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"It is the writer’s job to show us what his characters are like, not by what he says about them...but by their actions."The top New York agent, Noah Lukeman, says this in his book, "The First Five Pages". I believe that this idea is very important. It is about the sentence-by-sentence texture of your prose. For instance, let’s take a word that editors and agents often use to describe a well written passage— the writing is "tight," they say; very high praise. Let’s illustrate what they mean by writing the same scene two ways: "Your father died. How soon can you get here?" she said. Frank hung up, went down to the garage, drove to the airport, bought a ticket and caught the next plane. She was waiting when he arrived.Nothing wrong with that, is there? But let’s try it like this: "Your father died. How soon can you get here?" She said. She was waiting when he got off the plane.See? Here’s Pacing Rule # 1: when you construct a scene, what are the narrative steps your reader can assume for himself; how fast can you get him beyond that to something he did not know was going on? Doesn’t sound too hard, does it? I’ve spent my writing career trying to get better at it, and haven’t gotten there yet. Here’s an exercise you can try yourself. In an episode of Law & Order, we see two cops routinely interviewing someone in a hospital bed. Dinner has just been brought in, and the suspect eats while they talk. Nothing exciting. The two cops leave but stop an orderly on her way into the room. "Are you going to pick up that dinner tray? Don’t touch anything on it, just bring it to us." |
| Q: | If you were the script writer, what’s the next scene you’d put on camera? Hint: Go three or four paragraphs back, and re-read Pacing Rule #1. OK, done that? Compare your answer to the way they did it on Law & Order: |
| A: | |
| We go right past the orderly giving them the tray, skip any mention of lab
work, etc. Instead, we go straight to the cop house and see one of the two
reading to the other off a sheet rolling out of the printer: "Jeffrey J. Donner, two priors, burglary in North Carolina, wanted in Atlanta for Aggravated Assault." |
Read Part Two, The Problem of Form - Putting "Show, Don’t Tell" Into a larger context
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