What is this about? As you tell your story, you must provide information to the reader – facts about the hero, sidekick, villain(s) and plot. There are several ways to give this information. The methods you use to deliver the story facts can affect the speed at which the story is read, as well as the interest of the reader.

How do I give the reader information? The ways to give information are listed below, starting with the fastest/most interesting to the slowest/least interesting:

• Action (narration) – What the character does.
• Speech (dialogue) – What the character says.
• Thought (internal monologue) – What the character is thinking.
• Telling (exposition) – Simply listing the fact as is.

For example, suppose you want your reader to know that Joe is married. You could choose to show him in action with his wife, have him refer to his wife or to marriage in general during a conversation, show him thinking of his wife, or simply write, “Joe is married.” The more you show facts by action, the faster your text will seem to read. It is generally a mistake to give paragraphs of ‘fact lists,’ as this tends to bore the reader.

Is it ever ‘okay’ to use exposition? You should only use ‘telling’ statements in the rare occasion that none of the other methods work. Never use expository statements to begin a story! Only after you have engaged your reader in the action and led her to care deeply about your characters and story question should you use any exposition.

How will this help me tell my story? Once you accept the fact that action is faster than speech, which is faster than thought, which is faster than telling, you can use this to speed up the pace of your story. A good exercise is this: Take a copy of your first chapter and four colored highlighters. Highlight all the action sentences in red, dialogue in orange, thought in yellow and exposition in blue. Once you are done, you have a color coding that shows you the ‘cold’ spots in your story. Think of how you could ‘warm up’ your writing by changing the telling statements into dialogue, or better yet, action.

So, should all of my story be action? It is possible to overuse action. If your entire novel was nothing but car chases and gunplay, your story would seem like a breathless whirlwind of a video game. As long as you begin your story with action and sustain this action long enough to make the reader invest his interest, you can eventually add in the background details that give your story more thought and roundness.

A warning about dialogue: When you reveal facts in dialogue, you must make it a natural part of the conversation. Do not think that adding fact lists and putting quote marks around them makes them any more interesting. For example, don’t have your character say things like, “Hello, June, my daughter who is sixteen years old and goes to high school.” See how hokey that sounds?

The Bottom Line: Every chance you get, you must show the reader what is happening, rather than saying, “This happened, then this happened, then this….” The more you keep your story moving, the better chance that the reader will keep moving through your book!