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muskrat
Humble Creator
      
Date Joined Jan 2008
Total Posts : 26
| Posted 1/29/2008 11:39 PM (GMT -5) |   | I agree with everyone who has posted here. Yet I'm amazed at how many reads and reviews of published stories are basically big info dumps with little or no dialogue. If you have an editor that complains about this, be happy, he or she is a good editor. Reading a few good screenplays can help you understand how dialogue and narrative can weave a story, what are acceptable gaps, what needs explaining and what doesn't really matter. I did that and it really helped. And after all, what would be nicer than having your story adapted into a screenplay?
I learned a trick from reading all that American lit in grad school, and that is when you do have to do an info dump, try to make it interesting. I think while many stories that are 100% narrative are not only boring, but often lack the dump of important descriptive information regarding character and scenery. You don't need to go on for paragraphs, but just to capture and describe a moment in time, an experience or picture, that is common to most people. In one sentence you can describe a deer in a wintery wood to the point the reader smells the mouldering leaves and bark and feels the wet snow. Also, some character description is nice, not physical necessarily, that can be gleaned throughout, and it can be nice to let people imagine and fill this in to some extent, but their thoughts, their personality, their character flaws and personality type. So much good writing includes this covertly even, humorously, metaphorically, or right out front.
But when you find yourself writing, he did this, then this, then this, then she did this, and they remember back when they were like that and did that and that happened, etc. and so forth, you need to consider showing and possibly reordering.
But it's hard to recommend showing over telling only because I've seen a definite preference for poorly written narrative in many entry level publications, though it may be due to a poor editorial staff or reviewers. But if you plan to rise above this and produce quality work, the advice from everyone in this post is valuable to you. I will always show when I can rather than tell, my characters speaking like they would in their given region and time, and if an editor finds this "unliterary" then they are just dorks. I osce had a piece rejected for being "too Southern". Well my characters, being from a certain socioeconomic class and region speak the way they speak, and to convert it to perfect English would render the characters wooden and unbelievable.
Another peave for good editors, jumping back and forth in time too much, changing tense unless done very very well and infrequently, and narrative flashbacks and dream sequences. These can be done creatively, and certainly in novels, the rules change and you can get away with alot more, but I learned the test of a good plot is whether, when it is told chronologically, it is a good story, something happens. So many people write long vague narratives that masquerade as plot. Even that is ok provided there is a good plot underneath it all.
This stuff I learned teaching writing, working as an editor, and working with my exhusband, a writer, and through conversations with writers, my own critiques, my exboyfriend the writer, and just through trial and error.
If you need inspiration in writing descriptive narrative, pick up some popular novels and examine how others do it and you will see that writers develop tricks, techniques, and have their own stylistic flare in how they convey this otherwise relatively mundane information. If you can't tell, I'm a little burnt out in reviewing work. I've done like six long ones of info dumps in two days in addition to my own writing and submitting.
I have an MA in English and I'm happy to look at people's writing if they will reciprocate and I have time. Just remember, descriptive narrative is a game, how clever can you be and how efficient. The rest should be dialogue as mentioned in the posts above.
The weary muskrat
Muskrat
"Brain? What is brain?" --Kara, giver of pain and delight, Spock's Brain episode 61
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