You're So Emotional: Describing a Character's Emotions in a First Person Point of View

By Janice Hardy

A first-person narrator has a unique set of challenges, and describing emotions is one of them. 

For many readers, emotion is a big reason why they picked up a particular novel. They want to feel connected to the characters, experience life through their eyes, escape into their worlds. Bringing those emotions to the surface is critical to bringing the story to life.

Except sometimes, we go overboard and shift from emotion to melodrama. Our protagonists are too whiny, too stuck in their heads, too self-aware of what they're feeling all the time and that draws attention away from the story.

This is particularly easy to do with a first person narrator, because everything is so deep in that character's point of view. If we go emotionally overboard, our characters don't feel like real people, because no one walks around fully aware of every little feeling they have and why they have it.

An Age-Old Question: How Do You Show a Character's Age?

By Janice Hardy

Some details are difficult to slip seamlessly into the story, but you can show a character's age without it feeling awkward. 

In some novels, age doesn't matter. The characters are adults, and whether they're thirty or fifty the book unfolds pretty much the same way. Readers can assume the characters are about "the same age as they are" (if they're adults of course) and it still tracks. 

It's more about the characters being relatable to the readers' experiences than the actual age, and this also holds true for younger readers as well. As long as the characters fit the reader's expectations of age, the story flows smoothly. 

But imagine a young adult (or worse—a middle grade) novel if it was suddenly revealed halfway through the story that the protagonist was thirty. The entire book would change, and everything read so far would probably feel...icky. Readers would have interpreted the entire story through the wrong perspective.

Character age provides context. It tells readers how to judge decisions, mistakes, and emotional reactions.

Keeping Your Distance: How Narrative Distance Works in Your Novel

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

The narrative distance in a novel has more impact on it than you might think. Especially when it comes to point of view.

Over the years, I've critiqued a lot of manuscripts, and a common area writers stumble over is narrative distance. They're not always sure what it is, how to use it, or how it affects their point of view.
If you've never heard the term before, narrative distance is that feeling of closeness (or lack thereof) between the reader and the characters. It's what makes the point of view feel close or distant.

There's no "right" narrative distance. It's up to the writer to decide where they want the reader to be, but it's easy to fall into a "limbo narrative" where it isn't clear where—or even who—the narrator is. When this happens, we often slip into telling or too much filtering and readers feel disconnected from the characters and the story.

Telling Yourself to Show: How to Identify Flat Scenes

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy 

We don't always choose the right scenes to dramatize in a story.

I wrote a scene for my third novel, Darkfall, where my characters were sitting at a table talking about stuff. Now, from a technical standpoint, there wasn't anything wrong with this scene. My protagonist, Nya, had a goal for what she needed to do at that table, and there were stakes if she failed. 

This led to another scene where Nya was talking to someone else in a different room, gathering more information about things important to the story. It all advanced the plot.

But something felt off.

3 Places Told Prose Likes to Hide

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Told prose can steal the oompf from your story and make readers want to skim.

As a science fiction and fantasy writer, I was guilty of a lot of telling in my early work. I’d infodump, I’d write pages of backstory, I’d explain how rules worked and which gods did what to whom. It was a total mess.

But as my writing improved, I discovered how helpful showing could be. It let me put all those wonderful details I’d created into the scene without having to explain them. It let me suggest the backstories and create layered, nuanced characters. It let me background the description and not write boring paragraph after paragraph on what something looked like.

How Point of View Can Solve Your Writing Troubles

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Point of view is one of the strongest tools writers have for crafting stories readers just can’t put down.

Whenever I’m asked to give “one tip that will help writers succeed,” I say, “Master point of view.” I’m a firm believer that understanding point of view (POV) can help you avoid most common writing problems—especially the newbie mistakes we all stumble over at the start.

Point of view a versatile tool that does more than just help you pick which pronoun to use, or if you should write in first person or third. It allows you to put yourself in someone else’s head, empathize with them, and see the world through their eyes, even if that world is different from your own. It’s what lets you be a storyteller and not just someone who plops details on a page in a logical order.

Here are five common problems point of view can help you solve.

How Far is Too Far? How Narrative Distance Affects Telling

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

There can be a fine line between a far narrative distance and telling.

Not all points of view use the same narrative distance. A first-person point of view pulls readers in close, while an omniscient point of view keeps them at a distance. Both are valid narrative distances, but the farther away you get from the reader, the riskier it is you’ll slip up and start telling instead of showing.

Maybe you pull away from the narrative for style, or because you want to show more than just what the point of view character knows. Maybe you aren’t comfortable inside a character’s head and don’t yet know what’s going on in there. Or maybe your point-of-view-skills are still a little shaky and you don’t even realize you’re doing it—until your get feedback with comments such as “this feels told” or “I felt detached from the character.”

I see this most often in third person point of view novels, where there’s already a layer of distance between reader and character. If you’re not solid in the point of view character’s head, it’s easy to forget who’s narrating the story and start explaining why characters act as they do, or what a character knows. If a distant omniscient narrator is your goal, that’s fine, but if you want a tighter perspective—that’s a problem.

Do or Do Not. There is No Try: Clarifying What Your Characters Do

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

The word “try” can send all the wrong signals to your reader.

Characters “try to” do a lot of things in stories. They try to get up, they try to hide, they try to hold back tears. But what the writer really means, is the character got up, they hid behind the couch and were found anyway, or they blinked back tears welling in their eyes.

The “try” isn’t describing the action, it’s describing the motive, which is another form of telling, not showing. The trying weakens the writing, and isn’t putting enough of what’s actually happening on the page for readers to understand the action.

Not that “trying to” act is a bad thing. If the motive is more important than the action, “trying” works just fine and conveys what the author wants readers to know. But more often than not, “trying” is unclear, and readers are left wondering if the character accomplished what they tried to do or not.

How to Show (and not Tell) Without Raising Your Word Count

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Your word count has nothing to do with how well your novel is written, but it can be a red flag that there’s a problem.

I got several interesting questions on last week’s article about how point of view strengthens a novel that deserved further exploration. Essentially, commenters were concerned that showing would bloat their manuscripts and add too many words. They were particularly worried about already large manuscripts.

This is a legitimate concern for a lot of writers, because showing can use more words than telling. But it also allows you to cut words from other areas, because when you show you also:

• Characterize
• Dramatize
• Describe

When you show, you allow characters to interact with the world, which sneaks in details while you show action and internalization. The details you use convey more than one thing, which saves you words in the long run.

4 Reasons Over-Explaining Will Kill Your Novel

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Don’t let the urge to explain ruin your novel.

Writers have trust issues sometimes. We worry whether or not our readers will get what we're trying to do. Will they spot that oh-so-subtle hint in chapter three? Will they get the subtext between the romantic leads in scene five? Is the protagonist’s backstory clear or should we throw in a flashback that explains it?

We worry so much readers might miss something, we end up shoving the story right down their throats.

And that's bad.

Explaining a novel is not the same as telling a story.

For one thing, it frequently leads to bad writing, because we're explaining what happens, we’re not dramatizing a scene as it unfolds. For another, it robs readers of the chance to discover the story and connect to it on their own level. They’re not given the opportunity to make their own choices and decisions about the characters and story and what it means to them.

3 Ways to Make Your Writing Come Alive

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Quick—what’s your favorite book from your childhood?

The first novel I remember sweeping me away and capturing my imagination was The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I don’t remember how old I was, but probably around ten or so. It was magical, filled with adventure and mystery and characters I cared about. It’s a story I love to this day.

Other novels came after that—A Wrinkle in Time, The Black Stallion, Earth Times Two, The Haunted Cove, Trumpet of the Swans. All novels I loved as a child, and these were the first titles I thought of when writing this post. They’ve stayed with me for decades.

The best stories are the ones that come alive in a reader's imagination. They pull them into the story world and sweep them away in the struggles and dreams of the characters.

Are You Showing or Telling Your Internalization?

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Show, don't tell doesn't just apply to the action in your scenes. It also affects a character's internalization.   

When writers worry about showing, not telling, we typically think about the descriptions--the explanations of backstory, infodumps, and the mini-history lessons that "tell" readers what they need to know.

But telling can also occur in a character's internalization. Telling in internalization can distance the reader from the character, creating detachment instead of the closeness good internal thoughts excel at.

These emotional and motivational tells sneak into a manuscript when the author stops the story to explain what's motivating a character to act, or why that character is feeling what she's feeling.

When to Tell and Not Show

By Swati Teerdhala, @swatiteerdhala

Part of The How They Do It Series

JH: Showing and not telling is a core aspect of writing, but sometimes telling is actually better for the story. Swati Teerdhala shares thoughts on when it's okay--and preferable--to tell and not show. 

Swati Teerdhala is the author of the upcoming novel, The Tiger at Midnight, the first in a trilogy. After graduating from the University of Virginia with a B.S. in Finance and History, she tumbled into the marketing side of the technology industry. She’s passionate about many things, including how to make a proper cup of chai, the right ratio of curd-to-crust in a lemon tart, and diverse representation in the stories we tell. She currently lives in New York City and can be found wandering the streets with a pen or camera in hand.

Instagram | Website  | Twitter

Take it away Swati…

How to Set Tone and Mood in Your Scenes

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Setting the right tone can go a long way to drawing readers into your story and keeping their attention.

I'm a little weird when it comes to scary movies. I enjoy (most) of them, but sometimes I also get so tense I can't watch them. I figured out ages ago it the music that gets me, not the scene itself. It pokes at my emotions, and builds the tension in a masterful way that raises my anticipation and fear. This also happens in games during boss fights or any mission with really stressful music.

When a movie or game starts getting to me, I mute the volume and all that built-up tension drops to the floor.

What do movie scores have to do with tone and mood?

Reveal a Character's Past Without Falling Into Backstory

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Backstory is a necessary evil in many stories, but you can sneak it in so flows naturally with the scene.

A character's past is important to their character arc, but it's an area that can easily turn into messy backstory or infodump if we're not careful. We drop in information because it has to go somewhere, and getting it out of the way quickly lets us get to the story faster.

Odds are this "drop in" of information is going to make the past feel stuck in, and feel more like backstory than a natural part of the narrative. It can stop the story, kill the pacing, and read like the author held up their hand and said, "Wait, hang on a sec, let me tell you this one thing before we go on."

What “Setup” in a Novel Actually Means

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Setup is one of the more confusing (and frustrating) terms in writing.

I was working with a writer recently on developing his novel, and were discussing his struggles in setting up the story. Specifically, his frustrations with the word setup and what it actually meant, because he kept reading articles advising him to avoid setup, but then he’d also see advice on the importance of setting up a story.

I don’t blame him for being confused or annoyed by this.

Setup is a misleading word, especially since it has both positive and negative connotations, and it can be hard to know which one people mean. People say “setup,” even though they mean, “establish the premise of the story and tee up where the plot is going to go.” But that’s harder to work into a conversation.

Choosing the Right Words for the Scene: Subtle Changes Can Make a Difference

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

A single word or phrase can alter how a sentence reads. 

It always tickles me how a single edit can dramatically effect a piece of writing. The power of language and how we choose to wield it is what sets one writer apart from another. It's in our voices, our styles, and how we tell our tales.

Mark Twain famously calls it the difference between lightning and a lightning bug, but it's more than that. The decision to use filter words versus not, to use description versus internalization, to embrace a character's voice or the author's voice--these choices all shape the writing in unique ways. It's also why ten writers can take the same premise and create ten different novels. Just look at how many re-tellings exist, from Romeo & Juliet, to fairy tales, to stories that all draw from the same thematic archetype.

The words we choose matter. It makes a story ours.

One Common Way Writers Weaken Their Descriptions

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Good description doesn’t just list the facts.

I recently came across an article by Chris Winkle over at Mythcreants that resonated with me, because it's something I’ve written about a lot here—choosing the right description details and how that ties into point of view. Chris referred to it as listing facts instead of establishing relevance, which sums this idea up perfectly.

Everything in a novel is basically “description,” because it’s our job as writers to describe the story to our readers. We have multiple tools to do that, from dialogue, to narrative, to exposition and more, but it’s how we choose to wield those tools that sets an "okay" book apart from a "great" book. There’s a difference between describing what’s in a room and having a character interact with it.

Send up the (Red) Flag: Telling Words That Often Spell Trouble in Our Writing

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

It's easier to find told prose in your work when you know what red flag words to look for.

Show, don't tell is one of those pieces of advice that nearly every writer hears at some point, and not just when we're just starting out. Even when we know how to fix it (use strong nouns and verbs), we can't always find the problem in our work to fix it.

This frustrated me back in the day, and I set off to figure out how to find told prose. After a lot of study and analyzing, I found a series of "red flag words" often found in told prose. Not every word found meant the prose that contained it was told, but when I received feedback that a section sounded told, one of these red flag words almost always appeared.

Let's look at a quick round-up of the different types of red flag words commonly found in told prose.

7 Ways to Master “Show, Don’t Tell”

By Laurence MacNaughton, @LMacNaughton

Part of the How They Do It Series (Contributing Author)

“Show, Don’t Tell” is probably the most often-repeated writing advice in the world. It means that you shouldn't dump a load of information in the middle of the page, because it will stop your story dead. But it's easy to fix that problem, if you know how.

Here are seven different ways that you can unobtrusively slip information (also known as exposition) into your story without raising any red flags. Master these ninja exposition tricks, and you’ll never struggle with “Show, Don’t Tell” again.

Trick #1: Action

The most exciting way to bury exposition is to cover it with action. If your characters are fighting for their lives, ducking for cover, or engaged in a high-speed pursuit, the reader's adrenaline will be pounding. That's the perfect opportunity to slip in your exposition under the radar.