How many times does an author hear this on a near daily basis? And just when you think you've got it, you find yourself slipping back into the old telling routine again.  Here is just an example to help out.  

Telling:

I opened the letter and smiled as I read. When I finished, I put the letter in my pocket and walked back to the house.

Okay - so what's wrong with this picture?  There isn't one.  Does this really draw me into the scene or give me basic references to visualize one? Not really.

Showing:

I turned the letter over and slipped my fingernail between the flap and the M stamped seal to break it open. The corner of my mouth curved upward as I read. I folded the letter and returned it to the envelope. 

This example gives the reader a lot more information that offers plenty of references to visualize the scene. First off, The fact that the letter is stamped with a seal indicates a specific time period. Instead of saying I smiled, the writer describes how this person's lips moved. Showing actually provides more information that paints a more complete picture for the reader.
This is a technique that requires constant scrutiny.  The writer needs to always ask the what and how of everything. How does the smile look? How did the character walk back to the house. Did she stroll or trot or take a brisk pace? 

I've tried my hand at poetry a time or two, but find it frustrating. Just getting all the words to rhyme is challenging enough, but then you have to think about beats and rhythm on top of all that. Writing lyrics to songs isn't all that different, but then you have to add the music and that may change the beat and rhythm, which forces more or less words on the lyrics. And, then you add the voice on top of all that and depending on how the singer develops the vocals can change things even further. Whew! What's a right brainer to do? When I first began writing, I wrote songs. I found the inspiration through worship and praise first, and then brought it down to a more personal level in the contemporary Christian style of music. I would encourage anyone to start somewhere. Songwriting is a good place to start, because it is multi-faceted. However, to keep things simple just start with words. Whatever inspires you; your kids, your pets, God, nature, love, whatever. That being said, I will be brave and share a poem with you here. Hopefully, this will encourage you to write as you see it does not really take a rocket scientist to accomplish. Just start somewhere and go from there. You never know, God might just use that simple little task to make a huge difference in the lives of others.  Please leave a comment with any corrective criticism. I appreciate you indulging my efforts. 

Thy Word Becomes Life

Thy Word is life
 that stops all strife
 Thy Word is love
 from up above

Thy Word is hope
 to help me cope
 Thy Word is clear
 nothing to fear

 Thy Word is power
 no matter the hour
 Thy Word is peace
 when storms cease

Thy Word is protection
 without exception
 We hide beneath Your wing
 while praises we do sing

Thy Word is truth
 that needs no proof
 We may not see the wind
 Yet tender reeds still bend

Thy Word shows me the way
 It guides me every day
 becoming life in me
 through all eternity

“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” John 14:6

The most common reason to use single quotation marks is to quote someone who is quoting someone else. The rules differ in British English, but in American English, you enclose the primary speaker's comments in double quotation marks, and then you enclose the thing they are quoting in single quotation marks. You nest them, with the double quotation marks on the outside and the single quotation marks on the inside. For example, imagine you've interviewed Aardvark for a magazine article about his harrowing ordeal with an arrow, and he said, “Squiggly saved my life when he yelled, 'Watch out, Aardvark.' ”If you're ever in the extremely rare position of having to nest another quotation inside a sentence like that, you would use double quotation marks again for the third nested quote. 

The Associated Press uses single quotation marks for quotations in headlines. It's the convention in certain disciplines such as philosophy, theology, and linguistics to highlight words with special meaning by using single quotation marks instead of double quotation marks. 

It can be hard to see a single quotation mark that’s immediately followed by a double quotation marks, so typesetters sometimes insert something called a thin space between the two. A thin space is just what is sound like: a space that’s thinner than a regular space. "Quote" Versus "Quotation."

Also, a frequent point of confusion is the difference between the words “quote” and “quotation.”  “Quote” is a verb that means to repeat what someone else has said or written. For example, "Aardvark quoted Squiggly." “Quotation” is a noun used to describe what you are quoting, as in "Squiggly's quotation was inspiring." It's common to hear people use the noun “quote” as a shortened form of “quotation,” as in "I filled my notebook with quotes from The Daily Show," but that is technically wrong. It should be, "I filled my notebook with quotations from The Daily Show." I agree the correct way sounds a bit pretentious, and given that a lot of reference sources have extra entries discussing how the misuse is widespread, you aren't going to sound illiterate if you use “quote” incorrectly, but it is still good to know the difference. For more about quotation marks, be sure to visit The Grammar Girl.

[This is an excerpt from a Grammar Girl article that was originally published in 2006.]

Guest Blogger Cec Murphey shares his thoughts:

On Amazon, I read a review of a famous literary novel that said the author must have been reading a roadmap when he wrote one particular chapter. For 20 pages the author details the places he stopped to eat breakfast, have morning coffee, and so on. None of it, apparently, was germane to the plot. 
 
Some writers become enamored with travel information and seem to think it's important. Here's the question they need to ask: Will readers care? Or another question someone suggested is this: If you delete the information, would readers miss it?

A writer friend said, "I don't give any background unless it has some direct bearing on the story. Otherwise readers might ask, 'Why did she put that in the book?'"

Don't clog your prose
with long passages about background or travel.

Read more of Cec's blog at Cec Murphey's Writer to Writer

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