Every Thing On It by Shel Silverstein

A spider lives inside my head Who weaves a strange and wondrous web Of silken threads and silver strings To catch all sorts of flying things,

 Like crumbs of thought and bits of smiles And specks of dried-up tears,

 And dust of dreams that catch and cling For years and years and years . . .

Have you ever read a book with everything on it? Well, here it is, an amazing collection of never-before-published poems and drawings from the creator of Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, and Falling Up. You will say Hi-ho for the toilet troll, get tongue-tied with Stick-a-Tongue-Out-Sid, play a highly unusual horn, and experience the joys of growing down.

What's that? You have a case of the Lovetobutcants? Impossible! Just come on in and let the magic of Shel Silverstein bend your brain and open your heart.

I read Silverstein’s first book, Where The Sidewalk Ends, when it was first published. I was fascinated, and even memorized some of my favorites (like Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take The Garbage Out—love it!). When A Light In The Attic and Falling Up came out, I snatched up those books and devoured them, too. But they didn’t have the magic that Where The Sidewalk Ends had. I’m not sure why, or even what was missing, but something was definitely missing.

When Every Thing On It appeared on the shelves, I was skeptical. Still, I got this book for my boys this past Christmas and we’ve been reading it out loud off and on. Let me just say that the magic is back! There are some poems that make me laugh out loud, like I Didn’t, Dumb, and The One Who Invented Trick Or Treat. This book is chock full of fun.

My kids are having the same experience I had as a kid, and have marked their favorite poems. They’ve even memorized a few. It warms my heart. :)

So, if you liked Where The Sidewalk Ends, you’ll love Every Thing On It. 

Challenge: Describe Some Action!

Last year, I wrote a post on how to incorporate the senses in description. That goes a long way toward bringing your prose to life, but we can still do more to bring descriptions alive.

Most often, description sounds like a laundry list, especially with characters.
For example:
Jonah had startling green eyes, tousled chestnut hair, and wore a blue t-shirt with fitted, dark-washed jeans.

Eye color? Check. Hair color? Check. Clothing? Check. Yep, it’s a laundry list. I don’t know about you, but I find those to be pretty boring. Not just because it’s a laundry list, though. Mostly, they’re boring because it doesn’t show us the character.

When we first meet a person in real life, we usually get a sense of them, at least on a general level. Cocky, awkward, shy, easy-going, nervous, weird, dorky, confident, etc. This is what needs to be conveyed when we first meet a character in a story. The best way to do this is to use action.

For example:
Jonah strolled across the dance floor, easy and languid, his dark jeans stretching over corded muscles. His green eyes caught and held mine, and a slow smile stretched across his face. He leaned toward me, the heat from his breath on my neck and his tousled chestnut hair brushing my cheek.
“I think you need to dance with me,” he said.

In the first example, we don’t get any sense of who Jonah is. We only see what he looks like, and we don’t even really know if he’s that attractive. In the second example, we have a much better feel for what kind of person he is: confident, charismatic, and not afraid to go after what he wants. Granted, example 2 is a bit cliché, but you get the idea.

Challenge:
Think back to the last person you met. Write that scene and describe the person using action—show not only what the person looked like, but also how they came across. See if you can capture that person’s personality on the page.

Feel free to share your work here in the comments, or keep it to yourself. Your choice.

The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch

The wars that followed The Collapse nearly destroyed civilization. Now, twenty years later, the world is faced with a choice—rebuild what was or make something new. Stephen Quinn, a quiet and dutiful fifteen-year-old scavenger, travels Post-Collapse America with his Dad and stern ex-Marine Grandfather. They travel light. They keep to themselves. Nothing ever changes. But when his Grandfather passes suddenly and Stephen and his Dad decide to risk it all to save the lives of two strangers, Stephen's life is turned upside down. With his father terribly injured, Stephen is left alone to make his own choices for the first time.
Stephen’s choices lead him to Settler's Landing, a lost slice of the Pre-Collapse world where he encounters a seemingly benign world of barbecues, baseball games and days spent in a one-room schoolhouse. Distrustful of such tranquility, Stephen quickly falls in with Jenny Tan, the beautiful town outcast. As his relationship with Jenny grows it brings him into violent conflict with the leaders of Settler's Landing who are determined to remake the world they grew up in, no matter what the cost.

I’m still trying to sort out how I feel about this book. I enjoyed it, but I couldn’t really get into it, even though the action was constantly moving the story forward and there was lots of tension, plus many obstacles for Stephen to overcome. But I found myself not really caring about the story or the characters. I think that’s because much of what’s in this book has been done before in various venues, and it didn’t really contain any unique twists.

For example, America has been ravaged by a plague and much of the population didn’t survive. As a result, the government has collapsed and society as a whole doesn’t exist. It’s anarchy, weak vs. strong, survival of the fittest, etc. This concept has been the backdrop for many stories, and yet there is often something unique about each story. In Eleventh Plague, Stephen stumbles into a pocket of the world (Settler’s Landing) that’s close to how it was pre-Collapse. So, yeah, I guess it’s unique, except it pretty much takes us back to the present day, and that’s not where I want to be when I’m reading a dystopian novel.

Once we get fully entrenched in Settler’s Landing, there isn’t anything really unique here. The villains, Caleb and his son Will Henry, are basically large bullies with lots of influence, a huge sense of entitlement, and seem to enjoy inflicting pain on others. They’re not the kind of villains I love to hate—I prefer the calculating ones skilled in manipulation. Or, at the very least, they have an unshakable belief that what they’re doing is for the good of those around them. I didn’t get a sense of either in Caleb or Will Henry, so I never really got into them as antagonists.

The love interest is Jenny Tan, an outcast in the community because of her ethnic background. When she’s first introduced, I felt some sympathy for her situation and was looking forward to seeing how her story was going to intersect with Stephen’s. But as we find out more about her, we discover that she has created much of the discord between her and the rest of Settler’s Landing. I ceased to like her at this point. There is a moment where she understands this, and she does grow as a result, but the damage was done and I wasn’t invested in her enough to care.

I know all this sounds like I hated the book, but I didn’t. It was an okay read. I just couldn’t seem to connect on any level.

Tell Me First, Then Show Me

You’ve finished a manuscript, and now you’re sitting down to the daunting task of revising it. You page through your text, tearing your hair out because you realize it’s chock full of telling! Where’s all the action? The depth? The showing?

You know what? This is normal. So let your hair stay where it is.

Early drafts often consist of the main character telling the author his/her story. The very nature of this act generates a lot of telling, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Later drafts consist of converting all that telling into showing. But how do we do that? Well, let’s take a look at telling vs. showing.

Telling.
Telling consists of words that replace action with a description of the scene. In other words, there is a person telling the reader what’s going on (instead of simply letting them see the story for themselves) and saying things like “She feels sad because she’s missing her husband” or “She’s mad because her best friend stood her up” or “She sees the locket that her husband left for her” (these are extreme examples, but you get the idea).

This analogy works for all words that tell us that the characters are doing/thinking/feeling/seeing/etc something, instead of showing us how they are doing/thinking/feeling/seeing/hearing/etc something. That vs. How, this is the main issue.

Here are some examples of classic telling:

1. Jana heard the wind chimes outside the door.
2. I saw/noticed/perceived the diamond on her ring finger, and felt angry that she’d agreed to marry that scum. (another form: I realized she had a diamond on her finger...)
3. Theresa was a teacher’s pet.

All of these sentences describe something that would have much greater impact through action. That is the essence of telling.

Showing.
Showing consists of action. Plain and simple. It’s in the character’s physical actions, AND it’s in body language, habits, possessions, clothing, hobbies, voice, etc. It’s in how the characters do something, not that they do it.

When you ask someone to show you how to do something, do you expect that person to give you a list of steps and then send you off? No. You’re asking them to get up and Do Something. The same thing applies to writing. Give your characters action, and you will be showing them to the reader.

Let’s convert the above examples of classic telling into showing.

1. The wind chimes tinkled, high and beautiful. Jana opened the door, and a soft breeze cooled her hot skin. Finally, a break from the unbearable heat.
2. The diamond glinted on Mary’s ring finger. What? How could she agree to marry that man, after he’d ‘accidentally’ put her in the hospital?
3. On the first day of school, Theresa was the first one to class. She chose the seat right in front of the teacher’s desk, like always, and arranged her books and pencils on the desk. She pulled a silver pen from her backpack, polishing off the smudges from her fingertips, and attached the “From Theresa” tag to the top. She carefully set it on the teacher’s desk, then slid back into her seat.

When your main character hears, sees, feels, notices, realizes, etc something, we assume it’s the main character because that’s who’s story this is. So, we don’t need to know that she hears something. We need to know what she hears/sees/feels/etc, as well as how it affects her as a person. All at the same time.

For example, don’t tell us that your character is peeling potatoes. Show us how she does it. Is she slow and meticulous? Is she quick and efficient? Does she slam things around? Answers to these kinds of questions show us what kind of person she is, as well as what kind of mood she’s in. We don’t need to be told that she’s angry if she’s slamming things around. We can see it for ourselves. Just like we can see that she’s in a good mood if she’s humming.

All that said, it’s totally fine if your first draft is riddled with telling. The first draft, sometimes called the ‘zero draft,’ is really to get the story sorted out on a high level. Once you have that done, then you can go through and convert your telling to showing. It usually takes me three drafts to get to this point…

After you’ve gone through your manuscript to eliminate the telling, go through it again. A common mistake writers make is to add showing, but not remove all of the telling – i.e. showing anger, then telling the reader that the character is angry (or vice versa). That may take more than one pass, because trusting your reader to understand what you’re saying is really hard.

But, trust me, it’s worth it. :)