Show, don't tell.

[Bramblethorn]

Richard Feynman, the physicist, had genius for depicting complex events as simple imagery. At the CHALLENGER inquiry he stopped the circus when he put an O-ring in ice water, swizzled it, then took the o-ring from the ice water and snapped it in half, to demonstrate how the o-ring reacted with intense cold.

Quite a few people tell the story of Feynman snapping or even "shattering" a hammer, but that's not what happened. He bent a small O-ring in a clamp and chilled it; the point of the demonstration was that when he unclamped it, it didn't spring back quickly (which stopped it from closing a seal, leading to Very Bad Things). Still a good demonstration, though.

I suspect the "snapped"/"shattered" stories come from people conflating Feynman's demonstration with a popular physics demo. If you chill rubber in liquid nitrogen, you can indeed snap it pretty easily, but Feynman's ice water wasn't that cold.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

With all due respect, I believe that this advice is great when taken in moderation. Go too simple and you lose the imagery that allows the reader to immerse themselves in the story.

Simple, succinct, terse writing is great for technical writing because in technical writing, which is how I make my living, the overriding goal is simplicity that conveys the complete idea. Only true engineers really enjoy reading technical manuals, however, and if I were to write porn the way I write a technical manual on how to disassemble a complex assembly, no one would finish it.

Writing style must fit the purpose of the writing. I believe that when writing a story you want your readers to immerse themselves in you need to build the world. That doesn't necessarily mean you should spend ten pages describing a drop of water on a rose petal, but building the scene for the reader is important. Using the "Show don't tell" technique to build the world is an effective way of helping your reader visualize the scene, to become part of the scene.

In the only story of yours that I have tried to read, you did this. I apologize, I don't recall the name of the story. It was one you submitted just recently. In that story you didn't overdo it by any means, but you did build the scene. You were succinct but you spent the words necessary to build the scene enough for me to see, except in the scene where your main protagonist murdered two black men for the crime, ostensibly, of being black. That scene was too simple. You may have had a reason for that, but it makes my point. Go too simple and you lose your reader. Go too complex and you lose your reader as well. It's kind of a balancing act. At least that's my opinion.

Wow, I haven't been serious this long in a very long time. Must be time to go to bed.

I harvest lotsa material from my personal history. I spent, pretty much, most of my professional career closely associated with blacks and trailer trash whites and illegals. I mean, they weren't the whole deal, but they were most of it. The dead blacks really happened, they weren't murdered for their race, they were murdered for their convenience store robbery and potential bull shit. The cop-killer thought "If I arrest them I invite endless bull shit, and they'll be outta jail before I complete the paperwork." In the good old days I was called Mister Noodle cuz my worst offenders died when I did the Noodle Dance (a feature of the PB&J OTTER kids show). They do the Noodle Dance when stumped with a problem. Dead offenders make life blissfully simple.

John O'Hara wrote plenty of porn, and most of it is laconic. In one an MD completes a womans physical and asks,"WHAT ELSE CAN I DO FOR YOU MRS. JONES?" Mrs. Jones replies, "LOCK THE DOOR AND DONT PUT ME IN A FAMILY WAY." In another book a man accuses a prominent social matron of total ignorance of the human heart, and she replies," UNTIL I GOT BORED WITH IT I RUINED MANY OF THE GIRLS IN THIS TOWN. I KNOW HOW TO CAPTURE HEARTS AND MINDS, AND KEEP THEM." The most powerful erotica is often simple and obvious. And he didn't make his shit up. I have a pile of my own sexual incidents that were brief and the essence of laconic. WANNA FUCK? is prolly the most simple of them all.

I call them IMAGERY SEEDS and think they work best of all at unleashing reader imagination.

 

[GoldenCojones]

I call them IMAGERY SEEDS and think they work best of all at unleashing reader imagination.

I like that. Imagery seeds. Hmmm. But in the stories I read, I want those seeds to sprout into honking big bushes

The way you write suits you and I am not advocating that you change, but it isn't right for everyone. When I read for not one-handed pleasure I read epic fantasy. This genre is resplendent with scene building imagery and that is one of the things I love about it. The imagery is balanced with action, unlike Tolstoy who could bore a sloth to death, and I like that too.

Your style of writing, in the story I started, is reminiscent of the "Sam Spade" novels I disliked as a child. LOTS of people loved those stories.

Keep writing, you have something important to say and I think maybe your writing style will appeal to at least some of those that need to hear what you are saying.

Good luck.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I like that. Imagery seeds. Hmmm. But in the stories I read, I want those seeds to sprout into honking big bushes

The way you write suits you and I am not advocating that you change, but it isn't right for everyone. When I read for not one-handed pleasure I read epic fantasy. This genre is resplendent with scene building imagery and that is one of the things I love about it. The imagery is balanced with action, unlike Tolstoy who could bore a sloth to death, and I like that too.

Your style of writing, in the story I started, is reminiscent of the "Sam Spade" novels I disliked as a child. LOTS of people loved those stories.

Keep writing, you have something important to say and I think maybe your writing style will appeal to at least some of those that need to hear what you are saying.

Good luck.

All noir writers are alike and different. I have a point to make, is all. And it can be made 1000 ways. Its really the crux of the human condition. Take care of business.