Show, don't tell vs. starting too early

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morngnstar

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Does the sister ever become relevant after that? If not, why have her? If so, then when she does become relevant why can't you show their relationship then and there?

She is relevant throughout as a motivation. Around the middle of the book, I have a cut back to Russia where she appears, but that's too late to properly introduce her. And in the end she's important in wrapping up. (MCs travel to Russia then.)

I had the same thought when I first read your post. What is your heroine's main goal? Is it the relationship with your hero or something else? Is the romance between your MCs the focus of your story or is it more centered on your heroine's journey/growth/character arc?

Her initial goal is to support her family. However I just read an article that made the case that the characters' goals in romance should not be to fall in love. That's something that happens unintentionally and often conflicts with their original goal. Of course, soon after meeting, my heroine's goal is also to stay in a committed relationship with the hero, and that goal conflicts with her original goal, which hasn't gone away.

To carry on the Hunger Games example, that's a case of doing it right. Yes, Collins set up things in the beginning, but if you look at that very first paragraph, you learn that it's the day of the Reaping.

There you go. A promise of the inciting event. It doesn't happen just yet, but it's coming very soon.

That's what you need to give your readers: the promise that something interesting is going to happen. If you can do that while getting them familiar with the characters and setting, they'll keep reading. Just don't wait too long to get to that interesting stuff.

That's a good point. I do have such a teaser, at the end of a short chapter two, or I could possibly make it a long chapter one. If I had to, I could move it earlier. I don't think it has to be in the first sentence. My audience is probably a little more patient than readers of YA action.

This. Morngnstar, it sounds to me like what you have is a political thriller with a romance subplot. Sometimes you have to write the book first and then figure out the genre.

I don't really care what genre it's in, but what bothers me is it being in the suburbs of romance. People are saying, "Well, maybe it's not quite romance," but what if it's not quite the other genres either? It's not thrilling enough for political thriller. Maybe it could be women's fiction, but it's heavy on the romance aspect and might not have enough of the varied slice of life women's fiction readers want.

You've had many people tell you the backstory probably needs to be cut and your response was justifying everything, so I'm betting you've already made the decision to keep it. Just make sure it's there because the story can't work without it, not because you're so in love with it you can't bear to part with it.

I am leaning that way. As you say, I'm trying to justify that decision. I am willing to cut it if I can figure out how to make it work, but so far I have not found a plan to make it work to my satisfaction.
 

Myrealana

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For example one relationship is between the MC and her sister. After the inciting incident, they are in different countries. The relationship can only be evident, then, if I tell about it.{Snipped for space}

You are trying really hard to get us to tell you that you're right.

You're completely convinced that this information MUST be in the book, and it must be told before the MCs meet.

OK. It's your book. No one can force you to do it any way other than how you like.

However, that's not going to meet the expectations of romance readers, or agents or publishers who handle romance.

If you want to write it as a romance, then you're unlikely to sell it unless you hit the notes that romance readers expect. If you want to write it as a thriller, contemporary fiction or women's fiction with a romantic subplot, then your inciting incident is whatever starts off THAT plot, and the introduction of the love interest can be wherever it fits the story.
 

cbenoi1

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I don't really care what genre it's in, but what bothers me is it being in the suburbs of romance. People are saying, "Well, maybe it's not quite romance," but what if it's not quite the other genres either? It's not thrilling enough for political thriller. Maybe it could be women's fiction, but it's heavy on the romance aspect and might not have enough of the varied slice of life women's fiction readers want.
Romance has very strict rules for the genre. It's a brand thing. Follow the rules and you get the label. Don't and it has to be called something else - women's fiction or mainstream, etc.

Two choices here: 1) make the required changes to fit the genre or 2) continue your story as-is and forget about the Romance label altogether.

-cb
 

_Sian_

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Just a quick note - remember that a character's background shapes their perceptions. This can be quite useful in passing information along without shoving it all at the reader. The way they describe things is going to be tired into that past. You can say an awful lot about a person by how they interact with and describe the world.

A really plain example would be someone who takes careful note of how far away the night bus is on her phone app before she goes out to the bus stop, because she once had a horrid experience there where a drunk hit on her. You don't need to spell out the entire incident, just litter enough in there so that we can pick up on it.

And honestly, anything that's big enough in the characters past will pop up enough that we do get it, even if it isn't spelt out for us.
 
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Mr Flibble

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I have six pubbed "romances" (I do not consider them all romance -- some were "with elements"

Book 1 -- heroine meets hero in chapter 3

Book 2 -- hero meets heroine in chapter ...er 3? Abvout then

Book 3 -- hero and heroine meet (no chapters) 10-15% into the story

Book 5 -- They were already involved way before the book started, it just wasn't committed so there's doubt (this one a heist/fantasy romance, but the romance made up the major part of the story)

Book 5 They meet almost straight away -- but it is MUCH later on when it becomes romantic

Book 6 - again, already involved but (sequel to the first of these)


Answer -- it depends on how your story works. If you are writing straight romance, your hero needs to turn up soonish. (First chapter might be a bit arbitrary)

Anything else? What does the story need? What works? What builds tension? Are your chapters before they meet setting up the conflict that will prevent them being together till the end?

Get some readers in the genre you are writing, see what they think
 
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andiwrite

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Mine don't meet til chapter 3, but as my agent repeatedly insists, I AM NOT WRITING A ROMANCE.

It's historical crime. Crime thriller. Conspiracy thing. With a romance subplot.

I think that's an important distinction. As has been said, genre romance has certain conventions and expectations. It's not IMPOSSIBLE to write outside those conventions, but then you're sorta putting additional obstacles in your way when it comes to subbing it to someone who reps romance.

I just checked, and my character doesn't meet his leading lady until 6,700 words into the story. Never once was it suggested to me by my romance publisher that this was a problem. I guess it just depends. My ending is less than conventional for romance also.

So yeah, not impossible, but you're right. If it isn't 100 percent necessary, sticking to the guidelines will bring a greater chance of success.
 

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Why don't you put the first 1K words in SYW and see what happens?

That's a fine idea. I looked at the first scene, about 900 words, and I wouldn't have much of a problem cutting that. It wasn't in my original draft, and I added it after feedback from my first reader. Then with it added, another reader thought it should be cut, but it's impossible to know if the second scene wouldn't have worked for her without the setup in the first. I think the most useful feedback I can get at this point is to have some more people see it with the first scene cut, and see if those problems have come back.

That second scene is where the stuff I think is essential starts. I've rethought the way I want to do it, though, and I want to rewrite it before I post. Maybe this weekend.
 

Thomas Vail

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My story starts a few months before the main inciting incident.
Which should be where the story starts off. You might feel what precedes is required, but there's a reason why it's 'conventional wisdom.' Especially if it's coming from multiple people, there's a good chance something isn't actually working.

For example one relationship is between the MC and her sister. After the inciting incident, they are in different countries. The relationship can only be evident, then, if I tell about it.
This attempt at justification has a very very familiar ring to it. All that I can say is that whenever I've found myself doing similar, in the end it turned out that I would've been better off doing what was suggested in the first place.
 

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All else being equal, it's better not to write scenes to convey information.
Only write scenes to tell story.
Information is:
Romeo is a dashing young blade, heir to an ancient family in Verona. He's romantic and ripe to fall in love. Everybody likes Romeo.

Story is:
Boy meets girl. (Archetype 374 of boy-meets-girl.)

We know we are dealing with information when it can be changed and the play goes on pretty much the same. As per West Side Story.
Change the story, however, and you got a new play.

We need both story and information, but they got different parts to play.
Story is central. Story is hard as rock. It is the 600-pound gorilla that runs the show.
Information is confetti.
(Ooooh. Pretty.)

Now, it's not that you can't or shouldn't put information into a scene, God forbid.
Its just better to write scenes to tell story, rather than convey information.
The placement of the scene, its structure, its action, the pacing of the scene, the scene's very existence are dictated by the story inside it,
not by information the author wants to give to the reader.

For example one relationship is between the MC and her sister. After the inciting incident, they are in different countries. The relationship can only be evident, then, if I tell about it.
I think the author needs a recognition of who's in charge.
Probably it helps to say and to think:

"I put the two protagonists in different countries."

"I plotted the story so the protagonists can't meet till Chapter Five. "

" I arranged this separation because ... "

" I decided
plot points x, y, and z are more important than plot points a and b. "

It's never -- "this happens so I have to deal with it".
It's always "I, the author, have decided this is going to happen."
But it doesn't start out with Katniss training. We start out in her community.
The movie (I haven't read the book) doesn't begin with a boy-girl meeting because the story is not a Romance. It's bildungsroman.

The introductory story elements of a bildungsroman are all there in the opening scenes of the movie.
In my feeling it does build suspense. It allows for the romance to be unexpected and serendipitous. I've gotten the impression from romance purists, though, that suspense is not welcome in a romance novel.
I don't know what romance purists you've been talking to. Suspense works just fine in Romance. There's a whole subgenre called 'Romantic Suspense'.

If you want to someday market your work as genre Romance/ Romantic Suspense, you might familiarize yourself with the kind of books sold in this market. Your local library probably has a good selection. Authors you might try -- some of their books are RS -- include Carla Neggers, Kelley Armstrong, Christina Dodd, J.D. Robb, Elizabeth Lowell, Pamela Clare, Maya Banks, Linda Howard, and Suzanne Brockmann.

Genre Romance -- outside category romances which are a different kettle of fish -- does not require a H&H meeting in Chapter One. But like all genre fiction it requires story in Chapter One.

Most dystopian fiction is not genre Romance. Some is YA. Some is SF. Some is General Fiction.Some is even LitFic.

Not every book with a love story is genre Romance. If your work doesn't fit comfortably into Romance genre, there's no reason to try to shoehorn it in there.

Information in a broad sense. Not just dates, places, things. I'm talking about developing character. I've read the opinion that the main purpose of story is to give information about character. Character is the decisions your character makes, and story is a sequence of those decisions.
While all books reveal character, stories written primarily to 'reveal character' are often LitFic rather than genre.

I am, myself, wary of scenes that do not advance the overall action of the story. I add them ... but whenever I do, I know I'm breaking forward momentum. I avoid doing this sorta dead-still-in-the-water scene in the first five chapters.
 
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SomethingOrOther

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I guess I'm an atypical reader around here. I don't want information, and I don't really want a story.

All I want are great details and great sentences and paragraphs (okay, and good ones too).

I'm reading Denis Johnson's Angels right now. I love lines like these:

A couple of times she tried to shush Miranda, because the baby was sleeping and so was everyone else on the bus, except the driver, she hoped — but Miranda had to nudge Baby Ellen with her foot every two seconds because she wanted to play, right in the middle of Nevada in the middle of the night.

...

Jamie heard low snores issuing from the shorter nun when she was supposed to be praying. God had heard it all before anyway, and didn’t bother to wake her. [SoO: Yes, filtering. <3.]

...

"[A whole paragraph of cutesy talk directed at a baby, too much to quote.]" She wished she could smother the baby. Nobody would know.

Narrative is the organizing device that makes everything coherent and gives individual details/lines even more strength than they would have in isolation. It's like music: you can introduce a motif and repeat it a few times and/or have it recur later in a modified form, and that's generally preferable to having a whole bunch of isolated, dissimilar tuuuunes, one after another. But I don't need a neat early Classical period symphony; I'll take a meandering late-19th tone poem too. The stars of the show are the details, the small-scale stuff. The story is the galaxy: the big NASA picture-waiting-to-happen I can appreciate afterwards from afar but am not in position to see while actually inside.

Metaphor overload. Metaphors are like food to me; I eat them up, I poop them out. :e2moon: :gone:
 
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morngnstar

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Information is:
Romeo is a dashing young blade, heir to an ancient family in Verona. He's romantic and ripe to fall in love. Everybody likes Romeo.

I used the word. I get to choose what I meant by it. It wasn't that.

" I arranged this separation because ... "

" I decided
plot points x, y, and z are more important than plot points a and b. "

Yep, I did. The hero and heroine being from different countries is more fundamental than the heroine and her sister having a chat midway through act one.

I am, myself, wary of scenes that do not advance the overall action of the story. I add them ... but whenever I do, I know I'm breaking forward momentum. I avoid doing this sorta dead-still-in-the-water scene in the first five chapters.

I never said the scenes didn't have action, just that they had information. You interpreted that to mean they were "telling". They're not, they're showing. My question is if that information appears after boy meets girl, is there any way for it to be showing? One way is flashback. I don't know a any other.
 

SomethingOrOther

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I never said the scenes didn't have action, just that they had information. You interpreted that to mean they were "telling". They're not, they're showing. My question is if that information appears after boy meets girl, is there any way for it to be showing? One way is flashback. I don't know a any other.

Flashbacks needn't be long, if that is what you are worried about. You can also use short blocks of narrative summary. Can you be more specific about what this "information" is? It'll be easier for me to suggest alternative strategies if I know what you want to accomplish.

And a language nitpick: "You interpreted that to mean they were being told. They're not, they're being shown. ... is there any way for it to be shown."
 
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RaggedEdge

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The typical admonitions against "filtering" are similar in their crudeness. "Pay attention to narrative distance, and avoid haphazard slips in focalization" would be a big improvement. There are certain narrative distances at which you want to use "filtering" phrases, a lot.


*I'll occasionally read a story loaded with dull physical action, every other sentence looking like "He nodded" and "He adjusted his tie" and "He knitted his brow and wiped the sweat off his forehead and fiddled with his tie", because the author wanted to "show" not "tell", as per the mantra, and thought that was enough. I think "use interesting details instead of dull ones" on its own is better than "Show, Don't Tell"; I'd rather read a story full of interesting "telling" than one full of uninteresting "showing".

I agree with the above.

Morningstar, I get the feeling you are avoiding 'telling' at all costs, but 'telling' can be done in such interesting ways, often through figurative language such as metaphor, that it doesn't count as the dreaded telling.

It sounds like you're dealing with a few separate concerns that are interrelated and therefore hard to make sense of. One is figuring out your story's genre and then meeting specific conventions. Another is how to introduce the character's backstory and motivations. Another is what constitutes 'interesting' and 'story tension' and 'momentum' and how to work those in immediately.

It helps to read a lot in each genre that could apply, then choose your favorites and study their opening chapters closely. Take them apart, item by item. Look for occasions of telling and figure out why they work for you. One caveat: it seems like the best-selling authors in any genre are the least careful or edited anymore. IMHO, they get away with weaker openings, anyway, because their audience is built-in. Those of us who are trying to find our audience don't have that luxury.

It could be your story falls within the Romantic Suspense genre. Lisa Gardner has some interesting guidance on writing RS on her website, and one thing she explains is the quantity of romance-to-suspense can vary. Some authors lean heavily one way; some the other; some right in the middle. She lists examples of authors that fall within each.

From studying a lot of openings, most seem to do one of two things: promise a fascinating voice/outlook (something character-loving readers appreciate more than plot) or present a particular tension that's important to the story. The very best do both. :)
 
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