

Saturday, March 18

Revision Workshop: Day Eighteen: Eliminate Unnecessary Told Prose

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Welcome to Day Eighteen of Fiction University’s Month-Long Revision Workshop. During this stage, we should feel pretty good about our plot and characters, and understand what and why they’re doing all those exciting and interesting things in our novels. We’ve been focusing on the what and the why for a while, so it’s time to give a little attention to the where.

We’ve been doing a lot of description work these last few days, and any time there’s description or stage direction, there’s the risk of telling, not showing.

Today, we’re rolling up our sleeves and getting rid of any unnecessary told prose.

We’ll be using the search function of our writing programs heavily this session, looking for the common red flag words often associated with told prose. But remember, just because you find one of these words doesn’t mean you have to eliminate or rewrite it. If the word is doing its job and the sentence says what you want it to say, in the way you want to say it, leave it. Looking for these red flag words is just the easiest way to find told prose in a manuscript without reading the entire thing one more time.

With luck, some of these told moments were cleared up when we checked for stimulus/response back during the POV sessions, but it’s not a bad idea to check again with telling in mind—especially if we did a lot of rewriting or added additional description since then.

1. Check for Motivational Tells

Motivational tells explain motive, frequently before the character has even exhibited the action. For example, “To stop the mugger, John threw a rock at the guy’s head.” This tells readers why John threw the rock, explaining the action instead of showing it.

Look for ways to rewrite any motivational tells so readers can guess the motivation by the way the character acts, thinks, or speaks. “John threw a rock at the mugger’s head. The man yelped and crashed to the sidewalk.” We can guess he threw the rock to stop him.

Common red flag words: to (verb), when, as, causing, making.

2. Check for Emotional Tells

Emotional tells explain feelings or say the character is feeling an emotion, but readers never see that emotion exhibited by the character. If you’ve gotten feedback such as, “I’m just not feeling it, even though the character says she upset,” this could be the reason why. For example, “She screamed in anger and flung a rock at his head.”

Look for ways to convey the told emotion by using details that evoke that emotion. “Gritting her teeth, she screamed and flung a rock at his head.”

Common red flag words: In (emotion), and with (feeling).

(Here are more articles on show vs tell)

3. Check for Descriptive Tells

Descriptive tells explain actions. These are trickier because they often feel just fine until you notice that you're telling readers what they should be able to figure out by how the character is acting or how the scene is described. For example, “She sneaked across the room, trying not to be seen” or “the sound of a gun echoed across the stadium.”

Show the action and let readers figure out what’s going on by what they see. “She sneaked across the room, scurrying from chair to chair in the shadows” or “a gunshot echoed across the stadium.”

Common red flag words and phrases: Realize, could see, the sound of, trying, because, making.

4. Check for Placeholder Adverbs

When you see an adverb, there's a good chance you can improve the sentence by using details that show what that adverb means. How would someone who did something “adverb-ly” actually look and sound like? For example, “She said angrily” or “He walked nervously.”

Examine each adverb and decide if the sentence would be stronger without it. “She yelled” or “He scurried.”

This session ends Stage Three, and we should have all the missing or weak pieces of our novels fleshed out. The big macro issues have been taken care of, and the next stage is all about taking a step closer and tightening the draft on a text level.

Tomorrow: Check the Narrative Focus





  1. Thanks so much for providing this at home workshop. I'm a few days behind (more than a few!), but I'm going to work through all your suggestions eventually, and they're very helpful for guiding the revision process.

    1. No worries, I'm behind, too :) It's a work at your own pace workshop, and that's okay. Some steps will take more than a day to complete, so don't fret.

  2. This session is one of the best and most important lessons in writing. I used to think using adverbs (he shouted gladly, etc.) was the way to go, but soon realized it made for bad writing. Writers paint with words so that's exactly what we need to do - paint a world, a scene, a facial expression, etc.

    This is so helpful. Thanks!

    1. Most welcome! Show don't tell is definitely one of the tougher writing techniques to get. Hope this made it a little easier.

  3. I'm happy to say day 3 is still going well. ;) I'll also get through it all eventually! Thanks for all your work on this Janice...

    1. /cheer! You will :) It goes quicker after the first week to ten days.

  4. Janice, I am way behind, too. I hope this is going to be a book so I can keep the information for the next revision . . . merry writing!

    1. It will be. :) I'll add more to it and flesh it out with examples and exercises, and ETA is end of the year.

  5. Great tips here - something I'm working on at the moment. Loving this series x