More Essentials of Writing a Novel

I love how every now and then, in a book, on social media, in life . . . anywhere, these little nuggets show up that speak to a person. They hit me and I think, "BOOM! that makes sense" . . . or "that resonates," or even better, "That's what THAT means!" 

Many of these I try to file here in the blog as evershades or sox entries (see HERE or HERE), but many others get lost or integrated into my other blog hoi polloi.

This one is getting it's own post. 

The idea or the saying "show don't tell" when writing has always been a hallmark. Any author or writer has heard this and been advised to do this. It's perhaps one of the most popular, and I daresay important pieces of advice to follow when writing a novel . . . but for so long I didn't really understand it. 

I mean I had heard the mantra, and kinda understood it, but never really "got" it. 

Then I read a snippet in James Thayer's The Essential Guide to Writing a Nove (or is it Novel Writing) and it hit me. He was explaining this saying and he did it in such a way that I just got it. Like a thunderbolt it hit me. 

What's funny is that it's in a section on being a minimalist in terms of writing inner monologue. 

He wrote:

A novel is a series of scenes. Here is the best definition of a scene I have ever read, and it's by novelis and writing-teacher Jack Bickham. 

A scene is:

". . .  a segment of story action, written moment-by-moment, without summary, presented onstage in the story 'now.' It is not something that goes on inside a character's head; it is physical. It could be put on a theater stage and acted out."

Thinking cannot be acted out on a stage. When a character is thinking, nothing is going on for the reader to watch. 

For some reason this meant more to me than any other description of show don't tell than any other I've read. Write as if you're writing a stage play. Who wants to see a main character thinking about how he loves the love interest. Instead have him interact with the love interest and have what they're feeling exposed that way! 

Again, who knows why it hit me that way, it just did.