This is a classic piece of advice for new(ish) writers. It’s also one of the most frustrating, for a couple of reasons.
Often, we simply don’t know how to do that yet. It takes time and work to gain the skills to ‘show’ instead of merely narrating important details. Even the critical reading skills to analyze other works for show-don’t-tell moments, still take a lot of reading to internalize. We often see more in our writing than there actually is, a function of being too close to the work. That’s why we need beta readers – and at the professional level, great editors.
One of my biggest failures as a writer, for many years, was the ‘flat’ nature of my characters. I might have thought I was emulating the ceremonial fable-like minimalism of Andre Norton, or the sly subtlety of Tanith Lee. But to an outside reader, my characters didn’t show much of their thoughts and emotions.
The current SFF fiction model is exactly the opposite: all emotion, all the time, as much as possible. It’s one reason why series such as ‘Twilight’ and ‘Divergence’ are so popular: they’ve hit the levels of emotions expected and needed by many younger readers. The romance genre by its very nature is laced with emotional responses.
I’m finally beginning to understand how to write what should be on the page, without taking for granted what I thought was already there. Over the last year, I looked carefully at my 6K short fantasy story ‘Singer in Rhunshan’ and expanded it to 23K. Not by padding, but by fleshing out every major scene that I’d previously narrated.
The first dry paragraph, circa 2009, looked like this:
One morning after breakfast, Eridan Singer’s big-boned wife and bodyguard turned into a female sonnaroi.
Eridan’s wife Sfassa is the love of his life. The reason he makes such a dangerous quest later. In the first version, she’s only a cardboard symbol. Readers need to see them as real people, see how much these two love each other, and what they’re prepared to give up to be together. I’ve expanded that dull opening to six pages of post-sex cuddling, a married couple happily bickering over job opportunities, hints of the two major emotional conflicts, a bit more worldbuilding to establish place and social status, and then ripped my main character’s safe little world apart:
***
Eridan planted a messy kiss over her scar. “Breakfast, then? If you’ll settle for waterwheat porridge with nuts? I promise to at least look at the Danessa letter.”
“There better be more honey and butter, and less of your dried twigs and greens. You little Dana folk eat like herd animals,” she teased. “Of all the prices I pay for loving you, the lack of meat is one of the hardest to bear.”
“Predator,” he shot back, grinning. “You’ll just get a skewer of burnt venison or something equally horrible later at the market, and wash your mouth out with mint-water before you come home.”
“Yes, dear,” she said, without any meekness. She uncoiled gracefully from the bed, facing away from him and stretching up her arms until her fingers brushed the carved-plank ceiling. She’d sway next, into the flowing stances of her morning exercises.
He never missed them by choice.
The linen curtains were still closed, but Eridan saw a golden glow supplanting the gloom. Morning sunlight was just creeping over eastern cliffs, and down the terraces of Demuaira to the docks on the river.
He had time for one replete sigh at his life. A vague interest in the Danessa offer. Ancient golden books or not, he’d probably sideline it by lunch and his afternoon lectures. If he wanted any future chance, he’d have to draft a careful reply to the Queen of Danessa, and not leave it up to the frantic Chancellor or Sfassa’s forthright idea of diplomacy.
Then Sfassa gasped. Groaned. Stretched backward until her spine audibly creaked. “Oh!”, she said, and turned into a female sonnaroi.
***
Though it’s not perfect, I am much happier with this opening. And irked. If I’d figured out how to do this years ago, I’d be a much better writer now.