One Rule to Rule Them All

Novel: Labyrinth
Author: Kate Mosse

Writing fiction can seem daunting, especially if you're a rule follower. A Google search will turn up hundreds of long lists of "rules" for writers. Some of these lists are sturdy advice while others are nitpicky, and it's hard to tell the difference when you're still learning how to write. However, the one guideline that turns up on every list, and the one you should always, always, always follow is:

SHOW, DON'T TELL.

That means you don't TELL the story through a series of dry speeches in dialog or narrative form, but rather you SHOW the story by having the characters experience it.

This is the same principle behind labs in science class. For most people, it's not interesting enough to simply learn the dry facts with no context; to truly become engaged in a concept you must experience it by participating in it. This personal interaction provides a richer understanding and (hopefully) an affinity for the subject.

In a work of fiction, the plot is the science and the characters are our lab partners. We become engaged and reach a rich understanding by viewing the story through the characters' eyes. The author should write in such a way that we feel an affinity for the characters and through them the plot. The plot should not be a dry recitation of facts.

We should not feel like we are memorizing this:

CH3COOH + NaHCO3 ---> CH3COONa + H2CO3
H2CO3 ---> H2O + CO2

We should feel like we're doing/watching this:



Simple enough, right? Even the Brady Bunch can do it.

I regret to inform you that Kate Mosse has never heard of "Show, Don't Tell."

Whenever possible, she has her characters break into long speeches or else reverts to narrative to give us infodumps on such topics as:

* The Occitan language
* The history of medieval France
* The Crusades
* Egyptian Hieroglyphs
* Herbs and shrubbery
* The geographical layout of Southern France
* The types of wares available at a market in medieval France
* The relationships between medieval French nobles

...and on and on.

The culmination of this comes around page 400 when after hundreds of pages of running around that goes nowhere, one of the two main characters meets up with a heretofore extremely minor character, who then proceeds to give a twenty page lecture on the history of the Holy Grail. Said lecture reads like this:

"The origins of European Catharism lie in Bogomilism, a dualist faith that flourished in Bulgaria, Macedonia and Dalmatia from the tenth century onward. It was linked with older religious beliefs--such as Zoroastrianism in Persia or Manicheism. They believed in reincarnation. [...] In the Palais des Arts in Lyon," he continued, "there is a manuscript copy of a Cathar text of St. John's Gospel, one of very few documents to escape destruction by the Inquisition. It is written in the langue d'Oc, possession of which in those days was considered a heretical, punishable act. Of all the texts sacred to the Bon Homes, the Gospel of John was the most important. It is the one which lays most stress on personal, individual enlightenment through knowledge--gnosis. Bon Homes refused to worship idols, crosses or altars--carved from the rocks and trees of the Devil's base creation--they held the word of God in the very highest esteem."

Twenty pages of this, folks.

Do I exaggerate? A little. Some of those twenty pages are spent as the same character lectures us about what happened to the characters in the parallel plot of the book, which takes place in medieval times. So not only do we get a huuuuuuuuuge twenty page infodump, we also never get to see the other main character (Alais) again until the moment of her death!

The irony is, the events this guy describes sound like they'd be about 10,000 times more exciting than the feeble, yawn-inducing storyline we saw poor Alais through. Why couldn't Kate Mosse have started the story at a part that mattered? So basically we watched Alais run around for 400 pages collecting herbs and sneaking about the castle and the village for nothing? The "real" plot is delivered to us as a lecture by some minor character old dude we only saw for about four pages towards the beginning of the book and barely even know?

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME, KATE MOSSE?!

(Note: Can you tell I'm angry? And can you tell I'm angry even though I didn't say, "Gosh, I'm angry"? That right there is an example of Show-Don't-Tell.)

I don't want to finish this book. I'm going to do it, because I only have like fifty pages left, and I'm sure in those fifty pages there will be something even better/worse to write about on here. Plus I have a whole nother list of really horrible similes saved up to post. Can't stop now. Kate is not yet done SHOWING me how bad her writing is.