How Telling Slips Into Your Character’s Interiority
Staying on trend with last week’s blog, we’re covering telling in our characters’ interiority.
Telling is a sneaky little thing, worming its way into how we write:
Description
Dialogue
Interiority
Emotions
How does it get there? We end up telling (instead of showing) via info-dumping, backstory explanations, and history/worldbuilding lessons that tell readers what they need to know.
Tells come into your manuscript whenever you stop the story to explain what’s motivating a character to act, or why a character is feeling how they’re feeling.
By Another Name, Doth Still Tell
Interiority tells are commonly called emotional tells or motivational tells. Tells come into your manuscript whenever you stop the story to explain what’s motivating a character to act, or why a character is feeling how they’re feeling.
Giving Emotions A Name
Naming the emotion your character is feeling is a tell.
Examples:
He was angry.
She realized she was concerned.
This tell is probably the easiest to fix because you can, instead, focus on the internal sensations of an emotion or how your character expresses certain emotions.
When I tell you that the Emotion Thesaurus (click here to get a copy) elevated the way I write and edit, I mean it!
Thinking About It…
Have any of your characters ever thought about what they’re going to do before they do it?
Surprise! That’s telling.
Summary of what a character is about to do (and then the following scene is exactly what their thoughts were) is telling.
And this can create unwanted narrative distance between your readers and your character. And it can cause the readers to become bored due to them reading the same thing twice.
The suggestion here is to just have your characters do what they’re going to do instead of ruminating about it first. Unless, of course, your character has an actual anxiety order—because in real life with someone with diagnosed general anxiety disorder, I definitely think about what I’m going to do, and try to envision it, before I do it.
Character Internalization Is Tricky
Deciphering whether an interiority tell is, in fact, a tell can be difficult.
These sorts of tells are tied directly to your characters’ goals, motivations, and conflict. Known for short in the editor’s world as GMC.
There’s also a fine line between what your characters are thinking and what you, the writer, are trying to summarize for the reader.
Ask Your This When Self-Editing:
Does it sound like my character is thinking or am I explaining something to my readers so they understand it?
Remember: Readers can infer a great many things!
Would you like to work together? I have editing availability in the fall and winter of 2023 and have begun booking for 2024. Click here to find out more about my editing services.