, first place receives a $50 Amazon gift card, second a $15 Amazon gift card & third a $10 Amazon gift card. 

Deadline: March 24, 2024. Opens March 22.

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

We’re continuing with our monster “Show Don’t Tell” series of podcasts and posts.

So, hey! Welcome to our series of podcasts and posts all about showing vs. telling, which we are on fire about right now, right Shaun?

Growls.

You can check out the rest of the series on Carrie’s Substack Write Better Now or just the podcast episodes on her website.

And we're soon going to have some monthly author interviews starting with Chris Lynch.

One of the hardest places to differentiate showing rather than telling in writing (or vice versa) is when it comes to those internal thoughts and feelings.

So, here’s a quick example:

Ham-Ham groaned; he’d forgotten to turn off the water bottle drip in the hamster cage again.

So, there’s the groan. That’s all good and fine because it’s an action. BUT then you have him forgetting and thinking about what he forgot to do, right? All of that part is too much explaining and too distancing from the thought or the experience.

Instead of living with Ham-Ham as he realizes he forgot to do something important for the hamster cage bedding, we are distanced from it. It’s more a play-by-play in a ball game than being a player in the ball game actually kicking the ball and making a goal.

Instead go right into Ham-Ham’s head:

Damn it. Ham-Ham hadn’t turned off the damn water bottle. Now there’d be water drip-drip-dripping all day in the cage. The wood chips would be soggy as hell.

This seems simple. It’s not that simple.

Don't over explain everything. If you want me to sit, just say "sit."

This comes from Ride The Pen:

“Some words are signs that you are telling, not showing. These bad words are (view them as villains): Adjectives and any form of the word “to be.” They will seduce you to tell, not show. You must resist their evil powers!

“With adjectives, you can put a quick label on anything; something is “beautiful, big, funny, strange…” The same is true for variations of “to be”: “he was, she is, it was…” All of these lead to quick labeling, rather than showing.

“But I will give you an anti-spell against their evilness. The formula is to ask yourself:

“How do I notice she is quick/he is funny/it is delightful/etc…?

“Answer yourself that question, and you will have a great list of descriptions to show to your readers. This question is like your secret weapon against all adjectives.”

Deadline: July 15, 2024

Able Muse is now accepting submissions for our forthcoming issue, winter 2024/2025. Submit poetry, fiction, essays, book reviews, art, and photography.

Submission opens yearly January 1 and closes July 15. Read our guidelines and submit at www.ablemuse.com/submit/.

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It’s pretty awesome.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!

We’re continuing with our monster “Show Don’t Tell” series of podcasts and posts.

So, hey! Welcome to our series of podcasts and posts all about showing vs. telling, which we are on fire about right now, right Shaun?

Growls.

You can check out the rest of the series on Carrie’s Substack Write Better Now or just the podcast episodes on her website.

And we're soon going to have some monthly author interviews starting with Chris Lynch.

One of the hardest places to differentiate showing rather than telling in writing (or vice versa) is when it comes to those internal thoughts and feelings.

So, here’s a quick example:

Ham-Ham groaned; he’d forgotten to turn off the water bottle drip in the hamster cage again.

So, there’s the groan. That’s all good and fine because it’s an action. BUT then you have him forgetting and thinking about what he forgot to do, right? All of that part is too much explaining and too distancing from the thought or the experience.

Instead of living with Ham-Ham as he realizes he forgot to do something important for the hamster cage bedding, we are distanced from it. It’s more a play-by-play in a ball game than being a player in the ball game actually kicking the ball and making a goal.

Instead go right into Ham-Ham’s head:

Damn it. Ham-Ham hadn’t turned off the damn water bottle. Now there’d be water drip-drip-dripping all day in the cage. The wood chips would be soggy as hell.

This seems simple. It’s not that simple.

Don't over explain everything. If you want me to sit, just say "sit."

This comes from Ride The Pen:

“Some words are signs that you are telling, not showing. These bad words are (view them as villains): Adjectives and any form of the word “to be.” They will seduce you to tell, not show. You must resist their evil powers!

“With adjectives, you can put a quick label on anything; something is “beautiful, big, funny, strange…” The same is true for variations of “to be”: “he was, she is, it was…” All of these lead to quick labeling, rather than showing.

“But I will give you an anti-spell against their evilness. The formula is to ask yourself:

“How do I notice she is quick/he is funny/it is delightful/etc…?

“Answer yourself that question, and you will have a great list of descriptions to show to your readers. This question is like your secret weapon against all adjectives.”

Deadline: July 15, 2024

Able Muse is now accepting submissions for our forthcoming issue, winter 2024/2025. Submit poetry, fiction, essays, book reviews, art, and photography.

Submission opens yearly January 1 and closes July 15. Read our guidelines and submit at www.ablemuse.com/submit/.

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It’s pretty awesome.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!

We’re continuing with our monster “Show Don’t Tell” series of podcasts and posts.

Adverbs are a big place where you tell and not show.

So, if I wrote,

“You are the sexiest manatee in the world,” Ham-Ham said hopelessly.

Would you think that works? Would you feel how Ham-Ham said it hopelessly?

Janice Hardy is brilliant and she has a really simple way of explaining how to determine whether or not you’re showing rather than telling. According to her, you should ask yourself if you can act something out.

If you can act it out, it’s showing.

If it’s not that easy to act out? It’s telling.

“You are the sexiest manatee in the world,” Ham-Ham groaned and put his head in his paws.

And it’s not just about dialogue tags, those he saids and they yelled and she moaned. It’s also about adverbs in action.

Take this one:

Ham-Ham quietly said something.

Can you show that a bit more without the quietly?

Ham-Ham whispered something unintelligible.

Ham-Ham whispered a sentence that nobody heard.

Ham-Ham whispered. What the hell did he just say?

It’s deeper, right? You feel it more. That’s why adverbs can really pull you into the world of telling. It’s a world you don’t want to stay in too long. A rabbit hole of boredom. Quick! Get out!

So, how do you deal with this in your own writing? You can try to train yourself not to use too many adverbs, or you can revise those little poops out of there after your first draft.

Do a SEARCH in your story for the combination of LY. This won’t find all the adverbs in there (thanks to sneaky ones like VERY), but it will help. Cut them by two-thirds. Either cut them out or show that adverb in another non-adverb way.

It’s okay to revise. It’s okay to take the time to really dig deep and show your humans what you want.

Cool Beans Lit.

Spring 2024 Issue.

It takes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, cross-genre, interviews, reviews, art, photography.

No fee.

Deadline: March 1, 2024.

Guidelines are here.

Our random thoughts this week came from here.

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

There’s this really great book for writers by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi called The Emotional Wound Thesaurus. It came out way back in 2017.

As they write in their prologue,

“Life is painful, and not all the lessons we learn are positive ones. As with you and me, the characters in our stories have suffered emotional trauma that cannot easily be dispelled or forgotten. We call this type of trauma an emotional wound: a negative experience (or set of experiences) that causes pain on a deep psychological level. It is a lasting hurt that often involves someone close: A family member, loved one (etc.)… or results from a physical limitation, condition, or challenge.”

So, the key here is to not just write a quick character study and be like, “My character Hammy the Hamster has resentment because his dad never thought he did a good enough job as exemplified by when he came in second place for the Hammy Olympic Wheel Roll.”

The key is to make sure that this emotional wound impacts:

And there’s even a website, that we’ve linked in the podcast notes where you can look up emotional wounds. That’s called onestopforwriters. You have to pay to access the full features of that website.

But it writes, pretty simply, “Emotional wounds from the past have the power to greatly impact our characters’ personalities and choices in the future. Get to know your characters intimately by choosing the right emotional wound; understanding its effects will enable you to write realistic, fully-formed characters that resonate with readers and make sense for your story.”

Angela and Becca even have a ton of resources (they call it the motherlode) here. And one of those things is a pdf for a backstory wound profile. It’s all pretty amazing, honestly. 

When was a time your character actually felt at peace? Describe it. Do they want to get back there again?

Does your character do anything for self-care? What is it? Why or why don't they do it?

How would your character be different if those traumatic events of their childhood never happened?

Superpresent Spring Issue

Deadline: March 1, 2024

Superpresent is seeking submissions on the theme Survival.  We are looking for all forms of poetry, writing, video, and visual arts.  Please look at our website for details of the call and to get a feel for our magazine. superpresent.org

AP article

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. 

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song?  It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!