In Today’s Journal
* A New Short Story
* Setting, and Characters’ Opinions: 4
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
A New Short Story
“White Ring Quilt” went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out. It’s free.
Setting and Characters’ Opinions: 4
After my writer friend read the scene I posted here yesterday, his response was “I feel like I am immersed and grounded in the story, like I am there, feeling and seeing the things the character is experiencing.”
That’s the comment I most often get from my readers: that they’re in the story with the characters. It’s never a complaint.
Then he asked, “When is it okay to tell?”
The best short answer, if you want to pull the reader into your story and keep him there, is Never. So that’s what I told him.
When you, the writer, tell the readers what’s going on in the story, that’s author intrusion. You’ve effectively stepped in between the reader and the story and interrupted it.
In other words, you’ve turned the reader from an active participant in the story (the reader plays the role of the eavesdropper) into a passive listener.
The role of fiction in a reader’s life is escape to another world, your fictional world. If you take away that promise of escape, why should he keep reading?
So the whole time you’re telling him what’s going on instead of letting him experience it for himself, he’s wishing you’d step aside so he can get back into the story with the character.
I offered up this analogy:
1. You attend a stage play as a member of the audience. The lights dim, the curtain goes up, the actors become the characters, and you feel transported into the story, almost as if you’re on the stage with the actors. You’re IN the story, maybe as an extra character: The Eavesdropper. That’s good, right? Or…
2. You attend a stage play as a member of the audience. The lights dim, the curtain goes up, and the actors are in place: But the actors don’t do or say anything. Instead, a gentleman in a tuxedo comes out of the wings. He takes center stage, a microphone in his hand, and tells you what’s going on behind him, or what should be going on.
Which version of the play would YOU rather attend? The one in which you’re an active participant (the eavesdropper), or the one in which you’re only a passive listener?
Yeah. That’s what your reader wants too.
NOW, ALL OF THAT SAID, the quietly whispered longer answer to my friend’s question is “Yes, there are times when it’s actually preferable to ‘tell’ the reader what’s going on.”
But telling the reader what’s going on is an advanced technique, and I seriously suggest you forget it until all of the stuff above sinks in and you’re putting it into practice.
If you want a glimpse at the technique, here’s an example:
As I returned to cycle over Chapter 10 of my novel in progress, the chapter opened with 284 words in five paragraphs of me (the writer/presenter) stepping in and telling the reader what the characters talked about over supper and their actions as they talked.
The last two paragraphs illustrate the technique:
When supper and our after-supper cups of coffee were empty and our attentive waiter showed up to clear the table, I was almost sorry.
But I glanced at the waiter, then stood, walked around the table, and gripped the back of her chair to move it as she got up.
Then, with that ugly business finished, I stepped out of the way and went right back into presenting the characters’ actual dialogue and their actions to immerse the reader in the story again.
Why do I say this is an important advanced technique?
Because the “telling” in those five paragraphs glossed over the unimportant details of the conversation. It let the reader know what the characters discussed during the conversation without making him suffer through it.
During that 5-paragraph opening, the reader only vaguely ‘sees’ and ‘hears’ the two characters talking and chuckling and discussing things as they eat.
I usually use the technique at the beginning of a chapter or immediately after an in-chapter break and ALWAYS just after a cliffhanger (the end of the previous chapter or in-chapter segment).
That’s why ‘telling’ doesn’t run off my readers. They go from action and dialogue to the short ‘telling’ part, then right back into more action and dialogue.
This is the sort of thing you can learn by reading (first as a reader, for pleasure) and then studying (as a writer) parts that pique your interest in my work. This particular novel will be published on November 8. It will be available at my online discount store a day or two after I finish it, so somewhere around October 23.
What I’ve presented here over the past four days is the sort of knowledge you’ll get if you choose to engage in a mentorship with me. Not only what to do but how to do it and why.
For details on that mentorship, see Setting, and Characters’ Opinions, Part 1 either at the website or on Substack. And the price is only $30 per month, not some ridiculous number with the word “thousand” in it. Just sayin’.
This concludes this series on writing Setting and Characters’ Opinions. I hope you found it useful. Please let me know in the comments.
In the meantime, if you have the Journal archives (in fully searchable PDF format), you can search those for instances of “setting,” “scene,” “recorder,” and “presenter” to see a lot more on this topic.
If you don’t have them, you only have to email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com and I’ll send them along.
By the Way
I’ll be away from the Hovel for a few days. Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Kickstarter Friday and Dean’s starting a Kickstarter mentorship.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 980
Writing of Blackwell Ops 49: Wesley Stark
Day 1…… 2381 words. To date…… 2381
Day 2…… 3283 words. To date…… 5664
Day 3…… 2934 words. To date…… 8598
Day 4…… 2305 words. To date…… 10903
Day 5…… 3356 words. To date…… 14259
Day 6…… 2295 words. To date…… 16554
Day 7…… 3271 words. To date…… 19825
Day 8…… 2660 words. To date…… 22485
Day 9…… 3120 words. To date…… 25605
Fiction for October………………… 49160
Fiction for 2025…………………… 627698
Nonfiction for October.…………… 13370
Nonfiction for 2025……………….. 223480
2025 consumable words………… 843609
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 15
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 32
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 119
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 306
Short story collections……………………. 29