by Terra Caldwell | Aug 1, 2025 | Uncategorized
Infodumping In certain genres, infodumping is completely okay. Doorstopper/epic fantasies and science fiction (especially hard science fiction) rely on a certain amount of infodumping and the like to relay the details of their worlds to their readers, and readers...
by Terra Caldwell | Aug 1, 2025 | Uncategorized
Whenever we use an adverb related to time,* we are telling. This isn’t always bad, and it’s certainly unavoidable. You want to mention time in your writing. Some sense of time can ground a person into a story, especially if the story plays with time, or...
by Terra Caldwell | Aug 1, 2025 | Uncategorized
Another way that people tell their stories instead of showing them is through the use of filter words, especially in first person writing. A filter word is a word such as heard, saw, felt, knew, thought, realized, etc. If you’re unsure why these are not wise to...
by Terra Caldwell | Aug 1, 2025 | Craft basics, New Writers
Today’s readers expect a story to be shown to them, not told to them, so even if you’re a big fan of telling, a publisher won’t accept your piece unless you show what’s going on, and readers are more likely to give you bad reviews if most of...
by Terra Caldwell | Jul 12, 2025 | Craft basics, New Writers
Here is an example that I’m making up on the spot, so it’s going to be a bit rough, but it works. We’ll call this “The Very Bad Birthday.” Note: What follows IS a sort of outline for a story. It’s long, and for that I apologize, but stories are long and complicated!...
