Sharleen Jonsson

It seemed like a good idea at the time: Pick a book off the shelf not because I’d read the review or had it recommended to me by someone or knew of the writer, but simply because the title caught my eye.

As well, it was a mystery, a genre that goes well with rainy winter afternoons and mugs of tea. This mystery was set in a country I’ve been to and remain interested in.

I wasn’t expecting anything especially literary but I was surprised at the clumsiness of the prose. Still, I read on for several chapters, partly because I hoped it would get better, partly because of the setting—and partly because you can learn from bad writers as well as excellent ones. You can’t learn as much, true, but if you ever want to be reminded of why writing teachers tell you to beware of the cliché, be it in description or plot, or of dialogue that does nothing to advance the story, there’s no better way than to see such things in action.

Stephen King puts it this way: “Every book you read has its own lessons, and quite often bad books have more to teach than the good ones.” (He uses The Bridges of Madison County and Valley of the Dolls as examples of bad books, by the way.)

Still, I had to close this book about one-third of the way in—I couldn’t stand it anymore. But it reinforced what I know about what not to do.

About a week later, my mother-in-law gave me a book. It’s a novel by an author frequently called the Queen of Suspense. The woman has no doubt earned multi-multi-millions from these books. Her novel began well, grabbing my interest enough that I kept turning pages, anyway—but soon, by chapter two, I was more than a little dismayed by the writing. Again, I carried on. I’ve had writing instructors tell me to be careful of interior monologue, but reading lines like, “Our client is innocent, he thought, sarcastically,” really make the point. (People actually think “sarcastically”?) In this same novel, characters frequently tell each other things they both know well, all too obviously for the sake of feeding information to the reader.

And, um, realistic dialogue anyone? Here’s one cop talking to another outside of a mansion in which a murderer is almost certainly advancing on his victims:

“[the bad guy] may be dangerous, and he may be armed. More police officers will be here soon. If you see [the bad guy], try to avoid any contact with him, and alert the other officers as soon as they get here. He may try to drive out. Tell the guard at the gate what is happening and make sure he closes the gates as soon as the other police arrive.”

Do people speak in full sentences in the heat of the moment? I certainly don’t. And, aside from the fact the first cop thinks the second cop is an idiot who needs to be told exactly what to do, would anyone in such a situation speak as if his contraction-hating, high school English teacher was within earshot? (ie., Why not “what’s happening”?)

“Show, don’t tell,” is a well-worn—but worthwhile—cliché of writing manuals. As the above example demonstrates, showing can have more power than telling when it comes to learning about how (not) to write, too.