THE PROBLEM WITH ADVERBS & BEARS IN THE DOGGY DOOR: Let’s Show, Not Tell.

Dogs Are Smarter Than People: Writing Life, Marriage and Motivation

We’re continuing with our monster “Show Don’t Tell” series of podcasts and posts.

Adverbs are a big place where you tell and not show.

So, if I wrote,

“You are the sexiest manatee in the world,” Ham-Ham said hopelessly.

Would you think that works? Would you feel how Ham-Ham said it hopelessly?

Janice Hardy is brilliant and she has a really simple way of explaining how to determine whether or not you’re showing rather than telling. According to her, you should ask yourself if you can act something out.

If you can act it out, it’s showing.

If it’s not that easy to act out? It’s telling.

“You are the sexiest manatee in the world,” Ham-Ham groaned and put his head in his paws.

And it’s not just about dialogue tags, those he saids and they yelled and she moaned. It’s also about adverbs in action.

Take this one:

Ham-Ham quietly said something.

Can you show that a bit more without the quietly?

Ham-Ham whispered something unintelligible.

Ham-Ham whispered a sentence that nobody heard.

Ham-Ham whispered. What the hell did he just say?

It’s deeper, right? You feel it more. That’s why adverbs can really pull you into the world of telling. It’s a world you don’t want to stay in too long. A rabbit hole of boredom. Quick! Get out!

EXERCISE

So, how do you deal with this in your own writing? You can try to train yourself not to use too many adverbs, or you can revise those little poops out of there after your first draft.

Do a SEARCH in your story for the combination of LY. This won’t find all the adverbs in there (thanks to sneaky ones like VERY), but it will help. Cut them by two-thirds. Either cut them out or show that adverb in another non-adverb way.

DOG TIP FOR LIFE

It’s okay to revise. It’s okay to take the time to really dig deep and show your humans what you want.

PLACE TO SUBMIT

Cool Beans Lit.

Spring 2024 Issue.

It takes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, cross-genre, interviews, reviews, art, photography.

No fee.

Deadline: March 1, 2024.

Guidelines are here.

RANDOM THOUGHT

Our random thoughts this week came from here.

SHOUT OUT!

The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.

Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.

WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It's pretty awesome.

We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.

Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That's a lot!

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