How Fiction Works Writing Meme - Day Ten

[meridian_rose]

10 - Do you show, or tell? Wax poetic on the emotion of the moment? Or simply describe the moment and let the reader find the emotion for themselves? Which do you prefer reading?

Again: it depends. I know we are supposed to show, but sometimes you need to tell things in order to get the story moving along – facts, background information, and so on.

Wax lyrical? If it is a character piece, then probably so. Again, I don't think I'm the best person to ask. I can't see the wood for the trees with things like this. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, but I'm just guessing.

As for reading, well that depends too. I'll only get frustrated with the 'poetical' if I'm feeling an emotion other than that which the author thinks I ought to be. I'm not going to get all teary eyed over a relationship breaking down if I didn't think it was a good one in the first place and besides, I'm shipping the heroine with the cute cop from chapter four :D

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I'll make an index post when I've completed the meme with links to all my answers; they will all be tagged #how fiction works meme. You can find the full set of questions at pristineungift's entry:here

Comments

[hrhrionastar.livejournal.com]

I know we are supposed to show, but sometimes you need to tell things in order to get the story moving along – facts, background information, and so on. Exactly - you can't show everything.

I read a book where it was just one day, from the point of view of one character, sort of a stream of consciousness - it was an important day, sure, but I thought the book was hard to get through. I don't need to know the character's shoe size to know what kind of person they are.

So I guess I think it depends on what kind of detail; and at the writers' conference they did say that writing just about emotion is amateurish.

[meridian_rose]

That does sound like a difficult book to read.
I wouldn't know how to write 'just about emotion' for more than a couple of paragraphs at a time. I get distracted by the plot, sometimes to the detriment of the emotional impact.