Writers hear a lot about Show versus Tell, mainly how the former is the key to success. Then they read some award-winning story and see paragraph after page of Tell. Why can’t they get away with all that telling?
Often it comes down to the passive language and phrases they’re using.
ACTIVE writing pulls the reader in, engaging them deeper with the characters and events during every phrase, every sentence, every paragraph. PASSIVE writing tells the reader the story from an emotional distance. Guess which kind keeps more readers hooked on your writing?
A is for Action
At their simplest, verbs move a character (and the reader) from one place or state of being to another.
Passive verbs take a character from one place to the other but barely carry their own weight, let alone shift the mood or enhance character development. ‘Walked’ may be the English language’s most overused, and therefore sleep-inducing, verb. Writers rely on various means to awaken ‘walked’ from its torpor: piling on modifiers like quickly, slowly, reluctantly, relentlessly, or using dialogue or inner monologue to tell the reader the character is in a hurry.
In active writing, instead of the simple act of walking, a
character might saunter, stride, run, speed, hurry, scurry, flee. Each choice
gives a different flavour to the sentence, the scene, and the character. A
scurrying character seems mouselike, a striding one confident, a fleeing one
frightened. Active verbs pull double duty, moving the character and also shifting
the mood, foreshadowing a plot development, or exposing a character’s trait,
all without ‘telling’ the reader anything. A character who runs or hurries when
the scene doesn’t obviously call for it may be awakening a question (what do
they know that the reader doesn’t yet?) or revealing their inner drive, worry,
or impatience.
So how does this work in writing? Take a simple daily situation in the life of
a child.
Inner monologue: Remembering [passive] his mother telling [passive] him to be on time for school, Angus put [passive] his schoolbag on his shoulder and walked [passive] quickly [modifier] out of the house.
Dialogue: “Hurry up, Angus,” said [passive] his mother. “You’ll be late for school.” Angus picked up [passive] his schoolbag and walked [passive] out of the house.
Active writing: As Mom yelled [active] for the third time [implied lateness], Angus grabbed [active] his schoolbag and ran [active] out of the house.”
In that last example, how would you see Mom differently if she’d shrieked or bellowed or whispered instead of yelling? How would you see Angus differently if he scurried, slouched, stomped, or strode instead of ran?
When choosing verbs, think about how you want the reader to see that character moving in this moment of their fictional life. Choose the active verbs that bring the character to life in the reader’s mind.
B is for Bringing the reader inside the character’s experience
To be or not to be, says Hamlet, beginning one of the most famous monologues of the English theatrical tradition with his musings on whether dying (the ‘sleep’) would be preferably to living in his state of torment. Like Hamlet, writers over-using ‘to be’ verbs are teetering toward putting readers to sleep rather than awakening them to the exciting adventure that will follow.
‘to be’ verbs: Is, am, are, was, were, being, been
How does it push readers out of the character’s experience?
One of the most flattening, energy-lowering uses of the to-be verb occurs in emotional ‘tells’ like I am furious, she’s sad, they were happy.’ In every one of these cases, the reader is told how the character feels but not invited to feel it along with them.
Any time the author isn’t actively inviting the reader to feel, see, hear, taste, or sense with the character, the reader feels subtly more distant, less immersed, in the character’s experience.
Sometimes that is deliberate; in literary fiction, authors frequently uses those low-engagement ‘tells’ to create some distance. They want the reader to think about what the character is feeling at this moment, to analyze the feeling in context of the other story parts, to discover perhaps that the character is deluding themselves. The author uses the technique to help the reader become more knowledgeable than the character they’re following, which colours their interpretation of everything the character sees, says, and feels going forward.
More of the time, ‘to be’ verbs are simply the fastest route to where the author wants the sentence, or the scene, to go.
That’s fine for a first draft, but in edits, almost every ‘tell’ can be swapped for an active phrase that invites the reader further into the character’s experience. Simple ‘shows’ to replace the ‘tells’ above might be I clenched my fists [anger], her head drooped [sad], they whooped and cheered [happy]. I’m sure you can think of many more active phrases to replace ‘tells’ once you train yourself to notice them.
The other common way ‘to be’ verbs appear is with an action. For these examples, let’s go with our old neutral verb, ‘to walk’.
She is walking away from the candy store.
We are walking to the library.
He was walking out the door.
They were walking up the hill.
They have been walking toward us.
In writing or rewriting, swap a more active verb to draw the reader into the setting, the mood, the character’s state of mind or emotion. A good choice of active verb raises curiosity in the reader’s mind about what comes next in the story.
I rush toward the bus stop. (Oh, no! Will I/they miss the bus?)
She flees from the candy store. (Oh, no! Did she steal something?)
We stroll to the library. (How peaceful that sounds! Will we/they always be this content or is disaster right around the corner?)
He stomped out the door (and slammed it behind him?)
They raced up the hill (for fun, or were they rushing to help someone?)
They paced toward us (coming to lecture us, to arrest us, or measuring the distance for a duel?)
Those ever-awakening questions in the reader’s mind keep their eyes (or, increasingly, their ears) engaged with the next sentence, paragraph, scene, seeking answers large and small, all the way to the end of the story.
C: Colouring
Like dropping food colouring into cake batter turns the resulting cupcakes pink or blue, a verb colours the sentence it is building. It imparts mood, tone, atmosphere that reveals more of the character’s inner thoughts and feelings. A passive or under-active verb flattens the energy in the sentence while an active verb propels the reader through it with the energy you, the author, have deliberately chosen.
Carla said, “I wish you hadn’t said that.”
This gets the job done but doesn’t increase tension or curiosity. The reader already read whatever dialogue Carla’s responding to.
Aside: Author forums are filled with conflicting opinions on ‘said’. Some say it’s the only appropriate dialogue tag for all situations. Others opine that an occasional ‘replied’ is okay. And some people embrace the grade school vocabulary lesson to use a different dialogue tag every time: said, replied, spoke, laughed, chattered, babbled, and so on.
The truth is that no one way is always the right answer. What does your character, your story, need to awaken the reader’s next question? End Aside.
If Carla cooed, “I said, I wish you hadn’t said that,” what’s your impression as a reader? Is she talking to a child who has blurted out something inappropriate for the company? Is she putting on a little-girl voice in flirtation, or to register a protest while hoping to avoid an angry backlash? What does her ‘cooing’ voice tell readers about her relationship to, and feelings about, the character who spoke just before her?
Now what if Carla flung the answer over her shoulder. “I said, I wish you hadn’t said that.”
First, the choice of ‘flung’ implies a physical action. Pairing it with ‘over her shoulder’ lets the reader intuit that Carla is walking—possibly even striding—away from the other character. It implies a conflict, either between Carla and the other or inside Carla herself.
Second, flung lends tone to the words she speaks, at least in the reader’s mind. Each reader might ‘hear’ her words slightly differently, as
“I said, I wish you hadn’t said that.” (don’t you EVER listen to me when I’m talking?)
“I said, I wish you hadn’t said that.” (now my boss is going to question me about it and open a whole can of worms)
“I said, I wish you hadn’t said that.” (If Katie’s date had said it, people would think he’s the jerk instead of you.)
“I said, I wish you hadn’t said that.” (why did you blurt out the one thing I asked you to keep secret?)
Every one of those possible flung answers leads the reader deeper into Carla’s inner world.
Third, pairing ‘flung her answer over her shoulder’ with the words inside the dialogue tags awakens a question for the reader. Carla is obviously upset (annoyed, distraught, angry) by whatever dialogue preceded this line, so much so that she is already acting on her emotion. Readers are primed to wonder not only why she’s upset (if it’s not clear from the preceding paragraphs) but also what she’ll do next in response.
Active writing implies another action is incoming. Something is happening. That feeling is to readers like catnip is to cats.
To recap: An active verb is
A: implied or described action in the character’s present moment.
B: Bringing the reader inside the character’s experience
C: Colouring all that comes after it with the mood the author has deliberately, specifically chosen
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