« 
 »
Sep 27 2007

On showing not telling and a look at character based teasers

Posted by Fritz. in Author, Blog, Idea, Teaser, Writing

E. E. Knight has a couple of blog entries of note.  The first is on showing not telling, or, in other words, how to avoid exposition dumps.  This got me thinking about the opening scenes for the two short stories that I am working on and how I had ended up committing the expositional sin in both.  Having set about remedying these transgressions I find that, strangely enough, I am having fun replacing a paragraph of exposition with a page or two of character interaction.  Who knew?   Well, I did.  I had just forgotten.

The second blog entry of interest was about an old  Jackie Collins’ paperback and its character based back cover copy and front cover teaser.  It struck me that it might be a good exercise to try and do this for (some of) the characters in Tactics.  Fifteen minutes later I had a fun little set of six two sentence (more or less) character descriptions.  They’re a bit silly so I’m not sure how comfortable I feel in sharing it.  Perhaps later (if and when) I take a few more steps down the road to getting published.

Share:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Add to favorites
  • email
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • RSS
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • Twitter

Related posts:

  1. Penny drops in — or how I discovered a character
  2. AAAWG Q-and-A on character voice
  3. Critiquing SF – Character and Viewpoint
  4. AAAWG notes
  5. “The Shaper’s Daughter” is complete

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Author, Blog, Idea, Teaser, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “On showing not telling and a look at character based teasers”
  1. Fritz. says:
    2009/03/05 at 6:41 pm

    The results of of the exposition to character interaction are here:
    http://fritzfreiheit.com/wiki/Exposition_paragraph_into_dialog_example_from_The_Shaper%27s_Daughter

    Reply
  2. Fritz. says:
    2009/03/05 at 6:44 pm

    And, being older, with a thicker skin when it comes to my writing, here is the teaser:

    Tactics of Transience Teaser

    TreeYllana and Drey thought it would be a simple op. Just plant an audit port on a fellow first class passenger on the uberzeppelin /Reichgeist/ and enjoy the rest of the her maiden voyage in luxury. But their plans spin out of control when a band of mercenary pirates hijack the /Reichgeist/ deep in null-space. Soon they are fighting for their lives and their freedom against the well armed and armored pirates.

    Character Teasers

    TreeYllana – this cool dark woman is on a mission. Backed up by a crack team she seeks a prize worthy of her skill and daring, pirates not with standing.

    Drey – the mysterious muscle behind TreeYllana. What will this disciple of Transience cook up to throw defeat back into the teeth of the pirates?

    Gyr – what does the foppish exterior of TreeYllana’s target hide? Will he give away the location of the windfall that has cost him so much?

    Bella – the beautiful young Spirean debutante who finds herself in the middle of a commando assault. How will she survive?

    Pelicia – the youngest of TreeYllana’s operatives who finds herself trapped in TreeYllana’s suite by the pirate seizure of the Reichgeist. Will her first mission be her last?

    The Reichgeist – an uberzeppelin on the last leg of her maiden flight. Will she make it to her final port? Or will she be lost in null-space?

    Reply
  3.  
Leave a Reply

Spam Protection by WP-SpamFree