I was wondering, how would you explain pain?
For example:
“Ugh”

With show and tell, it is really about showing the RIGHT things. Showing everything will bog down the pace and stall the story. Show too little, and the reader will not connect with your character or really invest in the story.

I always advocate that when it comes to emotion, a single piece of emotional showing (or two) is so much better than a paragraph of it. Do less with more. This doesn’t mean to only show fear by saying, Miranda shivered. Rather, write a sensory description that is active, and an exact depiction of what your character feels in the moment. This might be a piece of body language, a thought, a visceral sensation, or a combination that weaves right into the action. It is how you get these beats of emotional showing across in a fresh way that really pulls readers in. Here’s a quick example of how to weave in bits of emotional showing into the sensory description of an action scene:

Far from the glow of streetlights, the only way to track Alex was the hammer of his boots against the forest floor, a sound that drew closer no matter how hard or fast Miranda ran. She risked a look back just as the ground dipped, and fell. Her wrists sunk into the cold, slippery leaves before momentum threw her forward. She tumbled down a hill in a blur of jabs and scrapes, rolling through dead fall and half-buried rocks. A tree root at the bottom jerked her to a stop, and fire burst through her knee. She clamped her teeth down, but not in time. Had Alex heard? Her heart drummed, blotting out everything else. There was no going on. She was done. Miranda clawed her way to the trunk and found a hollow. She made herself small, struggling to rein in the loud rasps of her breath. She couldn’t outrun him, but maybe she could outsmart him.

There are a lot of things I could have chosen to describe (the way the forest smelled, the cool air on her face, the time of night, the sound of traffic from the road or forest other night life, etc.), but I focused on details the character, in her panic, would notice and sense. This is what we need to do–think about what the character is feeling at any point and describe things that align with that and what she would notice in this current emotional state. Hope this helps a bit!

I agree, Devon. How much is too much? How does one maintain a good balance? Does every speaking situation need to have the showing cues of body language?

I’ve been away from here for far too long and have made it a part of my daily RSS feed. Don’t plan to miss anything any more.