The roadblock a writing client and I faced this week was how to communicate a powerful message in the telling of an animal's amazing story. Our solution was to use a human, who journeys alongside the animal.
But we realized that some of the ways to "show" and not "tell," through the human, will be more effective, and engaging for the reader, than others.
As you'll see, we discovered that the best solution is to show the character interacting with the animal. The worst if to have the human thinking about her insight. (#telling)
Serving the Reader By Telling an Animal's Story Via a Human Companion...
1. (Best) Human discovers something by interacting with the animal herself.
2. Human interacts with others who are interacting with, or impacted by, the animal.
3. Human observes others interacting with the animal.
4. Human notices, sees, overhears, others talking about their experience with the animal.
5. Human has a conversation with someone else where she describes how she's experienced the animal's actions and impact.
6. (Worst) Human reflects, internally, on the meaning of the animal.
What's worked for you?
This is a great lesson.
ReplyDeleteAs writers we can easily end up with #6, sharing our internal journey. It may be an effective form of self-help, but isn't too interesting others.