Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Second Edition: How to Edit Yourself Into Print

Checklist How often do you use narrative summary? Are there long passages where nothing happens in real time? Do the main events in your plot take place in summary or in scenes? If you do have too much narrative summary, which sections do you want to convert into scenes? Does any of it involve major characters, where a scene could be used to flesh

anything that can go into a scene can also be narrated. And since scenes are usually harder to write than narration, many writers rely too heavily on narrative summary to tell their stories.

This tendency to describe a character’s emotion may reflect a lack of confidence on the part of the writer. And more often than not, writers tell their readers things already shown by dialogue and action. It’s as if they’re repeating themselves to make sure their readers get the point. So when you come across an explanation of a character’s emotion

The Gatsby scene quoted above (Fitzgerald’s version) shows us how people react to Gatsby, and shows us effectively. But the writer also tells us that the three Mr. Mumbles leaned forward “eagerly,” that one girl spoke with enthusiasm, that a man nodded “in affirmation.” Granted, stylistic conventions have changed since 1925, but even so, the tellin

But when you switch to narrative summary, especially if you go on at length, it can sometimes seem as if you are falling into nonfiction—breaking into the story to give your readers a lecture.

Narrative summary can also be useful when you have a lot of repetitive action. Say you are writing a book about a track star in which your hero participates in several races. If you show all of these races as immediate scenes, eventually they all start to read alike. But if you summarize the first few races—have them happen offstage, in effect—then

Even within descriptions that have nothing to do with character emotion, there are ways you can show rather than tell. Rather than telling your readers that your hero’s car is an old broken-down wreck, you can show him twisting two bare wires together to turn on the headlights or driving through a puddle and being sprayed from the holes in the floo

A century or so ago this sort of writing would have been fine. It was the norm, in fact—Henry James wrote at least one entire novel composed largely of narrative summary. But thanks to the influence of movies and television, readers today have become accustomed to seeing a story as a series of immediate scenes. Narrative summary no longer engages r