In Today’s Journal
* My Quote of the Day
* On Trusting the Reader
* The Future
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
My Quote of the Day
“You wouldn’t even try to influence or alter or change what happens in a real-life event as it unfolds, much as you might wish you could. You’re only able to watch with joy or glee or horror or trepidation or sadness as the real-life story unfolds. So do the same with your characters’ stories.” Yer Uncle Harv
On Trusting the Reader
Before I learned better, I used to beat the reader over the head. Soundly. For just one fairly weak example, I might write this in a story:
Mary said, “Damn it!” She plucked the ashtray off the table and threw it at Dan. She was angry.
Yeah. Is “She was angry” even necessary?
Um, nope.
Given what Mary had just said, the exclamation point, and then the fact that she’d just chucked an ashtray at Dan, the reader would already know she’s angry.
Noticing that kind of structure for the first time was maybe my first step toward understanding that I needed to trust the reader to ‘get it’.
Of course, those little extraneous explanatory sentences continued in my writing for a period of time until I eventually was able to write without sticking them in there in the first place.
Sometime during that learning process, or maybe a little later, I experienced another realization: The reader can only see, hear, smell, taste and feel—physically and emotionally—what you put on the page.
For just one example, the reader can only hear the specific, particular words (and the connotation of those words) that a character utters in his dialogue if you put them on the page in the first place.
And the specific words the character utters, like any other nuance in dialogue or narrative, matter.
In the passage above, Mary said, “Damn it!”
If she’d said only, “Damn!” instead, or “Damn it, Dan!” the nuanced meaning would have been a little different.
- A simple, “Damn!” might’ve indicated Mary’s frustration in general.
- “Damn it!” indicated the same frustration, but maybe a little more strongly or a little more emphasized (by “it” not by italics). And
- “Damn it, Dan!” might’ve indicated she was frustrated specifically with Dan or with something he’d done, whether it was something real or something she’d imagined.
But even more to the point, the reader can only see, smell, taste, and feel (again, physically or emotionally) what you put on the page in tone and description.
All of that comes from the story itself and from the characters. But all of it passes through your mind on its bid to get to the page.
Your job as the characters’ recorder (or as Stephen King calls himself, his characters’ ‘stenographer’) is to notice it and put it on the page.
But don’t add something that you, the writer, ‘think’ should be included. The characters, not you, are actually living the story, so let them tell it. Your only job is to put it on the page, be it a computer screen, a sheet of typing paper in an old Remington or IBM Selectric, or a yellow legal pad. So….
- If the character enables you to “see” in your mind a door (or a bookshelf or a chair or whatever) behind Dan, include it. If the room is cool or hot, include it.
- If a fire alarm is going off in the hallway, include it. If the sound of a train going past on nearby railroad tracks or a passenger jet taking off from the nearby airport causes the windows to rattle, include it.
- If something in the room causes a character to remember the smell of his grandma’s fresh baked cinnamon rolls, include it.
- Even if something the characters put in your mind doesn’t “seem” important to you, the writer, at the time, include it. You have zero idea whether it might be important in the next chapter, or the chapter after that or even in the next novel of the series.
The bottom line is, don’t trust the reader to see (etc.) anything you don’t put on the page, and never second-guess your characters. Again, they, not you, are living the story.
In YOUR story, you’re just sitting on your buttocks writing down what happens. And once you settle into that role, I swear you’ll love it.
One of the most recent things I’m working on is omitting the word “thought” from my fiction. Really there are only two ‘rules’ to remember:
- There’s no reason to write “I thought” or “s/he thought” or even “my first thought was.” Instead, just write the thought itself.
- Remember not to set the actual thought off with quotation marks—those are reserved for spoken dialogue or monologue, not unspoken thought—and remember to keep unspoken thoughts in present tense.
Past tense is the natural voice of narrative, but we most often think in present tense. So there’s that.
Yesterday, in one tense scene in Chapter 19 of my current novel, the POV character’s telephone rang in the kitchen. The POV character got up from the couch, stretched, and started in that direction.
Then I wrote this:
My first thought was that maybe it was Dot, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t. She’d have come back to the house if she wanted to try to renew anything.
And Aspen doesn’t have my phone number as far as I know. Besides, ….. Whatever.
And if it was TJ— Well, no, it wouldn’t be TJ.
In my constant and ongoing desire to smooth out my craft, I changed the first sentence of that segment to this:
Maybe it was Dot, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t. She’d have come back to the house if she wanted to try to renew anything.
And Aspen doesn’t have my phone number as far as I know. Besides, ….. Whatever.
And if it was TJ— Well, no, it wouldn’t be TJ.
The whole scene was rendered a little more immediate (and the reader was invited a little more deeply into the scene) with the simple deletion of “My first thought was that.” Isn’t that cool?
Any questions, email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com.
The Future
As I reported yesterday, there will come a time when I’ll be wanting to step aside and let someone else take over TNDJ. In your own way, of course.
If anyone’s even the slightest bit interested, please email me to let me know and open a dialogue. You can absolutely do this. I’ve been doing it since early 2014.
Oh, and yesterday, I crossed over the million word mark on the year for consumable words (fiction and nonfiction). Woohoo! And over 261,000 words of that was in this Journal.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
The Best Black Friday Deals for Writers & Authors [2025] I strongly recommend the Generate Press deal and the DepositPhotos deal.
19 Instagram Book Promotion Ideas from Publishers
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 1160
Mentorship Words…………….. 300
Total Nonfiction…………………. 1460
Writing of Blackwell Ops 52: Sam Granger | Figuring Things Out
Day 1…… 4693 words. To date………… 4693
Day 2…… 3623 words. To date………… 8316
Day 3…… 3530 words. To date………… 11846
Day 4…… 6309 words. To date………… 18155
Day 5…… 5129 words. To date………… 23284
Day 6…… 5217 words. To date………… 28501
Day 7…… 5617 words. To date………… 34118
Fiction for November……………………… 86428
Fiction for 2025…………………………… 748469
Nonfiction for November.………………… 22280
Nonfiction for 2025………………..……… 261750
2025 consumable words………………… 1002650
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 17
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 36
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 121
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29