"People show you how they feel far more often than they tell you."
“Show, don’t tell!”
My editor used to write this in the margins of my earliest manuscripts. I would read it and frown. What in StarClan did she mean?
Then I worked it out!
People show you how they feel far more often than they tell you. Watch how your friends act. If your girlfriend flicks her hair huffily over her shoulder and stomps out of the room, then you can guess she’s cross–she doesn’t have to tell you. If your teacher sweeps into the classroom and starts tapping her fingers on her desk, you know she’s impatient to start work. If your mother slumps down onto the sofa and kicks off her shoes with a sigh, you know she’s tired.
They’re not telling, they’re showing.
So, when I’m writing a scene about Firestar and he’s not sure what to do, I don’t write “Firestar was unsure what to do”. Instead I write, “Firestar frowned and shifted his paws.” Or if Graystripe is in a bad mood, I don’t write “Graystripe was mad.” Instead I write “Graystripe lashed his tail.”
It just sounds so much better!
So go ahead, study what people do to show how they feel and use it in your writing!
Kate Cary
Kate was born in the Black Country, somewhere outside Birmingham and wrote her first book when she was four. It wasn’t very good, or long, or well spelt, but she was proud of it.
School started out easy but grew harder as her teachers became less interested in what Kate could imagine and more interested in what she could remember. But she was a good girl and learned everything they asked her to until she found herself at London University. There Kate studied History. One tutor commented that, to be any good at the subject, she would have to try very hard and for a very long time. She proved him wrong by not trying at all and getting a good BA and then a better MA. Though she lingered at the university as long as she could, when the grants ran out she still had not figured out what she should do for a living. Kate's love of writing had never left her. Studying History had just been an excuse to write stories (History provides great plots and characters), so she decided to try becoming a Proper Writer and wrote and wrote and eventually an editor noticed her and decided she was publishable.
Meanwhile, Kate settled down and had a son, Joshua. And all the time she kept writing, and she will carry on doing so as long as there are other worlds to describe.
