Identifying Over-Telling in Your Writing

Examples & Fixes of overtelling

Missed Part 1? Read this first.

This is where I’m going to give you a slew of examples of over-explaining and telling simply to bring awareness of how to look for it in your writing.

And like all things, it takes practice.

Here are the examples:

Example 1

• She twisted the ring on her index finger, staring at the engraved letter A. The ring was a gift from her parents on her name day, which was one day of the year that everyone named Amanda celebrates.

Let’s assume that readers already know her name is Amanda, she’s the main character. This line explains what a name day is even though the word itself is enough for readers to guess what name day means.

How to fix this?

• She twisted the ring on her index finger, staring at the engraved letter A. The ring was a gift from her parents on her twenty-first name day.  

Example 2

• “Mr. G isn’t in his room. He’s probably gone for the day. We can walk in there and take the answer key, no problem. Come on, let’s do this before the janitor comes!” Been said, sounding excited to go into Mr. G’s room after school hours.

The narrator is telling readers what emotion Ben is feeling rather than showing it, and overexplaining why he’s excited when the writer did a great job of giving readers that context using the character’s dialogue.

How to fix this?

• “Mr. G isn’t in his room. He’s probably gone for the day,” Ben said, breathless. Stealing the answer key would make him a legend. And that’s all he wanted since stepping foot into this school. “We can walk in there and take the answer key no problem.” He shook Steve’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s do this before the janitor comes!”

Example 3

• Serena leaned closer and whispered in Blaire’s ear, low enough that if someone stood in front of them, they’d never be able to hear, “I think I’m in love with Jenny.”

Here, the writer does a good job of showing the action of Serena leaning in and the dialogue using ‘whisper’ as a tag. But the second part of the first sentence is where we run into the writer defining what whispering means.

The fix?

• Serena cupped her hand around Blaire’s ear and whispered, “I think I’m in love with Jenny.”

Example 4

• Jonny stared at Jessica in surprise, eyes wide and mouth agape, trying to process each word that came from her mouth.

Context: Jonny was just told by Jessica that she cheated on him. If you want to go all-in on deep POV, which will allow readers to be inside Jonny’s head rather than feeling like he’s telling the readers after the fact about this moment, interiority might help us here. The issues in this line are naming the emotion and being vague with the following description of ‘processing each word.’

Could we go deep into Johnny’s emotions and interiority here? Could he maybe be feeling something more than just surprise?

The fix? Here’s the new scene:

“I cheated on you.” Jessica leaned back in her chair, cradling the wine glass to her chest.

Jonny flinched, his muscles suddenly stiff and heavy as lead. “What…do you mean?”

She sighed, glancing around the room. Likely checking to make sure no one was staring. Appearance had always been most important to her, and how they appeared as a couple even more so. “You’ve always been a slow one. I. Cheated. On. You.”

His heartbeat pounded in his ears, deafening the shit local band in the corner. Slowly, he placed his whisky glass on the table and wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans.

No…

He thought back to recent weeks—she had been staying later at work.

He cleared his throat. “With who?”

She cocked a brow. “Anthony.”

His best friend. Tall, more hair on his head than him, and in in the gym everyday.

Could the scene be fleshed out a bit more? Sure. But the point comes across with showing emotion in scene.

Need help with showing vs. telling?

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