NARRATE vs. DRAMATIZE (magical writing fix!!!)

hello everyone Alexa done here and today I'm going to be talking about a craft and revision tool essentially a writing hack but along Fermin we're really gonna dig in here and that is when to narrate versus when to dramatize I actually got the idea to talk about this from Laini Taylor she did a tweet friend that basically set off like a lightning bolt for me and she said that in fact it was an editor of hers who set off this lightning bolt for her but she articulated this problem this question this struggle in writing that she has had to work on and that she has leveled up over the years and I went oh my gosh that is the perfect way to describe a problem that I have seen in a lot of work a problem I've had in my own work and something that I think can really help crystallize and elucidate the show versus tell debate and problem for you so that you can dig in and improve your writing and prove your storytelling so what does narrate versus dramatize mean so narration is when you're summarizing or quickly describing something for the reader often you're going to narrate in the name of pacing you want to give the reader information and move along from it and then of course to dramatize is to write a full scene or dialogue exchange really draw it out and actively show something happening there is a time and a place to do both and in every book you will do both but what I really want to focus on and dig into is the problem that I see in a lot of novels especially first drafts not just novice writers really experienced writers can fall into this trap as well and that is relying too heavily on narration telling readers what happened essential information etc instead of more vividly describing it and essentially delivering it to readers in ways that are going to engage them more I think that narrate versus dramatize pretty clearly boils down into show vs. tell where narration is most closely associated with telling and dramatization dramatizing is most closely associated with showing and if you've watched my video on show vs. you know that I demonize neither of them I am someone who tends do more telling and has to fight to show and there is a time and a place for both there is a time and a place for telling just like there is a time and a place for narration my problem with too much narration is this system invaders are delivering so much information to you via narration they're skipping over a lot they're using narration to tell you about characters instead of showing you what those characters are like they're to using narration to tell you about character relationships they're giving you backstory especially on these people in these relationships now the aim of course is to give you context and there are plenty of cases we're using narration to give you context is perfect but there are many cases where using it too much this is what creates distance between a reader and characters and story this is when you start to lose engagement and the number one thing you want to do is make your readers care you want them to care about your characters and care about the story and care about the conflict and the stakes and the tension so the tip is to look for opportunities in your work where you are relying too heavily on narration where you're narrating and essentially glossing over something where you could do a dramatic scene you could dramatize a moment and just a few smart choices of switching narration to dramatizing could completely change your book especially if you were looking for spots and making these choices in your first act very often I find that writers you're using narration to set up essential backstory where if you use dramatization they're going to make character stick more in in readers minds they're gonna do essential kind of setup and engagement work so then later on you can use more narration you don't have to dramatize everything we'll talk a bit about what happens when you over dramatize everything because narration is an essential tactic for writing you do need to use both places where you can look to dramatize instead of narrate especially when describing character relationships most often you're going to just get more mileage out of the readers caring for your characters and understanding your characters if you give if you show them an interaction have a scene between characters instead of info dumping backstory so instead of telling me oh I've been dating Charles for two years and you know he was kind of you know mean to me he would snark on me but boy was he cute I don't know instead give me an intro scene with the douche boyfriend where you know he's negging her and like maybe another character is like oh he's the hottest guy in school this is not good writing by the way it's just an example but you see what I mean where instead of having your character say oh I'm dating this guy's kind of a douche but he's hot you could show that to me even dramatize it it can be a dialogue scene and in doing this dialogue scene this introduction scene you can show me character dynamics or school dynamics setting dynamics which is essentially world building especially let's say that scene takes place by the lockers or in a classroom or in the lunchroom you're also telling me something about social dynamics at school you're telling me about the main character as well and how they relate to other people you're giving me so much more information through a meaningful interaction instead of through narration I've also seen this a lot with parents Raiders will just say uh you know my mom's a drag my parents don't understand me know show me is scene where the parents don't understand the why a character the teen character that's gonna be so much more valuable and meaningful to me as a reader and it's gonna make the parents feel like real people like actual figures present in the story who introduced stakes because parents are there to complicate things for their kids because they don't want us to go on adventures um that's just like definitely one to look for now not every character needs a dramatic introduction by the way but I do think when it comes to your essential core relationships in your book that is not a good idea to introduce characters through your narrating character your main character dumping backstory on the reader I just don't think that's as effective and that's the other area to look for where you're relying too heavily on narration and should be dramatizing backstory now a lot of backstory needs to be related narration it's almost a essential function of story but every once in a while what I want you to do is look for opportunities where you can have brief flashbacks now as many of you may know you've got to be really careful with flashbacks in fiction they can make a book hokey clunky they can enter it flow and structure but every once in a while you can do an artful flashback it can be as simple as your character a quote repeats in their mind they think of an awful thing that someone that this person said to them I'll give you an example from my book brightly burning instead of having my main characters say my aunt was horrific to me and I hated her I have her flashback like when those key quotes ring in our heads we all have that something awful something said to us that pops up into her brain every once in a while I had my main character hear her own voice in her head and have this this awful thing that she said to her on the page a line of dialogue with a little bit of almost like a flashback of what her how her aunt had said it and what she had looked like and how my character had felt at the time it's the tiniest bit of flashback but it's really a dramatization it's not narration I could have just said aunt Reed was the worst but that's not as effective it's not as vivid and doesn't paint as much of a picture of this backstory that is essential to understanding a character and essential to understand what's going on now and then in some books you can actually do deep flashback if you really want to and in many books it does work well you could use a structure where you intersperse little snippets of flashback chapters of flashback you'll see this very often in like thriller books where you get flashbacks of the victim so you want to think about this when is it going to be effective to dramatize backstory rather than just narrate it and then with big important moments where your character should be feeling things and reacting to things and you want your readers to essentially be in their feelings and really dig into the moment look for cases where you're glossing over where you are narrating a moment instead of dramatizing it you'll find a lot of these in climaxes you know kissing scenes there are all sorts of places where you realize ah I'm being very sparse on what is actually happening what my characters feeling and so those are definitely opportunities to look to dramatize and now let's talk more about dramatizing and overusing dramatizing so the downside of dramatizing too much and some people's style is to dramatize more in their first draft rather than narrate too much in their first draft is if you dramatize everything most up in your pacing is going to be an absolute mess because not everything needs to be dramatized a lot of things are just more effectively communicated through some quick lines of narration or transition and so if you are dramatized you're gonna have to look for those clever spots you want to look where your pacing is dragging where the book is getting boring where things are repeating very often when you dramatize everything you are repeating yourself in terms of character growth moments and a character trait moments like you only need so many scenes where you're demonstrating your character's weakness cut the ones that are dragging the pacing you only need so many scenes of romance to build romantic tension you just don't need them all the way that I like to think of this dynamic of narration versus dramatization is you're going to look to switch narration to dramatization when you're trying to up reader engagement when people aren't feeling connected to your characters and your stakes in your book you're going to be looking to go from dramatization to narration when you have a pacing problem and so of course in many books you're going to be doing both of these things you're going to be looking for both problems but you also might find that you have one problem more than another so I think of it as like engagement character engagement versus pacing and finally I just want to say that you shouldn't beat yourself up if you're doing either of these things in excess when you are drafting what I loved about Laini Taylor's thread is that she stressed that over dramatizing everything in her first drafts is how she figured out what would work better as narration she had to dramatize it and write the whole thing to know it was important to the story and I think that's really common I can really relate to that as a pantser I have to write out everything so I can figure out what's actually important in my book I do indeed tend to overdramatize especially in the middle I think this is why my middles drag because I have to work through the characters emotions and where they are and what they're feeling and then so often in revision I have to pull back dramatization and switch it to narration same thing with narration many people need narration to just barf stuff onto the page the narration helps them get a sense of their deep backstory of character relationships and then it's identifying those key scenes where it's dragging things down and it's putting distance between the reader and you switch that to dramatization you need to do both of these it's a style thing so mostly I think of this as a revision hack or a vision tool but I do think over time as with most craft related things once you're aware of what you're doing you can start to course-correct when you're first drafting over time you should get better at knowing when to dramatize versus narrate so I hope this was as illuminating for you as Laini Taylor's tweet thread was for me and I will link to it down below it seriously unlocked something that I already knew was a thing but just I love putting the terminology to it and conceptualizing show vs. tell and thinking about reader engagement and pacing in this specific way let me know down below in the comments any questions you have and give this video a thumbs up if you liked it I really enjoy these kind of deep dive tool looks at writing craft and writing hacks and I hope you do too I'll make more of them if you're not already subscribed to the channel I post new videos two to three times a week as always guys thank you so much for watching and happy writing

Channel: Alexa Donne

Views: 30,989

Rating: 4.9856558 out of 5

Keywords: alexa donne, author tube, writing advice, how to write a book, publishing advice, narrate vs dramatize, narration vs dramatization, narration in fiction, dramatization in fiction, show vs tell, writing hack, alexa donne writing hack, writing tips, craft tips

Id: RiA6t7MOYVs

Length: 12min 41sec (761 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 07 2019