I particularly enjoy writing where I feel that the author trusts me to understand what they are saying and what they are trying to do on the page. This is something that brings me joy both as a reader and an editor. Here are five ways that you can entrust your readers with your words and draw them further into your writing.
Show, don’t tell
This is a classic writers’ maxim for a reason. When we show our readers what is happening or who our characters are (rather than just flat out telling them) it allows the reader to better visualise what we are trying to convey. It also makes for more engaging, artful writing.
My fellow editor Lu Sexton and I ran a Curious Writers Book Club session on this technique and we keep coming back to the lessons from it. (We are hoping to run this session again, so get in contact if you’d like to be involved.)
Don’t over-explain
There is a fine line between filling in a story and over-writing, and this often comes in the form of explaining something in much more detail or more often than is necessary. For example, a writer might explain almost every detail of a setting all in one go. Sometimes this even goes over multiple pages that are filled with a lot of description and not a lot of action. This can bore our readers or distract from the story.
We have to ask ourselves as writers (or, as editors, ask our writers) what purpose that level and cluster of description serves. It might be that the level of information is necessary for the reader, but that it can be divided up across various scenes rather than be plopped in the one place, or it might be that the setting is a short-lived location and that the description can get razed all the way down to a short paragraph. It will always depend on the writer’s intention, but to summarise: don’t explain more than is needed.
Leave gaps
This makes me think about my sweet father-in-law. When we watch a movie together and two characters make meaningful eye contact and then move their faces towards each other, he will declare, “They’re going to kiss!” even though it is clearly going to happen. Sometimes leaving out some commentary allows the reader to fill in the obvious themselves without the writer spelling everything out or over-writing.
A straightforward example of this is not overdoing speech tags (see below). There might also be something that a character has just realised or is about to do that is clear without it needing to be explicitly worded because of what has just taken place or through cues from their behaviour or speech. Allow your reader to linger in these spots of realisation so they can be more actively engaged with the text.
Don’t overuse speech tags
A pet peeve of mine, both as a reader and editor, is when there are too many speech tags or there are unnecessary speech tags.
For example: “How could you do that to me!” he yelled angrily.
The speech tag here is telling us what we already know. We can tell that this character is hurt and angry by their words alone. Our readers are smart enough to pick up cues like that from dialogue. And if it is clear who is speaking, you don’t really even need to include “he said” after the dialogue.
This isn’t just a stylistic preference. Too many speech tags can interrupt the flow of a conversation between characters. This can be particularly distracting during an argument or a tense or action-packed conversation. If you clearly establish who is speaking, you can let the conversation play out without overstuffing your page with speech tags.
My fellow editor, Lu Sexton, wrote a handy piece about whether speech tags need to be descriptive.
Use symbolism and metaphor instead of bonking readers over the head with the obvious
Similar to using ‘show, don’t tell’ and not over-explaining things to our readers, using symbolism and metaphor can reveal a lot to our readers, and offer them the space to make connections themselves. Symbolism can add depth of meaning to a scene, character or to an entire book.
If you’d like to learn more about symbolism and metaphor and discover some excellent examples, there is a Curious Writers Book Club session on this coming up on Tuesday 22 March at 6pm Melbourne time.
If you’d like to chat with me about running a session on this or one of our other topics for your writers group or at your library, I'd love to hear from you.
So, trust your readers by using some of these approaches and let them engage more actively with your story.
