I can only grit out chunky, bland sets of sentences that lacks any
soul. I am having problems making the character shine naturally.

I think these are due to my unsureness on what is the middle ground
between too much and too little information on the character's thought
process. I fear if I give too little info the reader will become
uninterested, and I dislike giving too much simply because I think it
as a sign of bad writing. Also, I worry that the reader will dislike
the characters when I do give some dimension to the character.

I am a little confused on how to approach my writing, and I will be
very happy if you can help me out with it.

I'm not a professional but am further along in my first novel than you and will share what I have learned. It might be helpful.

Don't let the blank page stop you from writing. Plan for your first draft to be a 'crappy copy.' Just write a bad first draft. Give yourself permission to write a bad first draft.

^That's my answer to your question. Give yourself a word count goal (example 1000 words per day) to meet every day and don't worry if the words are bad, just get them on the page.

A thousand bad words is infinitely better that no words. Make a bad copy and revise later.

You're putting too much responsibility onto yourself up front, to know what the reader will want. You don't know, it might be impossible to know. Don't worry if you have too much or too little detail, not yet. You can always take away, and you can always add more.

I gave my tenth draft out to 2 people in my writing group - and learned that I had not added enough setting, anywhere in the story. Other parts I had beaten over the head, there was too much message/idea. That's fine, I can tune those areas now. Same for you.

You can change telling to showing later, and vice versa. Showing and telling refer to how to communicate information and showing comes in different flavors.

It sounds to me, like you're stuck on making progress (afraid of bad writing) rather than wrestling with show/tell. It's OK for the first draft to be all 'tell.'

Telling is stating information, and engages about one part of the reader brain, the part that boring lecturers rely on, the part where we are supposed to listen to words and memorize them. Any part of your story that does that is telling. It's OK for the first draft to be telling.

"He was aggravated." < telling.

Showing is anything that pulls on other parts of the reader brain, preferably multiple parts. The reader's memories, imagination, emotions, etc. It goes a step outside of telling and requires the reader to figure out what is not being told. That's why it is more immersive.

"He slammed his fist into the dashboard. Start, dammit, my flight's about to board." < showing. You can figure out 'he was aggravated.' In the meantime you have a picture instead of something to memorize.

But showing can also be through description. It can be a paragraph or two (or a chapter or a book) without any dialog, as long as it moves the reader and engages multiple modalities of cognition.

How much “showing, not telling” is the best for character development?

Showing is best for engaging the reader. In addition to the stuff above, one way to develop a character by showing, is through other characters' reactions to him/her.

Telling is best for brevity. A character's age is easy to tell and is fine to tell. A character's maturity is better to show. A character's eye color is fine to tell but the emotion behind those eyes is usually shown. The car that the character drives can be told. That the character loves the car can be shown.

Hope something in there is useful. Good luck!

p.s. Incidentally - one thing I would do differently if I was starting my novel right now: Find the overriding question that your protagonist is struggling with through the story. Keep it in mind as you write.

---

(0)

Login to post a comment!