Show Don’t Tell:

How to Master
This Cardinal Rule

Jerry Jenkins and David Loy

 Workshop #4
Unedited Transcript
Watch or listen here

“Show Don’t Tell: How to Master this

Cardinal Rule”
David: Hello and thanks for joining us today. This is the Jerry Jenkins
Writer’s Guild, and today’s session is a Live Online Workshop with Jerry
Jenkins teaching on the topic, “Show, Don’t Tell: How to Finally Master
This Cardinal Rule.” I’m your host, David Loy, and leading our training
again today is 21-time New York Times best-selling author, Jerry Jenkins.
Jerry, how are you doing today?

Jerry: I’m a little out of breath, but I’m doing great and ready to roll.

Showing engages your reader: telling

imparts information
David: Well, Jerry this is another important foundational topic for writers,
if for no other reason than that it’s one the founding members of the guild
have been asking for in the Forum. Both you and I, and our team, have seen
that repeatedly.

We’ve heard this, “Show, Don’t Tell” phrase for as long as we can
remember, but for some reason it’s hard for writers to get a handle on. Why
do you think that is Jerry?

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Jerry: I’m not entirely sure, David, but I found that the frustration is not
limited to beginners. If I’m not careful, I find myself slipping into this,
“Show, Not Tell” habit myself, and many of my colleagues tell me the same
is true for them. So the bottom line of today’s training is simply this:
showing means engaging your reader, while telling merely imparts
information.

David: That’s really good. You’d better say that one more time, Jerry.

Jerry: Okay, I think I will. Showing means engaging your reader, while
telling merely imparts information.

David: And you’re promising we’re going to finally master this cardinal
rule today. So that tells me that, as usual, you’re ready with lots of practical
tips and advice. I think we are ready if you’re about ready to get started.

The reader is our partner

Jerry: All right, great. A writer wrote me recently and complained that she
was struggling to get enough detail into her story to give her readers what
she called “the same pictures I see in my head.” Now, at first blush that
might seem like a worthy goal – the one we should all strive for – but it’s
really a huge mistake. If you succeed, you could be crushing your reader’s
imagination.

Instead, let me advise you as I advised her – to do the exact opposite. Don’t
dictate what your readers should see. We mature as novelists and artists
when we come to realize that the reader is our partner in the effort and
wants, needs a role in the experience.

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David: Jerry, let me stop you there for just a second. That is an interesting
concept, and it’s one I’m guessing that a lot of writers have not thought
about. Don’t we usually think of writing and reading as – sort of a – like a
transaction? You’ve got a writer over here and the reader over there with
the book in the middle?

Engage the theater of the reader’s mind

Jerry: Well, that’s true, and I think that’s the problem. I believe my writing
really turned a corner some years ago when I caught on to this idea that the
reader is my partner and deserves a place in the equation. He or she is not
just on the receiving end, but must also a play a role. That’s why it’s so
important for us, for a novelist, to engage the theater of the reader’s mind.

I’m sure we all agree that the most common response to a movie made from
a novel is, “The book was better.” Why is that? Because the pictures evoked
in our minds by the author’s words are far more creative than anything
Hollywood can put on the screen.

Don’t strive to make your reader see exactly what’s in your mind. Trigger
the theater of his mind, and however many readers you have, that’s how
many views of your story will be imagined.

The late, great detective novelist John Dann MacDonald once described one
of his orbital characters simply as knuckly. That was his entire description.
I don’t know about you, but that was more than enough for me. I instantly
formed a complete picture of that man in my mind. In fact, I knew him. He
reminded of a hardware store clerk in the town where I grew up – tall,

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rangy, bony, protruding Adam’s apple. I got all that from knuckly. The
novelist had triggered the theater of my mind.

When I wrote “Left Behind,” I described a computer techie merely as oily.

My editor said he needed more. I said, “Really, why?” He said, “Well,
couldn’t you say he was pudgy, with longish blond hair, and that he kept
having to push his glasses back up on his nose?” I said, “Is that what you
saw when you read he was oily?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Then, why do I
have to say it?” He thought for a second and said, “Hmm. Point taken.”

Now, that series was read by tens of millions. If some of those readers saw
that character the way my editor did, some saw him as I did, and still others
saw him tall and skinny and without glasses, so much the better. Each
reader was enjoying his or her own experience with the story, and why not?

Now, for my main characters, I provided enough information so readers

knew their builds, and perhaps their hair color and whether others found
them attractive. I showed them in actions, so it was clear whether they were
athletic or capable or not. But if some readers wanted to imagine my pilot
character as Harrison Ford and others saw him as Sean Connery, fine.

In the movies, he’s been played by a fine character actor named Brad
Johnson, who looked pretty much the way I imagined him in the story. And
he’s also been played by Nicholas Cage. And if some readers saw my flight
attendant as Julia Roberts and others as Jennifer Anniston, who was I to
quibble?

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But my overarching theme today is to show your reader what your story
looks like – and better yet, let him imagine what it looks like – rather than
to tell him how it should look.

So as you’re writing, here are two adages to live by. One of my favorite
maxims is always think reader first. Now that doesn’t mean to spoon feed
them. They want to learn, to discover, to figure things out for themselves.
Don’t do all their work for them.

This fits with another useful chestnut I tell student writers every day. Resist
the urge to explain. We all know the joy of reading a book so full of vivid
images that we remember it for years, almost as if they were lavishly
illustrated in vibrant color.

I once read the story of a woman who was thrilled to go back to her
childhood home and discover a volume that she’d read and cherished as a
child. So she eagerly thumbed through it looking for the beautiful four-
color paintings that she remembered so well. What did she discover? That
the book had no illustrations. The author had so engaged her – triggering
the theater of her young mind – that she realized she herself had created
those very real memories.

I’m convinced if we get these two things right – thinking reader first and
resisting the urge to explain – writing doesn’t get much better than that.
Make your reader your partner, and give him or her a role in the
experience, and you can hardly lose. In fact, you can do more than make
your reader your partner and let them in on half the fun. You can make
them a repeat customer. It really doesn’t get much better than that.

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Readers want to lose themselves in your
story
Now, there is one deadly description mistake you must avoid – you must
avoid. If you’ve made sure you don’t lose your reader within the first 10
pages, then heed this warning: Don’t let your description become dead
boring.

Think about it. How many ways can you describe sunsets, sunrises,
moonlight peeking through tree branches? Now, if you can handle
description the way Charles Frazier did in his masterpiece Cold Mountain,
you’ll never lose anyone’s attention.

Listen to this paragraph from Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. “The hay
field beyond the beaten dirt of the school playground stood pant-waist high
and the heads of grass was turning yellow from need of cutting. The teacher
was a round little old man, hairless and pink of face. He owned but one
rusty, black suit of clothes and a pair of old overlarge dress boots that
curled up at the toes and were so worn down that the heels were wedge-
like. He stood at the front of the room rocking on the points.”

Some writers make you want to emulate them. Frazier makes me want to
surrender and simply read. Here’s why his description writing works. It
makes you forget you’re reading. If you can come close to what he did there,
go for it.

But if your goal in writing like that is to get your reader to think, “Hey this
writer is eloquent,” you’re missing the point. Readers want to lose

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themselves in your story, not be bombarded with flowery writing. Instead,
as I’ve said, suggest just enough to engage the theater of your reader’s
mind. Nothing can compete with that. So my approach to description – do
it extremely well, like Frazier. Layer it in with your narrative, or leave it out.

Open registration reminder

David: This is some great stuff. Jerry, let me break in for just a second to
remind everybody that at the end of these sessions of our time together
today on this Live Online Workshop, there’s going to be a Q&A session with
you. So, once you are done, we’re going to take questions, as we always do.
So make sure everybody stay tuned for that.

Also – really quickly – many of you have reached out asking, “When will my
friends be able to join the Guild?” or “When will my writer’s group have the
opportunity to participate?” We’ve heard you and I’m excited to say that,
that time is quickly approaching.

Just in the next few weeks, we’re going to open up registration for the Guild
again for a limited time, so watch out for details and announcements and
start thinking about the other people in your life who could benefit from
this outstanding online resource.

Again, we’ve heard from so many people asking that question, so I just
wanted to just take a quick second to let you know that that’s coming up
quickly. Make sure you’re paying attention, because it will be a very limited
window. Just like we did previously, it will be a limited registration window
for people to sign up to join the Guild.

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Using narrative summary
Now, Jerry we’re getting a pretty clear picture of the importance of showing
over telling and some good hints on how to go about doing that, but is
telling ever acceptable?

Jerry: Well, as a matter of fact it is. I must have known that question was
coming, because our slide guru, Matt, even has a graphic to cover it.
Anytime you break from the action to convey information to most
economically keep your reader up to speed, we call that a narrative
summary.

Now, narrative summaries are simple, powerful tools – but again, because
of the overarching “show, don’t tell” rule, they should be sparingly used,
only for the sake of maintaining the reader as your top priority.

One good use of narrative summary is to pepper it throughout your

dialogue. One character can debrief another, but you have to be careful that
you don’t have an information dump to the reader masquerading as
dialogue.

The best use of narrative summary is for communicating information that

might otherwise take several pages to explain. Think of these passages as
ways to avoid overlong stretches of on-the-nose scenes.

For instance, say it would take a chapter and a half to show your main
character traveling several hundred miles to get face-to-face, high-level
clearance to conduct a delicate mission. Rather than invest all those words
in pages, that would be a logical place to get on with the story – with

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something like this: “Four days later, after Jack had returned from a flight
to Langley to clear the particulars with CIA Brass, he met with his top aide
to select the extraction team.”

So you see there, with one sentence, you’ve eliminated days of routine
travel and bureaucracy. And if you need to add drama, drop in a paragraph
that heightens the tension – maybe an irritating competitor adds tension –
without slowing things.

You could say, “No surprise, Felix Nedler nearly made Jack miss his return
flight with his usual pestering, concluding, ‘Screw this up like you did
Berlin and you’ll answer to me’.” That kind of thing also plants a bit of back
story that could arise later again, if you need to color your story.

So that’s one way where normally you’re showing. We say “show, don’t tell,”
so we could have all kinds of dialogue and traveling on a train or plane and
landing and using a limo and getting where you need to go. That’s showing
over telling, but it’s on-the-nose stuff. It’s routine. It adds page after page,
and it doesn’t really advance the story any more than these brief sentences
and paragraphs did. So that’s a good use of narrative summary.

Here’s another quick example. Say you’re writing a young adult novel about
the breakup of a high school couple. Here’s a brief sentence that covers a lot
with some just some narrative summary. “For the next few weeks, Kelly
used study hall as her war room where she plotted to get Emilio back.”

So, important dialogue about the couple’s breakup or a description of the

chaos when Kelly saw Emilio with another girl doesn’t need to be ground to
a halt by several pages about how a lovelorn teen pines over her lost

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boyfriend day after day. Rather than describing all the tormented
conniving, the writer covers a lot of ground in just one sentence.

You can also weave narrative summary into description, reveal it in back
story, express it through inner monologue, or find a dozen other ways to
work it in to serve your story. But primarily you’re serving your reader,
thinking reader-first.

So remember, narrative summary allows you to convey information

quickly, inject important details that might otherwise slow your story,
ratchet down the intensity after a high scene – high-action scene –
condense time, economically express a character’s intentions, and
synopsize otherwise lengthy scenes or dialogue.

Notice how Toni Morrison condenses years into this single paragraph of her
classic Beloved. “Men and women were moved around like checkers.
Anybody Baby Suggs knew let alone loved who hadn’t run off or been
hanged got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up,
mortgaged, won, stolen or seized. So Baby’s eight children had six fathers.
What she called the nastiness of life was the stock she received upon
learning that nobody stopped playing checkers just because the pieces
included her children.” That’s a brilliant use of narrative summary. Imagine
how many pages would have been used showing all that, rather than just
telling it at that point. That’s a good use of narrative summary.

In a well dramatized scene, nothing should stand between the reader and
the action. Renni Browne and Dave King explain in Self-Editing for Fiction
Writers, “You want your readers so wrapped up in your world that they’re
not even aware that the writer exists.”

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Avoid lecturing
But when you switch to narrative summary, especially if you go on at
length, it can sometimes seem as if you’re breaking into the story to give
your readers a lecture. So how do we avoid that?

One: resist the urge to explain. The RUE principle Browne and King
teach means relay your message through action and dialogue, and let the
content speak for itself. Jesus hardly ever interpreted his parables, which
were clearly fictitious.

Readers are intelligent. They want to be challenged, not led by the nose.
When readers finish your novel, you want them to be thinking about it,
puzzling over it, internalizing it. Resist the urge to explain.

Number two, be wary of the dangers. It’s easy to get carried away with
backstory, historical minutia, or exposition. Our primary job is to show the
story through setting, characters, action, and dialogue. Narrative summary
can interrupt the reader’s fictional dream, so weigh its benefits against that
risk. Some readers admit they skip narrative summary altogether, which is
your cue to (a) use it wisely, and (b) be judicious when you do.

Be careful, especially, to stay within the limits of what your point-of-view

character knows. Don’t let a block of narrative summary tempt you to lapse
into an omniscient POV, which can come off not just as inconsistent but
also condescending and boring and can create a structural disaster for you.

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Three, strike a harmonious balance. Narrative summary is by
definition a substitute for scenes, so it’s crucial which scenes you choose to
summarize versus those you choose to dramatize.

If, for a hundred pages you’ve foreshadowed some great tragedy, you can’t
synopsize it in a paragraph or two of narrative summary without
shortchanging your reader. Balance your very occasional narrative
summary with lots of showing.

Four, “show, don’t tell.” That’s our whole point today, obviously, so
remind yourself of this every time you sit at the keyboard. Thomas Sawyer
says, “Telling about an aspect of a character – his profession, tic, quirk,
attitude, whatever – will not stick to the audience’s ribs. Showing the
character doing it, being it, acting it out makes the lasting impression.”

So five, review and revise. Narrative summary should always keep your
reader centered in the present story, so be sure to cut exposition based on
the following narrative checklist: Does it slow the reader? Does it take the
reader out of the fictional dream? Does the character’s motivation ring
true? Does it violate point of view? Is the information necessary to
understand the story? Does it fit seamlessly or does it feel forced?

Content available in 48 hours

David: Jerry, I’m going to jump again here real quick. The training so far
has been outstanding, especially that narrative checklist that you just ran
through right there. There’s so many slides and so much content that you
are delivering, I just feel like it’s worth taking a second to remind everybody

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that the recording of this session and all of our sessions is going to be made
available in about 48 hours.

You can always go back and listen, take more notes anytime that you’d like
to do so. For a session like this, I would strongly encourage that. You know,
we want to keep things moving. You can’t break down these points too
much further than what you’re saying, but there’s a lot of materials, so it’s
certainly worth people going back and listening to the recordings at a later
date.

Again, we got the question and answer session coming up here in just a
little bit, so stay tuned for that. Jerry, I think we’re almost to the point right
now. I think you have a couple of short video examples of how you have
fixed the telling versus showing problem in a couple of previous writing
samples, is that right?

Jerry: I do. Let’s take a look at those right now.

Show versus tell examples

[Silence – sharing of video examples]

Jerry: Now, in the remaining few minutes we have before our Q&A
session, let’s take look at several slides that should make this crystal clear
for you, if you’re still having trouble understanding the difference between
telling and showing.

Telling: “When they embraced, she could tell he had been smoking and was
scared.”

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To show this we would say, “When he wrapped his arms around her, the
sweet staleness of tobacco enveloped her, and he was shivering.”

Now we’re in her point of view, so we can tell whatever she sees, feels,
hears, thinks. You don’t have to tell that he’d been smoking and was scared,
you show it, and the reader is part of the process then.

Since she’s the camera, and we’re getting what she senses – her senses
become the reader’s senses. If the sweet staleness of tobacco enveloped her
and he’s shivering, the reader can say, “I get it. He’s been smoking,” and
then we’re going to find out why he is shivering.

“The temperature fell and the ice reflected the sun.” You can see why that’s
telling. You might look at that and say, “Well there’s nothing wrong with
that sentence,” or “There’s nothing wrong with the language.”

You can see that in your mind, but take your character outside, and when
you write, “Bill’s nose burned in the frigid air and he squinted hard against
the sun’s glaze reflecting off the street.” Now you’re showing. You’re
evoking feeling in the reader. You’re engaging his senses. You’re triggering
the theater of his mind. He can see this for himself, rather than just being
told that the temperature fell and the ice reflected the sun. The reader is
experiencing it for himself.

“She was a plumber and asked where the bathroom was,” as opposed to,
“She wore coveralls and carried a plunger and metal toolbox, wrenches of
various sizes hanging from a leather belt around her waist. ‘Point me to the
head,’ she said.”

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I hope you’re catching the difference here. Watch for these things in your
own writing. Don’t tell me, show me. Whenever you see an editor write that
or say that, this is what they are saying.

This one is fairly straightforward. “Jim was tired.” Won’t we know this if
you say, “Jim yawned and stretched.”?

“Suzy was blind,” as opposed to, “Suzy felt for the bench with a white cane.”
Now unless Suzy is faking it, or there’s a reason for her to masquerade, we’ll
know she’s blind from this. She might have a seeing eye dog. Now, of
course, not all blind people have seeing eye dogs or canes. Neither do they
all wear dark glasses. But you soon can tell by whether they have someone
with them, helping them, or whether they appear to be looking directly at
you or, when you reach for their hand, they don’t reach the same place, etc.

But show me. Don’t just tell me. It’s telling to simply say it was late fall. It’s
showing to say that leaves crunched beneath his feet.

Well, I hope that clarifies this important cardinal rule for you and I look
forward to the questions.

Narrative checklist
David: Yeah and they are already rolling in and a lot of people – I’m going
to throw a curveball at us here in just a second but I’m going to try to get
Matt and you, Jerry, ready for it.

Several people have asked if we can revisit very quickly the narrative
checklist slides. I guess there’s 39 through 45 if we can revisit that at some

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point, that would be terrific. Look how quickly it’s there. Jerry, can you run
back through those really quickly before we jump into some questions?

Jerry: Sure. That’s why they call Matt our slide guru.

David: That’s right.

Does it slow the reader?

Jerry: Yeah, this is important stuff, the narrative checklist. Anytime that
you’re switching from showing to telling, you have to use great care. There
are reasons to do it. I think it’s an important thing, because some people get
so hung up on only showing, and not telling, that they can slip into on-the-
nose writing, as I mentioned, like the example of the CIA guy that has to go
back to Langley to get face-to-face clearance from his superiors before he
chooses his extraction team.

If you’re going to be married to this rule and go by the book, you take him
from wherever he is living – let’s say he’s living in Atlanta – and he has to
get to Langley for CIA headquarters. You get him up in the morning. You
get him dressed. You get him out to the car. You get him to the airport. He
flies in. Somebody picks him up at the airport. They take him to Langley.
He goes through all the rigmarole that it takes security-wise to get to his
superiors. We’ve been there. We’ve seen this. We’ve read it. We’ve seen it
on television or in the movies.

Then he goes through all the folderol of the pleasantries and the formalities,
and the meeting happens, and then somebody’s busy, and he has to wait,
and all that stuff doesn’t really move the story along. That’s what on-the-

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nose writing is. It exactly mirrors real life, but it doesn’t advance the story,
and so that’s what I mean, of course, in this first one: Does it slow the
reader?

So if you’re showing, that’s going to slow the reader. Now in this case, I
think you can keep the reader in the story by using narrative summary and
not slowing the reader. And that’s what this one did. In one sentence, we
got him from wherever he was, and said, “Over the next few days, he got
back from this trip and got done what he needed to get done.” So it took
care of that, and it didn’t slow the reader.

Does it take the reader out of the fictional

dream?
So then the next one was: Does it take the reader out of the fictional dream?

The problem with a lot of telling is that sometimes the author’s voice
intrudes. It’s important – if you’re going to do some telling or some
summary – to stay, in a sense, in character. If you can, do some of the
telling even in the same voice as your character. Maybe you do this through
dialogue.

Another way – another alternative from the paragraph that I read about
(where it was in a sense from the writer) – it could have been done through
a character telling another character.

Maybe somebody shows up at our main character’s place in Atlanta and

says, “How did it go in Langley?” And he says, “Well, it was two days that

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I’ll never get back, but I had to do it. I had to go make sure that I got
clearance face to face with A because they’re always suspicious of me calling
or emailing or asking for approval.” He even could have thrown in that line
about the guy Nedler who says, “Don’t screw this up the way you did in
Berlin.”

In a few paragraphs of dialogue, you can cover those days that it took him
to get that clearance, but it’s still narrative summary because he is covering
a lot of stuff in a short time. Rather than, as I say, showing every detail of
that trip – getting in and out of cars and planes and getting through
security and all that stuff – you’re enhancing your story. You’re telescoping
a lot of activity, because it doesn’t move the story along.

This is the way you condense. You want to spend your time showing
important stuff, and that’s going to be extracting a hostage with a team, a
CIA team. That’s the good stuff.

Does the character’s motivation ring true?

Then the next one was: Does the character’s motivation ring true? If, when
you’re trying to condense material, or tell, your character all of a sudden is
doing something he wouldn’t normally do or is skipping. Maybe he’s had
this challenge or quest or drive to do something. Every novel needs that.
You need to have a major thing that your character wants or needs or is
trying to avoid or trying to gain. What’s the big motivation behind the
entire novel?

If, when you break out of showing, and try to tell to try to move things
along, he, in essence, slips out of character. You’ve got to watch that. If

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things become less important to him just because you need to move the
story along, the reader is going to go, “Wait a minute. I thought he really
cared about this love of his life or this danger to his family or whatever and
now he’s…” We’ve skipped that so that we can save a few chapters.

Keep an eye on what the true motivation is of the character, and don’t let
that flag at that point.

Does it violate point of view?

Then the one about does it violate point of view. You don’t want to slip into
a narrative summary that switches to another character unless you’ve made
that consistent with how you’re telling your story.

I mentioned Left Behind. In the first several volumes of Left Behind, I had
two point of view characters – the pilot and the journalist – and I made it
crystal clear every time I switched back and forth between them. The reader
always knew who the point of view character was.

So, if I was trying to switch from showing to telling in order to enhance the
story and move things along, I did it very sparingly and briefly only to serve
the story and the reader. But I wouldn’t do that and switch to any other
POV than those two characters, because that would really jar the reader. If
all of a sudden I switched to an entirely different character just to serve me
and just to serve my timelines somehow – to streamline things – that would
jar the reader out of the fictional dream, as we talked about. So, I have to be
careful of that.

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Is the information necessary to
understand the story?
Is the information necessary to understand the story? Sometimes, I think
what authors tend to do is they use a narrative summary to toss in stuff they
wanted to write about. Maybe it’s some political thought they’ve got or
some ax they want to grind or some spiritual truth they want – some
message they want to bring in, and they can’t figure out a way to make it
work in the story. And so they find a way to shoehorn it in there in some
narrative summary. It doesn’t move the story along, and the reader is
sitting there, shaking their head, like, “Where did this come from?”

You’ve got all these scenes that seem to fit and move the story along and
then there’s a break – almost like a flashback – or it looks like backstory,
but it’s not. It’s narrative summary and you work– somehow worked –
another character in that tends to preach a little bit. That usually stands
out.

Usually an editor catch that, but watch it yourself, because it can keep you
from selling a story, too. So make sure that it’s information necessary to
understand the story.

Does it fit seamlessly or feel forced?

Then the last one – does it fit seamlessly or feel forced? That’s going to be
true of, really, all the previous ones. That’s the caveat that will really help
you understand if your narrative summary is necessary.

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A lot of writing teachers will tell you that the ideal novel is a string of scenes
and no narrative summary. Now, I haven’t seen one that really works that
way. Maybe the closest thing – there might be a couple of short ones.

Novellas often don’t have too much telling, because they’re so short you can
string together the scenes and they make up… The Old Man and the Sea is a
pretty good one. There’s not too much telling in that. The Bridges of
Madison County is another one. It is just scene after scene and then it’s
over. I’m not necessarily recommending the morality of these books, but
the techniques are decent. But read it to make sure that it is seamless and
doesn’t feel like it’s just been plugged in or dropped in there.

That’s one of the reasons, I think, backstory has sort of replaced flashback
these days, because flashback so often seems forced. Whenever you see a
character sitting on a plane looking out the window and says in his mind –
transports him back to when he was seven, and then you have a couple of
chapters of his childhood, and then the flight attendant says, “Would you
care for dinner, sir?” and he’s startled back to the present. It always seems
forced.

Same way with narrative summary, if it just seems to stick out and you’ve
so obviously gone from showing to telling. You want it to feel like it’s part of
the whole design of the piece and it doesn’t look like it’s been stuck in there
like an add-on. So watch for those things.

David: Thanks for running back through those, Jerry. I think that helps a
ton of people. The questions and requests are just flooding in for us to run
back over those.

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Let the scene speak for itself
Okay, another question that just came in – let’s go ahead and jump into the
Q&A session. I think a lot of people have questions right now. The first
one’s from Don. “Is it ever okay to show and then tell? Is it okay for me to
show what’s happening and then have my narrator comment on it in a
telling way?”

Jerry: Well, again, I would go through the checklist pretty carefully.

Hopefully, you shouldn’t have to. I mean, you want the scene to speak for
itself. You want the reader to be your partner and get it. That’s the – you
know – resisting the urge to explain.

I guess the question would be: why would you need to? That’s the biggest
question. Sometimes, you know, a lot of people are making use of beta
readers these days, where you’re asking friends to read your manuscript
and say, “Does it work for you?” and that might be a question to ask those
readers. Did you need this scene explained? Did I need to come out of it and
then explain it?

Now, if the narrator is explaining it, it sounds like the narrator is

omniscient, and an omniscient narrator is really a passé thing these days.
You generally want a third person limited narrator, and that’s writing it
basically from the perspective of a main character, not necessarily first
person, but just stick to that person, the one, the lead character.

The novel that I have coming out the end of May…I have one point of view
character for the whole novel that is written in third person, but that’s my
camera. I tell what he sees, hears, feels, and thinks, and that’s it, and so

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there is no overarching omniscient narrator that can explain anything. I’ve
got him having inner dialogue.

He may think – he may come away from a conversation and be talking to

himself and say…you know, I may say, “Azik wondered if so and so was
lying,” or why he would have said that, or he is frustrated because this guy
is always this way or that way. But that’s the extent of it. That’s about as
much explaining or telling as I am able to do there. And I think that’s the
way – that’s what people expect from fiction, from modern fiction.

Don’t overcomplicate your writing

David: All right, next question is from Elizabeth. “I don’t think I
understand what you mean by ‘resist the urge to explain.’ How is that
different than vivid words that paint a picture?”

Jerry: Well, let me give you a very simplistic view of that. If a sentence
says, “I was ushered through the open door and sat down on a chair,” that’s
explaining what doesn’t need to be explained.

If you said, “I was ushered into the office and sat before the desk,” I don’t
need to be – you don’t need to explain to me that you came in through a
door. I’m going to assume that. You certainly don’t need to explain that the
door was open and it doesn’t need to be explained to me that you sat on a
chair. That’s what we mean by ‘resist the urge to explain.’

So that’s – and those things, it sounds so simplistic, but it happens in so

many manuscripts, especially by beginners. They tell all kinds of detail that
is assumed. So don’t overcomplicate it. I guess I can’t say more. You’d have

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to look at a simple sentence. Some of those examples we’ve used at the end
there, I think, were examples of that reader [writer] telling. You know, the
telling is explaining – to say, “Jim was tired.” If you say he yawned and
stretched, you don’t have to explain why. We know why. The telling is
explaining. The showing lets the reader figure it out for themselves.

The same principle applies to non-fiction

writing
David: Alright, we'll keep moving. The next question is from Sam. “Does
any of this apply to nonfiction, such as an autobiography and if so, how?”

Jerry: Well, it really all does apply, because you're going to use this same
kind of sentences in an autobiography. If you're talking about yourself,
imagine yourself in all those examples we did.

If you're talking about something that happened to you when you were in
high school, you might be tempted to say – maybe it was when you met the
love of your life, maybe it was when you were a senior in high school – you
might just want to say, “It was late fall, and she came walking up the
sidewalk.”

Wouldn't it be better to say, “As I left the football stadium, the leaves
crunched beneath my feet, and she came around the corner.”? Then I'm
going to assume it's late fall, because that's when the leaves crunch, and I
don't need to be told it was late fall.

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It's just little things like that where the reader just unconsciously realizes,
“I'm part of the action here and I'm not being told everything. I'm being
shown things.”

Maybe it's into December and you're going to experience the holidays
together for the first time as a couple, and you're taking a walk on a snowy
evening. You don't say, “It was snowing,” or “It was cold.” You talk about
how you held hands, but your hands were in gloves; or you hunched your
shoulders against the cold; or you pulled your coats tighter around your
neck; or you reached over and tightened her scarf; or that type of thing.

So it's where you're showing the reader what you were doing so the reader
understands the season and the air temperature and the milieu, without
saying “It was cold out. It was snowing.” Anytime you see yourself saying –
using ‘state of being’ verbs like “it was” and “I was” and “she was,” look for
ways to show that rather than tell it.

Write so your reader feels it

David: All right, that's good. Great question, Sam. Thank you for sending
that in. Okay, let's keep going. The next one is from Michael. This is
interesting. “I was almost tossed out of the back of a C-130 transport plane,
so how do I share my experience? How do I show that versus telling?”

Jerry: I think it's – you know, put us in there with you. Tell us what it
sounded like, what it felt like, and what was said. What did you feel and
hear? The temptation would be to describe how your shortness of breath…
and your heart pounding, but those are clichés, and people always fall into

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that. I want you to describe that experience so clearly that I, as the reader,
start feeling those emotions, and you don't need to tell me.

I mean, if you tell me that you’re maybe a rookie airman of some sort, make
a mistake, or somebody is bullying you, or whatever, and they're mad at you
for a mistake, and they grab you and hold you close to an open door.

And you're thinking, “If this guy tosses me out of here, I have no parachute,
and I'm going to die.” You don't need to tell me that your breath is shorter,
your eyes are big, or your mouth is dry, or your heart is pounding. I know
that. I don't need to be told that.

Resist the urge to explain. Maybe he dangles you out of there, and you can
think – you can say, “I thought of my mother or father or my brothers or
sisters or the love of my life,” or whatever, or that “I may never get married
or have kids,” or whatever.

I want to know what you're thinking, but I don't need to know – as I said –
that shortness of breath and the dry mouth and the heartbeat, because
that's obvious, and I want to feel that when I'm reading it.

But, what brought us to that point? What did you say, what did you do?
What was it that made this happen? Was it in battle, was it in wartime,
where you being strafed? So take us there, and the more detail, the better.

I want to see it, feel it. Engage my senses and trigger the theater of my
mind. The biggest thing there is going to be the personalities and the
people. I mean, who was there with you, and who’s the enemy there? Who
was ready to throw you out? That's what we want to know, and why.

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Finding a beta reader
David: Absolutely. That's a great question. Let's keep going, and also great
answer from you. Let's go to Beth Casey. Beth has been a founding member
of the Guild and is a fantastic participant, so we're going to get her question
in here.

She says, “I'm sorry, I'm late joining in – been celebrating my birthday. My
question is about beta readers. How do you choose someone to be a beta
reader and I believe I've heard you say once before to not have friends or
family read your work, because their opinion will be biased.”

Jerry: Happy birthday, first of all, Beth. I wouldn't say not to have them
read it, but be careful of what you make of what they say because they're
bound to love it – especially if they're reading it on your birthday. Now
usually, a beta reader is somebody you know, so that's going to be tricky but
you want to make sure it's somebody that you really trust.

I have friends that I know will tell me the truth. Some friends are so
truthful, I don't want them to read it. But, if you've got a friend that you've
had for a long time where you know they’ll tell you the truth, where you
really – this is the one that will tell you when you've got lipstick on your
teeth and something that's – you got a shirttail hanging out where it's not
supposed to etc. They’ll protect you from yourself.

You've been honest with each other, and you say, “Okay, I want you to read
this, and I want you to tell me when you thought, ‘What?! This doesn't
make sense,’ or ‘I got bored here, frankly,’ or ‘I was reading this in bed and
– I have to tell you – I fell asleep.’ Tell me where you love it, tell me where

THE JERRY JENKINS WRITERS GUILD: Live Online Workshop #4 Unedited Transcript 28
you hate it, because I want you to tell me the truth.” That's a good beta
reader.

Or, “Tell me where, ‘I couldn't tell these two characters apart,’ or ‘I had to
go back and say… now which one is this?’ and ‘These two characters’ names
were too close together, and I couldn't tell them apart,’ etc.” If you're in a
writer's critique group, usually people trade off with each other. I’ll read
yours if you read mine, and we'll be honest.

Now, sometimes, you experiment with beta readers. Some people just never
like anything. They criticize everything, and they kind of – you know, they
get some of sort of satisfaction out of that. You have to watch for those.

Other people are too nice. They just can't bring themselves to say anything.
They might pick out one thing, and it’s so minor… “I don't like the typeface
you chose.” Well, you should always choose a serif typeface that's big
enough to read. That's about it. But if their biggest thing is something
minor with it… You want to know: does the story work, do the characters –
are they engaging?

There are places even online where you can Google and talk about how
should somebody evaluate a manuscript, what 10 things should we be
looking for and on and on. But that's a good way to choose beta readers.

People that you know and trust will be honest and forthright and not just
totally critical or totally flattering. You want people that are – at least one of
them, or two should be – people, maybe in the business, so they know how
to help.

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But a beta reader is a normal everyday person that reads a lot and can say,
you know, “I read a lot of mysteries, and this didn't do it for me,” or “I read
a lot of mysteries, and this competes with everything I read, and I would
buy it and like your stuff.”

Describe an emotion without using the

word for it
David: That's good. Thanks, Beth, for that great question and happy
birthday as well. Next question is from Tim. “What are some examples of
how to show emotions or feelings rather than telling them, especially if a
character isn't speaking a line of dialogue? Are there good online resources
to help with this?”

Jerry: That’s a good question. There’s good stuff online on just about
everything, if you just ask it the right way and Google it the right way. But,
for instance, any time you look at an emotion, there’s – if you ever catch
yourself writing, “he was mad,” or “he was afraid,” or “she was lonely or
angry or fearful or happy,” – anytime it says that, that's telling. Don't tell
me that. Show me that.

Okay, how are you going to show me somebody was happy without saying
she was happy? She was smiling. She was jumping up and down. She was
squealing. She was hugging people. She was – she couldn’t sit still. She was
embracing everybody. She was singing. She was whistling. That’s happy. I
know when people are happy. You can see it all over them.

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When you come home, and your spouse is angry with you, but they aren't
saying “I'm angry with you,” how do you know? Believe me, I bet you can
write down 10 ways you know. Is it because they’re answering with one
word or not answering at all? Not looking at you? Turning away? (That's
what the ‘cold shoulder’ means.) Is it the way they put a plate down in front
of you – or not? How do you know when somebody is upset with you?
That’s what you want to describe. You want to show it instead of tell it.

Anytime I'm reading a manuscript and I see something there that says, “He
was tired.” I don't want to see he was tired. I want you to show me he was
tired.

I don't want to see he was lonely. I don’t know what that means. Show me,
show me he was lonely. So it's not telling me, it's showing me, and there are
all kinds of ways. As I say, you can Google that. How do you show emotion?
And how many emotions are there?

It's funny, I Googled this the other day, even in advance of this session, and
there are some great philosophers that say there are only four emotions,
and somebody else said there’s only six, and other places say there are 25
different – and it's based on facial expressions, etc.

If you just sit down with a yellow pen and try to list the various emotions.
First you start and you list six or eight or 10, and then the more you think
about it, the more you'll come up with. But that's a good exercise. Try to
figure out how you would describe those emotions without using that word.
How would you show how somebody feels without using the word?

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First person versus third person
perspective
David: All right. Next, we go to Ann. “Jerry, for show don't tell, is first
person or third person more difficult? Do you have any suggestions and
solutions for getting into someone else's head when doing this and writing
in third person?”

Jerry: I'm not sure one is preferable. Of course, when you are in first
person, you're tempted to say, “I was mad,” “I was happy,” “I was sad,” –
whatever, and that's just as much a no-no, because you want to show the
reader. The temptation is to say, “Somebody made me mad, and so I went
home angry.”

But you want to say, “When he said that, I drove home, and skidded into
the driveway, ran and slammed the door and threw my clothes, kicked my
shoes off and slammed the microwave so hard, it knocked it off the shelf.”
Now, that's anger, and you're showing it rather than telling it. You can say
“I was mad,” but it's just as bad.

So if you're in third person, then the writer is writing from the standpoint of
a main character who is seeing somebody else do those things. Now, you
can still fall into, “He could tell Joe was mad.” Well, that's still telling, so
how did he tell? Because he was throwing things, because he was shouting
at people, because his lips were pressed hard together, and he looked away
or he pounded the table, or whatever it is that shows somebody was mad. I
think they're equally useful in writing in either point of view, as long as
you're showing and not telling.

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Out of breath
David: All right Jerry, we've got a somewhat entertaining question. Lisa
has called me out a little bit, because I missed the chance at the beginning
of our time today to ask you, “Why were you out of breath when we
started?”

Jerry: [Laughs] Now we have to admit how we work on these things.

We work hard on preparing these things, and we try to make it as good as it

can be right to the last minute. David and I were tweaking the script and
the slides and everything, and I had just grabbed my final version of the
script out of the printer, and I wanted to make sure I had my little Diet
Coke in front of me and my script, and I was sitting in the chair with my
microphone on. And I realized I hadn't breathed. So I’m like – I live at
7,300 feet above sea level, so – and I'm an old man. I thought, “Well good,
if I had another 30 seconds to breathe, but short of that, I'll just have to
breathe as I talk.” So that's why.

David: That's exactly right. Lisa, great question. Thank you. I totally
missed a great chance there. All right, let's see. Let's go to the next question.
Jason asks, “Can we get the slides as a download? There is so much
information, it would be handy to have them as a worksheet or something?”
Jerry, I think that's a great idea. What do you think?

Jerry: I don’t have a bit of problem with it. Yeah. Well, they're on the site. I
assume they’re on the site along with the – yeah, there. When we have the
stuff up 24/7 for our members, they can see this session too, so they're
there.

THE JERRY JENKINS WRITERS GUILD: Live Online Workshop #4 Unedited Transcript 33
David: That's right.

Jerry: I think they could be as part of the PDF, too.

Showing historical context

David: Yup, I think that's a good idea. Jason, thanks for that suggestion.
We’ll make sure that we figure out a way to make that happen. And like
Jerry said, that's why we do it this way. We want you to have access to it as
many times, any time that you want.

All right, let's see. Georgia asks, “How can you create a historical setting by
showing and not telling?”

Jerry: Well, I think it's the same way you do … it's the same narrative trick,
in a sense. I hate to use the word trick, but I’m trying to imagine a historical
setting. Let's talk about when Lincoln visited the troops. Rather than say,
“Lincoln was tired from the trip, and it was late fall,” you say that the leaves
were turning or dropping from the trees and he sat in Sherman’s or Lee’s
tent, and rubbed his eyes and hung his head, and maybe rested his elbows
on the table.

You're showing me that he’s tired. You don't have to say he's tired. Maybe
when he's on the train going back – he was so tall, especially for that period
that – he would have had to stick his legs out in the aisle of the train car,
even his own private car, to cross his ankles and stretch out and put his
head back.

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Describe to me what a 6-foot 4-inch man in the 1800s tries to relax on a
train. Show me an exhausted, troubled leader of a broken country looks like
at that time. Instead of just saying, “He was exhausted and anguished and
depressed,” I want to see it. I don't want to just hear you tell me about it. I
want to see it.

And that's the job. That's our job as writers, especially as novelists. That's
what makes this fun is that we’re – in essence, we're painters with words.
We're not just typists. Anybody can say, “He was tired.” “It was late.” “It
was fall.” “It was the war.” Take us there. Make us feel it. Engage our
senses. Make us partners in the experience. I want to be there and see it
and feel it.

Better or worse – even from the same

author
David: That's great. Georgia, thank you for that question. Another
question came in. This is good. “Jerry, I have two books in my hand, both
from well-published authors; both from similar traditional publishers and
in the same genre. Both of these books use action and dialogue, but one is
boring and one is a page turner, and you can tell which is which in the first
few pages. So it isn't just plot or characterization. I know you aren't looking
at the books that I'm holding, or the authors, but are there levels of showing
even within showing?”

I guess she’s asking, “Can you be an entry-level shower and a graduate-level

shower?”

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Jerry: Yeah, you know, there’s a sort of simplistic answer to this, and the
fact is, there are just writers who are better than others. And, you know, it's
a strange thing. I have some writers I really enjoy, and some of them are
really commercial. They tell a great yarn, and they're very commercial, and
they sell well.

And here’s what happens. They work really hard at their craft, and they sell
a big book, and it sells millions, and so they get a big contract with a big
company. And now, they've become a hit, so they’re interviewed and they’re
everywhere, and they are a success.

And they're enjoying it, and they should. They’ve got their big royalty
checks and they're interviewed everywhere and they’re a star and the
publisher says “Okay,” and then, “Next year, sometime maybe between 12
and 18 months from now, we want another one of these and here's a big
advance for it because you're now a superstar.” They go, “Great,” but they're
enjoying their life for a while.

And now the time comes closer for that book to be due and they keep
thinking, “I’ve got to get to that,” and then, maybe with six months to go,
they finally write it. Well, they didn't give it five years like they gave that
first one, they gave it six months, but they are a superstar, so they ought to
be able to do this.

They tell a good story, and the publisher gets it and they go, “Wow, this is
not at all as good as the first one. I mean it's a good story, and it's that
person and their name will sell and people will buy it but…”

THE JERRY JENKINS WRITERS GUILD: Live Online Workshop #4 Unedited Transcript 36
So they go to him, they go, “You know, this isn't really that great. Do you
think if you took another run at it, it could be as good as the first one?” The
writer says, “If you don't like it, I guess we could end the contract, and I'll
take it to somebody else.” And lots of other publishers are thinking, “Wow,
this is so-and-so, the big, best-selling author. We would pay him anything
to come to us.”

So the original publisher goes, “Nah, if you don't want to change it, we'll
just take it as it is.” So they put it out there. And the critics and the public
agree with the publisher, and they go, “Wow, this is not as good at all as the
first one.” But it sold well, because they tried it.

Now the writer is embarrassed. And he buckles down, and really gives them
a good third book. And he's a star again, and the same thing happens. I've
seen this happen where every other book is great, and the in-between books
aren't, and it happens a lot. So you know the writer can do it, they just start
coasting in between.

Now, the really great writers never coast. They just always want to do their
best. They don't ever want to be embarrassed. But, boy, you get a great
writer like a Rick Bragg – now, he's a nonfiction writer, but – everything he
writes is a masterpiece.

I think Pat Conroy did this. There are some people – he's a little bit too
flowery for their taste, but he gave everything to every word. And then you
see other writers, they just – the story is everything, and the craft is not as
much.

THE JERRY JENKINS WRITERS GUILD: Live Online Workshop #4 Unedited Transcript 37
So you look at it and you think, “I wonder why people like this. I'm not sure
why.” But I was looking at some samples the other day, and one really great
best-selling writer. The example was, he's writing a line and he says, “And
then, just when you least expect it …” this happened. Well, when he says,
“Just when you least expect it,” you expect it, because he said that, and so it
wasn't a surprise.

Another writer was writing about a very grizzly scene. In fact, I think it was
the guy who wrote Silence of the Lambs. In fact, it might have even been in
Silence of the Lambs – talked about this corpse in a certain place, and the
investigator noticed that the wristwatch was still ticking on this body. It was
such a grizzly scene, but such a poignant detail, and he didn't foreshadow it
by saying, “And then, just when you would least expect it, he noticed this.”

That was the last line, and I thought, “What a difference between that line
and, ‘Just when you least expect it, this happened’.” That's the difference
between a great writer and a hack, in my opinion, and that's, I think, what
you’re seeing between those two books.

There's a way to do this, and if you learn to do it right, if you learn to show
and not tell, that's the difference. The point that you're also making is that
just because this can be taught, and there are ways to do it, doesn't mean
that every published book by a great publishing house or a name author
means that they know how to do it and do it right. I wish that were the case,
and that's what we're trying to teach.

THE JERRY JENKINS WRITERS GUILD: Live Online Workshop #4 Unedited Transcript 38
Cardinal rule applies to all types of writing
David: Absolutely. All right, next we go to Rosa. “Jerry, am I correct that
the cardinal rule is important in all types of writing, including blogging?”

Jerry: Yeah, I think it is. I love to see this. A lot of people are showing me
their blogs these days because that's where people are starting to learn to
write and build their platform and that type of thing. When I see a blog that
says, “The other night, I got home from all my activities, and I was tired” or
“I was hungry.” I'm thinking, you know, this is where we want to learn to
stop doing this, stop telling and show.

I want to see him say, “I got home from all my activities,” and then I want
just a sentence or two that says, “I dug through the refrigerator and the
cupboards and the pantry.”

Now, why are they doing that? Because they're hungry. I don't need to be
told you're hungry. Show me that you're digging through the refrigerator,
and the cupboards and the pantry, and you want to find the cookies, or the
cereal, or the – whatever your favorite food is. Don't tell me you're hungry.
I know, because you're doing this. Show me, don't tell me.

Or, say, “As soon as I got home, I kicked off my shoes, and I took off my
clothes and got into my housecoat and flopped onto the couch and lay my
head back. I was trying to watch the news and I could barely keep my eyes
open.” You don't have to tell me you're tired. You don't have to tell me
you're exhausted. You're showing me that.

THE JERRY JENKINS WRITERS GUILD: Live Online Workshop #4 Unedited Transcript 39
Do that even in your blog. You can do this in every– … you can do this in a
letter, do it in your journal. If you get this – if you can finally catch onto this
– you won't even do it in a note to a friend. You won't ever tell them
anything. You will show them everything.

David: That's really good. Gosh, I hear the passion in your voice, Jerry. I
know you've been teaching this concept for a long time, but it's so evident
that this is still something that you want others to learn, and you truly
believe they can learn, and that they can pick up.

Jerry: What really drives me nuts is I catch myself violating it. I'll be
writing along, and then I'll write a line that says, “He was tired,” and I’ll go,
“What the heck are you doing? You just taught this.” You know? Don't tell
me, show me!

Layer description into the action

David: That's funny. I can see you having that conversation with yourself.
That's great. All right, the next question is from Joiselyn and I think – I
thought it was Jocelyn at first, but it might be Joiselyn. I’m sorry. I'm
misreading things. My screen is covering up half the name here.

Anyway, the question is “Some people say that the description is very
important, and they've told me that I need more, especially when I'm
describing people. In your opinion, how much is too much when you're
dealing with a main camera character? Also, I tend to want to tell. How do I
turn off my internal narrator and let my character tell my story?”

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Jerry: Well, description – as I read Frazier – if you're really good at it,
people love it. And I hear what you're saying about describing, like, a main
character. If people say… you want to be able to see a main character,
because they're going to be with you the whole way.

One thing you don't want is a big surprise. Like, let's say you're 100 pages
into a novel and you get the idea of this main character is a – say it's a
beautiful brunette of about 30 years old, and a hundred pages in, you
realize that she’s beautiful, and she’s a brunette, but she’s 45 years old and
she’s African-American. You go, “Wow, how did I miss that?” You don't
want that to happen. It's fine if she is, but you ought to know that up front.
So you want to establish that.

But I see some books where people are describing slender fingers and how
long the fingernails are and the eyelashes and the crease in the chin and…
you know. You describe somebody so distinctly that it can only be this
certain actress that could play the part.

What's important is roughly who this is. You need the age and the build and
hair color maybe. I don't know if eye color is that crucial. It might be, if it
means something to the story, but let the reader have their own vision of
the character. Give them enough. Give them what they need, but don't give
them more. As I say, trigger the theater of their mind.

If your character is nebulous – if people have no idea who they're looking at

– that's too little. And I would say, too, don't make your description a
separate thing. If you've got a couple of paragraphs, simply describing
somebody, then it becomes very obviously a written piece.

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It's a novel. He stood there, and you describe the clothes and the face and
the hair and this and that. Make it part of the action, part of the narrative.
So that somebody says something in one place about – they make a
comment about his hair, or make a comment about her eyes, or something
like that – so that it's just part of the story, and you kind of get it as you go
along.

That’s true too of settings. “I'll talk to you about this when we get to the
cottage.” “We're having a reunion at the cottage on the lake.” So, “As they
pulled up to the long, curving, gravel driveway, people were parked on
either side, so he had to pull off to the left of the three-car garage.” Well,
you're just kind of getting the picture, “Oh, this is a big place.” You didn't
describe it. It's just that's just where he had to park. And then, when they
got there, “He had a secret he wanted to tell them so he pulled them out on
the deck.” Oh, there's a deck on this place, “And the wind was blowing so
hard they had to hold on to the door so it didn't get away from him.”

So those things become – it's part of the action, but you're getting the
picture of what the place is like, and the wind is blowing, and maybe they
hear gulls or see palm trees or they see the waves crashing, or whatever, but
it’s part of what's going on.

If you can layer that in, it makes it much easier – and the reader realizes.
They’ve sort of got a picture of what the place looks like and what the
people look like, but they haven't been written to. They have been shown
instead of told.

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Season your story with the details
David: Next question’s from Lauren. “I'm writing a story based on a family
in the late 1800s. How much description should I use in describing old
buildings and settings, and how can I show this rather than tell it?”

Jerry: That’s a good question. One thing I like about research is that it can
really enhance your story, as long as it doesn't overwhelm it. I like to use
the metaphor – use your research as a condiment, not as a main course. So,
one good thing you can do to keep from sort of overwhelming the reader is
use what I call location and time tags or stamps rather than folding it into
the narrative. So, you might just start with a flush left italic line before you
even start your first narrative. Maybe you've got chapter 1 and you've got a
chapter title then flush left, you might say, “Boston, November, 1821.” Now,
you've covered an awful lot right there.

You don't have to start with a paragraph of, “As Suzy left the train in the fall
of such-and-such in Boston in 1918…” whatever it is. You've settled that. We
know that now. We don't have to say that there were trolley cars or stage
coaches or carriages or that there weren’t cars or trucks. The reader already
knows in their mind.

There's a limitation. The streetlights wouldn't be electric. There would be

horse excrement in the streets. The pavement would be a certain way.
There might be cobblestone or whatever – that’s sort of there.

And then, when they go inside a building, you can use little things that
you've researched, like the kind of keys or whatever, and just mention them
in passing. “He reached in –” and his keys wouldn't fit in his pocket because

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they’d be big skeleton keys. So maybe, “He takes the key from his belt and it
jangles because he's got several,” or just little touches like that so that it's
salt and pepper.

It spices your narrative, and so use it as seasoning, not as your main course.
Your main course is the story itself and the personalities and people.

So you don't have to describe somebody's entire dress – that it goes all the
way down to her ankles. But maybe, when she dresses for an event, you can
talk about her cape or her hat or her boots or, when she gets home, that she
has to leave her muddy boots outside. Just here and there, so the reader
gets it as you go, and you don't have to keep describing it as if it's a
travelogue or a historical piece.

Always striving for growth

David: All right. Carol Anne asked, “Jerry, do you ever find yourself
looking back at even your most successful, most popular bestselling books
and want to re-edit yourself? Do you find yourself saying, ‘That word was
unnecessary,’ or ‘Darn it, I was telling and not showing?’ Do you often catch
yourself re-evaluating your own best work?”

Jerry: I do. I'm not too hard on myself because I always make a big issue of
the fact that we have to keep growing and improving and, in a way, it's
encouraging to me to know that I am growing and I do know more now
than I did last year and the year before, and so I should know more now.

If I look back and say, I would write this or that the same way today, then it
would show me that I'm not growing. I did a little bit of clunky

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foreshadowing on the very first page of Left Behind, and that book came out
20 years ago, but it's also sold eight-and-a-half million copies, so I can't be
too hard on myself.

I have grown in one way. The biggest way, probably, is that I don't use the
word “asked” in dialogue when somebody asks a question like, “‘Where's
Jim,’ Mary asked.” I wouldn't say, “Mary asked” now because there is a
question mark in what she said, so “asked” is redundant. It would be,
“‘Where's Jim?’ Mary said.”

And even editors will change that, and I say, “Isn't that redundant? There's
a question mark there, we know she asked,” and they go, “Oh, that's true.”
So it’s starting to come in, where you don't use “asked” when you've got a
question mark there. And of course, usually, you don't even have to say any
attribution. You know who's speaking, etc.

But little things like that, I look back and I can see where for years. I used
“asked” like everybody else does. It's not a no-no. There’s lots of people still
use it today, but little trends… But I think it's good to look back and see
things like that and then in other places, I'm encouraged that I look back
and say – you know, there were things I was doing years ago that I think
were okay. Yet I do want to see growth, and I always will want to see that.

David: That’s really good. Great question, Carol Anne. Thank you so much.
Jerry, we’re about to wrap up here. We're almost out of time. We’ve had
several people ask about backstory and about flashbacks, and I know that's
a topic that you want to get into at some point. I think that's actually
something that you discussed with someone on an upcoming Master Class,
is that right?

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Jerry: It is. DiAnn Mills is really good on that, and it's sort of the new
thing. Flashbacks are becoming passé, and yet you need to talk about what
happened in the past. Backstory is what happened to your character before
the story began, and it often comes into play. So that might be a good topic
for a Live Online Workshop sometime. So let's keep that in mind, yeah, and
in the hopper.

David: Absolutely. We'll put it on the list. As we always do, we're trying to
monitor what people are asking about the most and – Cassandra, Dianne, I
know you were both asking some questions about that, so stay tuned for – I
believe, actually, DiAnn Mills, the Master Class with her is our next release.
So stay tuned for some details on that. Jerry, that might even be next week.
I need to double check before I say anything, but that could be perfect
timing for those that are interested.

One other thing I should just clarify. I mentioned that the registration
period is going to open up again very briefly here in just a few weeks. For
founding members of the Guild, that doesn't change a thing for you. You're
locked in. You're in, and you will always have access to all of the material.

It's just a chance to bring in some other likeminded folks, but please don't
worry about limited access or any of the previous recordings going away.
That's not happening. You're in. We're thrilled that you're here, and you're
going to continue to have access to everything that is going on here at the
Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild.

Well, Jerry, we're out of time. We're actually over time. But thank you so
much for your thoughts on this great topic today. We will look forward to

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speaking with you again on an upcoming Office Hour session that will be
announced very soon.

Jerry: Great. I had a great time, and it was good to be with everybody.

David: All right. Thanks. Everybody, have a great weekend. Bye-bye.

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