I‘m almost sure I already did a show vs. tell post somewhere here before.
Oh, well. That must’ve been years ago.
My books are starting to get a reputation as something you have to pay close attention to in order to get the most out of them. I feel like I should address this.
I don’t set out to write difficult books. They’re supposed to be something you can read as is–everything important will be explained later on. And I try to make the experience fun for the reader (a big reason why I try to avoid exposition in the first place–that stuff tends to bore me).
The “later on” is the key here, however. The novels only “tell” you what you need to know at that moment in time. I focus a lot on painting a picture, on showing what will later have meaning once it’s allowed to seep into the narrative. Readers who get to the end of Sapphire Flight can probably go back to the beginning of Jaeth’s Eye and see all the clues now staring them in the face. Little things like what the characters choose to talk about, how they react, and so on. Even something like a character misspelling a name or making a mistake will reveal yet another angle that might have not been there before.
The reason for this is the extremely limited 3rd person (or 1st person) POV I use. The point of view will not focus on anything that is not important to them at that point in time. We follow a train of thought, a certain flow of events, which means that things will be glossed over if they’re not important to the narrative, and we’re certainly not going to get the character wondering about a key plot point if they’re trying to avoid being stabbed in the guts. A beta-reader once remarked to me that he found it fascinating how, during intense fight scenes, sentences get shorter, the flow gets choppy, and the characters stop introspecting–at least long enough to get out alive.
I also employ unreliable narrators and characters who are flawed, and hence, still have a lot to learn. This means that my beginning novels tend to be riddled with falsities. A big example here is The Wolf of Oren-yaro, which seems to start out as a romance novel gone wrong. But it’s not. Annals of a Bitch Queen is a series concerning a flawed protagonist trying to live up to an impossible ideal set up by an ambitious father, of which her marriage plays a big part. In the beginning of the first book, we see her attempting to deal with politics while wrestling with loneliness and her own nerves. She can be threatening an enemy, for example, but be shaking–the narrative will focus on what she’s trying to do and not bring too much focus on what she’s trying very hard to ignore. She can also be saying one thing inside her head, but characters around her are saying something very different.
Jaeth’s Eye is another favourite example. The most popular question is “What happened in that first chapter?” I’m not going to spoil you in case you haven’t read it yet, but there’s little incidents like when Kefier overreacts if he’s startled and how careful his companions are around him in tight, dark spaces. He’s also paranoid and tends to panic easily. But the narrative isn’t focused on Kefier overcoming these little issues–it’s concerned about the big picture, of Kefier trying to live in spite of his difficulties and not making any excuses for the mistakes he’s made, which is why the narrative glosses over them. It doesn’t mean they’re not important…it means I’ll be writing 600k novels if I focus on everything.
So by all means, read this stuff like candy, and just watch how everything unfolds (I try to gather every loose thread up by the series end, which is why I like finishing these as fast as possible. I certainly don’t want to forget things!) The little things that are “off” will later come into play, and will probably be more obvious during a re-read.
