On Writing Romance_ How to Craft a Novel That Sells - Leigh Michaels [56]
Showing the story means giving the readers the same kinds of information they would get if they were sitting in a theater watching a play. In a theater, you don't get ultrafine detail, but you get the big picture that helps you make up your own mind about the setting. You see the characters' actions, props, and costumes, so you can draw your own conclusions about the kind of people they are.
A stage play doesn't give you all the details, just the ones you need in order to understand what's going on and to form a background for the story. You aren't told what the main character ate for breakfast, unless perhaps he's going to suspect in act 2 that his corn flakes were poisoned. You don't see what's beyond the doorways at the edge of the stage; you know there are rooms there, but you don't need the details.
In the same way, you don't need to give your readers every detail of your characters' lives and actions. Skip over the less important details and concentrate on the facts that help the readers picture the scene. If your heroine is driving to work, you don't need to describe every gear change or list every intersection. You might, however, note the fact that the heavy traffic frays her nerves, or comment that she's already so stressed by the hero that she doesn't even notice the traffic—because those things tell the readers important things about the heroine.
SELECTING DETAILS
Details are most effective when they build on what the readers already know. If the setting is a living room, the readers don't need to see a dozen other rooms in order to assume the one in front of them is attached to a regular house. On the other hand, if the setting is another planet, the readers will need considerably more information in order to form a mental picture.
The tricky part of including detail is sorting out the significant details from the mass of information inside your mind. As you write a scene, you know what everyone looks like, what they're wearing, and what color the upholstery is. Most of that information isn't critically important because the readers know about people and clothes and furnishings and can provide that picture for themselves. Yet it's important to give the readers enough information to be able to picture your room and your character.
How many details do you need to give, and which ones are important to help the readers form a picture in their minds? You can determine this by considering the following questions:
• How familiar are the readers with this type of location, person, or event? (The more commonplace the location, person, or event, the fewer descriptive details the readers need to form a picture.)
• What makes this place, these people, or this event different from the ordinary? What makes them stand out from similar places, people, or events?
• What do the readers need to know in order to understand why these characters react as they do?
Think about what you as a reader would like to know about this story, these characters, and this situation. What do you need to know in order to understand what's going on? Then share those facts—and no more—with your audience. Let the readers have the fun of imagining the rest.
And when you want to describe a room or a person, give your point-of-view character a reason to stop and take a good look. Is this the first time he's ever been in this location or seen this person? Is the room different from what he expected? Has the character he's looking at changed since he last saw him?
In her paranormal single title Undead and Unwed, MaryJanice Davidson shows us her heroine, a brand-new vampire, as she begins to realize what's happened to her:
I opened my eyes to pure darkness. When I was a kid I read a short story about a preacher who went to hell, and when he got there he discovered the dead didn't have eyelids, so they couldn't close their eyes to block out the horror.