Chapter 145: The “Tells”

I am not a poker player which is just as well because I shudder to think what an easy mark I’d be for any halfway decent card shark. I am woeful at keeping my feelings to myself. In a poker-playing context this means I ooze “tells.” 

I would be unable, say, to stop myself from twitching anxiously when I was holding a good hand and scratching at imaginary facial itches if I were holding a weak one. I’d be a veritable bucket of “tells.” My money would be safer stuffed in a mattress.

I’ve been thinking a lot about “tells” – but in writing context. I’m editing my students’ big stories and am reminded how the idea of “tells” captures what so often happens when stories somehow fall short of the writer’s expectations. I phrase this deliberately; much as we talk of writing for “the reader,” what motivates us is the pleasure of seeing our words on the page achieving all we’d hoped they would.

Tells are giveaways, flags, flashing red lights that alert editors that things are amiss. Often, writers miss the signals and end up with stories that do not work as they wish they might. 

So it is that writers, especially those first starting out, are prone to “tells” with the frequency of a newbie at a high stakes table in Vegas. Sit down kid and let us empty your wallet…

My hope here is to identify some of the more common tells, so that writers can self-diagnose and, with that knowledge, self-correct before things go off the rails.

1-Hiding: Writers hide in different ways but often for the same reason – avoiding commitment. By commitment I mean embracing the core question at the heart of a story. Because only by committing can you chart a course from beginning to end, knowing what is essential in answering that question – and leaving readers to ask again and again, “what happened next?” Commitment makes it possible to know what is essential to the story and what can and must be cut. 

Hiding allows writers to avoid commitment. You can spot the tells quickly: an over-reliance on, an abundance, actually a torrent, of detail: On a pleasant June day in the small and charming town of Springfield, where the streets were lined with magnolia trees and the houses were painted in vibrant and distinctive colors – red here, green there – the sound of the school bell reverberated along wide streets lined with parked cars.

Fifty words and my eyes can take no more. What am I supposed to be looking at? What matters? Small and charming? Magnolia trees? Vibrant colors? Parked cars? This passage approximates commitment – hey I’m describing the town, right? – but sidesteps the  big and yes, scary leap. 

Commitment is hard. Hiding is a way to side step it. 

Remind yourself that if you’ve done the reporting you’ve earned the right to commit. 

Embrace it.

2-Too many short sentences: Many writers schooled in the ways of daily journalism learn to write news as a series of short sentences. That rat-a-tat-tat works well when the imperative is conveying information quickly and clearly and not necessarily well when it comes to narrative. Why? Because rather than using a paragraph to build and articulate an idea, a short sentence ends before things can fully develop. It’s like talking with someone who cannot stay on point. 

If you look at the page and see a succession of short paragraphs it is often – and here I will grant some latitude for style – a case of not being quite sure of what you want to say (which harkens back to #1) and so saying a lot of things quickly.

It can also lead to…

3-Too many quotes: I know writers who like to use a lot of quotes and others – like me – who prefer to use them sparingly for emphasis and power. But if your story is a series of paragraphs of prose alternating with quotes it is often the case that you’re writing out of your notebook. 

If you find yourself flipping through your notebook looking for a quote to intersperse between paragraphs of your own words it is a sign that you have surrendered your authoritative voice and given that power over to those you’ve interviewed. 

When that happens it is best to stop. Immediately. And go back to the beginning and make sure you have given yourself a clear path into and through the story. Plowing ahead will only make your writing more tentative, more reliant on voices other than yours to sustain the narrative.

4-Too many adjectives: There is nothing wrong with adjectives but like steak, chocolate and red wine they are best in moderation. Excessive use of adjectives is a form of hiding in that they serve to obscure the fact that your belief in your story is not as strong as it can and should be. Adjectives, taken too far, become padding. They offer description built not on the choice telling detail but on verbiage that can weaken the impact of what you want a reader to see. Too much. Too bloating. Like chocolate mousse and a milkshake chaser.

And finally…5-Backing into sentences: When you find yourself beginning too many sentences with dependent clauses, stop and with a quick cut and paste flip the sentence around. And then you want to ask yourself – why am I backing into sentences? And why am I sounding so tentative? Why did I begin with: Upset by the price of gas and rising inflation, John walked into the store and took out a gun. 

Rather than: John walked into the store and took out a gun because he was upset about the price of gas and rising inflation.

The first is correct. The second drives the narrative. So much so that one corrective of this particular “tell” is to ban any commas, other than for punctuation after a (sparingly used) quote. It is remarkable how quickly the pace of the writing picks up. 

In the end, all “tells” are really manifestations of the same affliction: a lack of belief in yourself and your ability to tell your story. My hope is that by spotting and addressing them, you will remind yourself that while we writers live with fear – always, it’s part of who we are – so too do we live with a certain arrogance, the knowledge that we are the lucky ones who can tell the stories others want to read.

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Nothing good ever came from writers punishing themselves. We know writing is hard. We’re here to show that it doesn’t have to be torture. Writerland, The Delacorte Review Newsletter comes out every week.