New York may be the city so nice they named it twice, but when it comes to novels, most readers want a point well made once and not battered home in multiple forms. There are several ways this can happen. One is by showing and telling the same fact. Here’s what I mean:
She was steaming with frustration. “Why can’t you ever be on time?” she cried.
Nothing is really incorrect about this, but it could be tighter. Her words and her raised tone of voice make clear her frustration in a “showing” form. So there’s really no need to tell the same information first. Of course, it could be even worse. It could be::
She was steaming with frustration. He was always late. “Why can’t you ever be on time?” she cried.
In this version, the repetition reaches a point of near-caricature: 1) Statement of reaction. 2) Statement of provocation (presumably in her thoughts.) 3) Words out loud—all making the same point. If this sort of thing happens repeatedly, it begins to look like padding.
How It Happens
In fact, it’s extremely easy to fall into such a trap, because one thinks narratively when writing. The dialogue typically comes after. It’s only in the cleaning-up stage that the repetition manifests itself, and then dialogue needs to replace the telling phrase.
These additional examples show how treacherous such double trouble may be, because it masquerades as good writing, fluid style.
His father summed up the futility of George’s position. “Or think of it this way, son. How are you going to stop Jane if she wants to get involved?”
If you show George’s father summing up the futility, etc., in his own words, there really is no need to say he did it too. That statement is just another step between reader and action. Padding.
What about this one?
Jane shot the apprentice a quelling look. She didn’t like the way the adolescent sometimes showed disrespect for Mary, just because the little physician didn’t call her out for it.”Manners, my girl,” Jane said pointedly.
My own feeling is that you could drop one of the two beats, although it might be argued that the second sentence adds something to the first. Like everything else to do with writing, there’s a subjective edge to it. Mostly, you just don’t want to do it frequently, because that becomes conspicuous.
Double Trouble, Part Deux
There’s another way in which writing can lose momentum through doubling down, and that is to report whole conversations to which the reader is already party.
Let’s say the investigator has just participated in a long scene during which some important clues were revealed. Later in the same chapter, she meets up with her partner and recounts what happened. How much detail do you need to include?
Probably a brief summary will suffice, because, while the partner needs to find out what happened, she lives in the fictive world in which a year can pass with a sentence. It’s really the reader you have to keep in mind. And he knows every word that just took place.
A phrase like “and she proceeded to tell Annie everything Beth had told her” takes care of Annie’s update without making poor Reader sit through the same data twice.
These are just a few things to think about when editing your own work so that the manuscript other eyes will see is the best possible example of your great writing!
