Think Like a Real Writer - A professional writer explained

The blog emphasizes the importance of telling rather than showing in your writing. Michael J. Quinn in his book, Writing Inside and Out, explains how specific details help to clarify your writing and orient your reader.

Take a moment to recall red marks all over the pages of writing that you handed in during your school career. In addition to all of those “SP’s”, “GR’s” and “Frag’s”, do you remember the words “Be Specific” and “More details needed”? Have you at any point considered what those words implied, or why teachers repeated them so insistently?

Consider for a moment how we learn about the world in which we live. Those of you who have young babies, brothers and sisters, think for a moment about how they learn about the world around them. Learning starts before we can talk. It really starts before we even breathe. What tools do we use for learning when we are in the womb and when we first leave its safety? Our senses are our tools. They reach out and rub against raw experience. Through hot and cold, light and dark, sweet and sour, smooth and rough, loud and soft we learn what we like and what we loathe. We learn to trust and to fear. We learn about danger and safety. As we grow older, we learn language. When we can name what we trust and what we fear, we gain the illusion of control. But experience remains our prime teacher. 

“Be specific” and “More details needed”, remind you to refocus on experience. Think more about the nature of language. Consider for a moment a concrete noun, “desk”. As you read that word, some of you are thinking about your fourth-grade desk with the top that raised straight up. Others are thinking about a modern piece of office furniture, complete with computer and printer. Still others are thinking about an oak rolltop with intricate cubby holes in the upper-right hand corner. A reader will not be thinking of the same desk the writer has in mind unless the writer provides more details. The writer must be more specific. If communication is this difficult with a concrete word, consider how much more difficult it is with abstract words such as love, anger or frustration. When we write, we owe it to our readers to be as clear as possible. Clarity charges us to show not tell.

Example: Harper Lee uses the technique of showing not telling in her Pulitzer prize winning novel to Kill a mockingbird. She begins her paragraph describing Mrs. Dubose with the telling sentence “She was horrible.” Then she goes on to share the details that show her readers exactly what she means when she says “horrible”. 

“Her face was the color of a dirty pillowcase, and the corners of her mouth glistened with wet, which inched like a gladder down the deep groves enclosing her chin. Old age liver spots dotted her cheeks, and her pale eyes had black pinpoint pupils. Her hands were knobby, and the cuticles were grown up over her fingernails. Her bottom plate was not in” and her upper lip protruded; from time to time she would draw her nether lip to her upper plate and carry her chin with it. This made the wet move faster.”

DID YOU KNOW?
Learning involves taking risks. Take a risk. Share your write up with at least one other reader. Have the reader answer about what details does Lee use to show that Mrs.Dubose is horrible?

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