Showing, Not Telling

As you write your segments for the first project, try to SHOW, not merely TELL. You'll find yourself telling (explaining, not using sensory experience or narrative) when you simply talk "about" your object abstractly. You might find yourself, for instance, going on about the symbolic meaning of the object to you, what it "means" or what you "learned" from it.

Instead, try to get absorbed in helping readers experience the object. Help readers get into your world, into you using the object in real time, or into the story, letting it actually unfold as it happened. Work in descriptive details, basically, and try to ground us in the past somehow, rather than merely summarize what happened to you.

For illustration, compare the two excerpts that come from a past student's work with narrative and description. The first one is more like fastwriting, where the author is just explaining, but the second one is really trying to help you experience the thing. It's trying to help ground you in a moment in the past, and trying to be specific as it talks about what that object "says" about the author. Both examples are just the beginnings of the draft, but as readers, you'll likely have a completely different reaction to each!

Consider this: which excerpt helps you to know the author more? The author's life? Their personality? Their lived experiences as a unique person?

Keep asking yourself as you write: Am I just talking "about" this thing, or am I really trying to SHOW it to my readers? And SHOW its story?

Finally, here's a copy of the slideshow we worked with last class, if you wanted to get another peek at the before-and-after writing examples there.