Show or tell

Instead of characters knowing anything, you must now present the details that allow the reader to know them. Instead of a a character wanting something, you must now describe the thing so that the reader wants it.

Chuck Palahniuk, quoted in Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve by Ben Blatt

Chuck Palahniuk

Writers of fiction, if they are any good, learn early that it's better to show than tell. Novelist Chuck Palahniuk has gone so far as to make a long list of verbs writers should avoid because they tell too much while showing too little. Among these verbs are loves, hates, thinks, knows, understands, realizes, believes, wants, remembers imagines and desires. There are many more.

Try telling any kind of story, even a good joke, without using such verbs. They may be, in fact, the first verbs we think of because they serve as shortcuts to what we are trying to say. They tell the story directly, but they don't show the story as it develops.

In Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve, Ben Blatt ranks numerous famous writers according to their avoidance of these verboten words. Palahniuk himself ranks third on the list, indicating that he follows his own advice. In first place is James Joyce, followed by J.R.R. Tolkien in second and, after Palahniuk, Vladimir Nabokov.

One finds surprises on the list. Dan Brown, a popular author but not considered a great one, ranks above John Updike, William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Both James Patterson and Stephen King stand above John Steinbeck, Toni Morrison and Ernest Hemingway. Even Stephenie Meyer sits above Hemingway on this list.

So maybe there is more to great writing than avoiding certain verbs. Better to treat Palahniuk's list as a guide than a tablet of commandments. Still avoiding such words can sometimes create magic.

I just remembered a line from J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey that I quoted when I wrote about the book a couple of years ago: "Lane spotted her immediately, and despite whatever it was he was trying to do with his face, his arm that shot up into the air was the whole truth." Salinger could have told us Lane loved Franny and was very eager to see her again, but instead he showed us with just an arm in the air.