SHOW NOT TELL - Part 2

If you have read and properly digested yesterday's lesson on SHOWING, NOT TELLING, you may now move on to Lynn Price's typically excellent and trenchant post on VISUAL WRITING. She makes many wise points, but the examples of dialogue particularly link with my show-not-tell post. Lynn makes the same points about adverbs and dialogue tags - and, though we're far from the first to do so, she got there before me, damn the pesky coyote. In fact, it was reading her words that spurred me to bring show-not-tell to your attention earlier than I was going to. Such an influence she is.

By the way, all this stuff about rules: rules are for breaking, aren't they? Rules are for beginners, no? No, actually. Writing rules are for writers who crave the power of language.

The only rule I go by is: if you understand the power of language, you will want every single word to be right. And you will never stop wanting to learn new ways to control your power and therefore control your readers.

Power-crazy? You bet!