Solidifying your writing style when others tell you its wrong

[Cathy M.]

So far I've been rejected by quite a few editors in my hunt, but this is good as one of them was willing to tell me why.
Make lemons with lemonade no?
Right off the bat was punctuation which I was expecting, but what they said next caught me off guard.
To much telling and not enough describing.
I was very unprepared for that since all I've been told since high-school is that I need to tone things down.
I believed them and so cut out a lot of my work out and tried to find an in between.
Others came in and poked at my work a bit, and then told me I needed more describing.
Either I'm unable to find a happy medium, or i'm basing my opinion of a happy medium to much on other peoples personal opinion...
So to be safe i'll ask both questions.
How do you find a happy medium of telling and describing? And when does advice become a matter of opinion vs fact?
Thank you in advance for any advice you give!

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Advice is always opinion. Criticism may include facts, but advice is subjective.

If you are using punctuation incorrectly, that's a fact. If you are spelling something incorrectly, that's a fact. Even those two are subject to geographical/dialectical/poetic arguments, which is to say that one person's fact may differ from another's.

If someone says you should change the way you're telling your story to have more X, that's one opinion. While it's true that an overwhelming majority or even a large minority of opinions swinging the same direction are a good indicator that it might be hard to find an agent/publisher/market for your book, there's nothing to say you can't try anyway, and there's nothing to say that many people might not just love it. It depends on your motives for writing, and what you want to get out of it, and how hard you want to have to work at getting that.

It also depends on whom you are asking for opinions. You might try posting something in our Critiques section, to see what the folks around here think.

 

[Cathy M.]

Advice is always opinion. Criticism may include facts, but advice is subjective.

If you are using punctuation incorrectly, that's a fact. If you are spelling something incorrectly, that's a fact. Even those two are subject to geographical/dialectical/poetic arguments, which is to say that one person's fact may differ from another's.

If someone says you should change the way you're telling your story to have more X, that's one opinion. While it's true that an overwhelming majority or even a large minority of opinions swinging the same direction are a good indicator that it might be hard to find an agent/publisher/market for your book, there's nothing to say you can't try anyway, and there's nothing to say that many people might not just love it. It depends on your motives for writing, and what you want to get out of it, and how hard you want to have to work at getting that.

It also depends on whom you are asking for opinions. You might try posting something in our Critiques section, to see what the folks around here think.

So what you are saying is that if the majority rules its safe to assume its more then just opinion?
I will edit my work up a bit and submit a paragraph or two, i'm still nervous about doing so, but I guess right now its the best plan to figure out what i'm doing wrong.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Writing is a skill - it takes time to develop. But it's impossible to know where you're going right or wrong unless you get honest critical feedback. Post the first few paragraphs of your first chapter in the Critiques section here and see if that helps.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

So what you are saying is that if the majority rules its safe to assume its more then just opinion?
I will edit my work up a bit and submit a paragraph or two, i'm still nervous about doing so, but I guess right now its the best plan to figure out what i'm doing wrong.

Well, if you hear the same thing from a number of people, then you know it's the prevailing opinion -- many people believing something does not make it a fact (consider religions), but if many people don't like something in your book, it will be a harder sell. And if many people comment on the same thing, you know it's not just because your neighbor hates cats, or your aunt can't stand the Oxford comma, or something like that.

Do remember that people here will not be mean, but they will be honest, and sometimes that's painful -- but it's also necessary. It's better to hear things here, when you can fix them, than to never hear anything from an agent or a publisher and never know why. And you can always request a specific type of critique (does this hook you, or how is the tone, is the dialogue realistic, etc.), if you want to avoid an all-out red-ink job, but it can be less helpful.

 

[Boneman]

I've paid for professional edits I agreed with and I've paid for professional edits I disgagreed with, and, as has been said: it's an opinion. Hopefully a learned opinion, one that shows you why the piece doesn't work (in their opinion) and it is up to you to accept or reject. But I guess if ten people say the same, there must be some truth in it, unless there are ten different reasons why, all contradictory. Let's face it, if there was an editor out there who knew everything, and every customer who used them got published, they'd be booked solid for the next half-century. If you find yourself agreeing with the edit, fine. If you don't, ask yourself why you don't agree with it, and if you're convinced, then don't change a thing. In the end you must write for yourself, and probably the only editor you should listen to when you don't agree, is the one at the publishing house you're signed with...

 

[Cathy M.]

Writing is a skill - it takes time to develop. But it's impossible to know where you're going right or wrong unless you get honest critical feedback. Post the first few paragraphs of your first chapter in the Critiques section here and see if that helps.

I need to edit out names first thanks to issues I've had with theft/stalking, and as soon as I get that taken care of then I will post away.
I do need help, which was why i was contacting editors, haha.

 

[Cathy M.]

I've paid for professional edits I agreed with and I've paid for professional edits I disgagreed with, and, as has been said: it's an opinion. Hopefully a learned opinion, one that shows you why the piece doesn't work (in their opinion) and it is up to you to accept or reject. But I guess if ten people say the same, there must be some truth in it, unless there are ten different reasons why, all contradictory. Let's face it, if there was an editor out there who knew everything, and every customer who used them got published, they'd be booked solid for the next half-century. If you find yourself agreeing with the edit, fine. If you don't, ask yourself why you don't agree with it, and if you're convinced, then don't change a thing. In the end you must write for yourself, and probably the only editor you should listen to when you don't agree, is the one at the publishing house you're signed with...

I must say my biggest issue is that I believe everyone, and for the longest time was ruling opinion as fact.
A bit to much desperation on my end to make everything perfect is what i think kept me from ever questioning anyone.
Now i'm seeing that's not exactly a good rout to take either...
Well, hopefully I will be able to get some good advice to start off with in the critique section while I continue my search for an editor. That way i can work and wait at the same time.
Though I am glad to hear

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

A lot of what the others have said is spot on. I'll add a quote from Neil Gaiman. "Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right... When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong."

Right off the bat was punctuation which I was expecting...

I would suggest working on this first. It's harsh, but you're probably being rejected out of hand because of this.

Also, if you haven't already, post a few hundred words over on the critique section for some pointers.

How do you find a happy medium of telling and describing?

That's up to each writer and their personal style, and different genres have different conventions. I dipped into mystery novels recently and found that--compared to SF at least--the detective fiction I read was loaded down with paragraphs long description of the most mundane and irrelevant details. SF by comparison is light on the description except to world-build or the important bits.

In mysteries they describe everything in detail so you can't spot the real clues mixed in with the red herrings or throw away description, in SF if it's being described in detail you know it's important.

The one book I would recommend is "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers". The editing checklist alone is worth the price of admission.

And when does advice become a matter of opinion vs fact?

Are they willing to pay you for your fiction? Then it's a matter of fact.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Are they willing to pay you for your fiction? Then it's a matter of fact.

Ahh, yes, another way of sorting that out. I missed that one.

 

[tinkerdan]

First of all it's really important for you to establish your voice. It's best to establish it around the best spelling a punctuation you can so that doesn't distract people. It's also important to be able to take some advice with a grain of salt not only because some might be bad advice, but also (at least for me) sometimes it's easy to get the wrong idea or go in the wrong direction when having a knee jerk reaction to an editors complaint.

One editor complained that he didn't like to see character dialogue ejaculated. He'd rather see simple he or she said's. I thought he meant that you should never have dialogue without tags and put in a whole bunch of tags and then was told I'd made the next editor bleed out their ears from too many he saids she saids. It turns out the first editor was being explicitly literal meaning he did not go for dialogue like this:: "Stop," he ejaculated. How was I to know, since I hadn't used the word ejaculated just other words he didn't care for.

To much telling and not enough describing.

With that in mind and looking at the above perhaps its possible what was meant was something more in line with what we see here a lot; and that is that it's merely too much tell that should be show. Which means we don't necessarily need more description as much as we don't need to have it told to us when you could more easily show it through the narrators gut feelings, their emotional reaction or lack thereof.

And that is something that you can turn readily into lemonade and it would be easily determined if you posted some of the work in the critique section here.

 

[Bowler1]

Learning your art and the rules (grammar, it can't be avoided so best just learn how to master it (see threads on comma placement and you'll see grammar is a slippery customer)) of grammar, the tools of the trade. Show and tell, dialogue, emotion, pace and plot are the power tools that I just plug in and go, and when it comes down to it you only really learn to handle by writing.


Don't ever be afraid to hold your own and write as you please. How can you be different if you don't?


I know the Crit section can be scary, but most take part with good intensions and are trying to help. So don't just tip your toe in the water, dive in, and get started.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I'm sort of facing this at the moment with a story where my betas are looking for more action and less description than I feel is right for the story I'm trying to achieve. Because I trust them implicitly (and I do) I will bring it a little closer to where they want it, but because I'm an independent, read for that bloody-minded, so-and-so, it will only be a little closer.

At the end of the day, you're the author, it's your story, only you know how you want to tell it. But getting the confidence to get to the point where you can say that and mean it takes time.

But, if it's punctuation and spelling issues - you need to sort those or you're shooting yourself in the foot at first base.

 

[Cosmic Geoff]

"Too much telling and not enough describing."
I got "Too much telling and not enough showing" from some beta readers, but not others, and found it baffling till one took the trouble to explain exactly what he meant. This is a case where a general comment is not necessarily very helpful. If possible, go back to your critics and ask them to explain exactly what they meant, with examples.
Also note that the modern fashion is to tell a story entirely in scenes (like TV), while the older fashion was to use significant amounts of narration (exposition). Nowadays, exposition, unless very good, is liable to be labelled "info-dump"

What I was doing was to repeatedly include little paragraphs that said something had happened or been said, instead of dramatising it as a scene.

 

[ratsy]

It's funny, I never really understood showing and telling as a reader. It just never bothered me. Once I started writing and reading about it and trying to learn (and yes getting my own critiques) it makes so much sense.

It takes a lot more work to "show" something than to just say it, or info-dump it. I think that being conscious of it will help as it has helped me. When I write now it is always on my mind and I know it has made me a better writer because of it.

So if people are saying that there is too much telling, there more than likely is. Now when I read a book with telling I easily notice and think of ways they could have done it differently.

 

[Fishbowl Helmet]

That said, ignore people when they say to never tell, only show. Sometimes it's better to tell than show.

 

[Cathy M.]

Wow, talk about some wonderful advice and explanations!
What I have gathered from everyone is that if the majority shouts, then its best to listen and consider changes, while if I hear one thing from one person, not to take it to heart if I truly think my work should remain the same.
Rule of thumb, advice is opinion, there to guide based off of a single persons thought, not necessarily to be taken as fact.

As for those of you reassuring me that the critique section is nothing to fear, I do appreciate it, but i am nervous about posting due to past theft issues that required court to resolve. Its taking me a while, but I am modifying names and other key words in my chapter so I don't run into the same problem.
I crave constructive criticism, for me its a door that opens and allows me better myself, so as soon as I go through and finish these modifications I will most definitely post in the critique section.

 

[tinkerdan]

As far as trying to interpret what was said and being able to act appropriately I have had the example of writing first person present tense in an entire piece as a learning tool.

One of the beta readers complained that I should only use present tense in scenes that have heavy action and then I should switch out of it as quickly as possible. And I suppose writing that way might have been an interesting exercise. I just wasn't sure where he'd read or heard that and why he was fixated upon it.

From that, though, I did determine that I was not quite succeeding at the first person present tense level. This was understandable because there are a great number of pitfall with either of those and with them together its like going through the pits of despair.

So I went through everything I knew to avoid in those pitfalls and tried to find the spots where I'd slipped up and did a bit of research and went through it one more time.

When I resubmitted that to him he decided that once he got the feel for the style he thought this version was much better. (Which meant I was getting closer.)

Usually the complaint and advice mean that something is out of kilter somewhere and even for those used to going over text with a fine toothed comb, what they perceive is not always what is most evidently wrong.

 

[tinkerdan]

Sorry about double post

almost worse than dog eating homework is post evaporating and having to retype what you just typed and then having both posts show up.