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Show, don't Tell Writing with Suzy Vadori
If writing advice and the lingo used in the publishing industry usually sounds like gobbledygook to you, look no further than this Show, don’t Tell Writing podcast.
I’m Author, Editor, and Book Coach Suzy Vadori, and I’m absolutely obsessed with helping writers get their ideas onto the page in a way that readers LOVE. If you think Show, don’t Tell is just tired writing advice, prepare to have your eyes opened as I break down the process of applying this key technique in both fiction and nonfiction books, sharing step-by-step actions each week you can take immediately to get closer each week to your wildest writing dreams, whether you’re writing your first book, or your tenth, all while making the process inspiring and fun.
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Show, don't Tell Writing with Suzy Vadori
20. [Show, don't Tell Page Review] Action/Adventure with Muhammad
In this episode of Show Don’t Tell Writing, Suzy provides live coaching for Muhammad’s action-adventure story, The Well. Muhammad, a Nigerian writer, shares his vision for crafting a story that reflects African culture and folklore with a larger-than-life protagonist. Suzy offers actionable advice on enhancing worldbuilding, developing character motivations, and grounding the reader in a vivid setting. The conversation covers storytelling essentials for creating an immersive adventure, especially for writers seeking to elevate their fantasy or action genres.
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Welcome to Show Don't Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vidori, where I teach you the tried and true secrets to writing fiction, nonfiction, that are going to wow your readers broken down step by step. We're going to explore writing techniques. I'm going to show you a glimpse behind the scenes of successful writers careers that you wouldn't have access to otherwise, and I'm also going to coach writers live on their pages so that you can learn and transform your own storytelling. Whether you're just starting out, you're drafting your first book, you're editing, or you're currently rewriting that book, or maybe even your 10th book, this show is going to help you unlock the writing skills that you didn't even know you needed, but you definitely do. I'm I'm so looking forward to helping you get your amazing ideas from your mind onto your pages in an exciting way for both you and your readers, so that you can achieve your wildest writing dreams. And you're going to also have some fun doing it. Let's dive in. I had the opportunity to speak with Mohamed Nadabo Fadje about his story that he's writing. Mohamed comes all the way from Nigeria and sent in this submission because he wanted some feedback. He wants to write the best African book that he can possibly write. He's got this huge dream. Our connection was not the best. I'm going to read you the story, and then I'm going to give you some feedback, and then we're going to intersperse it with some snippets from this amazing writer. And so I hope you really enjoy some of the audio quality, unfortunately, because he's very remote, wasn't, wasn't usable. But I had a really terrific conversation. Muhammad's super excited to up his writing game, to apply all the really cool show, don't tell pieces. He has written three other books in his native language and this now he's super excited to be writing in English. It is a really cool story that he's going to write with lots of action and adventure. It's a story for adults, and this piece that he sent in that I'm about to read to you and then give feedback on is called The Well. He was the tallest man on earth. His size was bigger than Goliath of ancient history. Jeremie was living on an island surrounded by an orchard, rocks, and mountain ranges. The giant lived inside a green house, and the house had a green bed, table, and chairs. It was also surrounded by giant green flowers big enough to be seen from miles away. The green house that the giant built was near the sea. One day, the giant dreamt of building the deepest well. How long did it take to build the well? 30 days. Wow, that's wonderful. Someone built a well linked to the sea in only 30 days? But it does sound like he was giant. Yes, the old man continued narrating the story. He dug deeply into the ground. The hole was big enough to travel miles. The hole was so deep that it traveled a hundred miles into the ground. Later, he changed the shape of the hole into a big tunnel. It was the longest tunnel which stretched several miles to the sea. He arrived at the sea. The End He built a waterway that linked the Seine and the well. He completed the project and built a giant iron gate at the entrance of the tunnel. It was the largest gate so far ever constructed. So, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Awesome. Where are you calling from, Mohamed? Yes, I'm calling from Nigeria, Conestoga. Amazing. Welcome. Okay. So, this is an action adventure story? Exactly. It's an action adventure story. Why are you writing this particular story at this moment in your life, Mohamed? Well, I started writing this story to encourage the young writers or the old writers together, because I'm an old person, but I'm still Trying to improve the writing skill of African writers because I am a new writer, but I have a skill to improve some aspect of writing. So I began writing since a long time ago. Because I started writing since when I was young. Maybe I was 30, I think about 30 years ago. I started writing. 30 years ago, I love it. Yes, I started writing with my Hausa language. Yes, I started with my Hausa language. I started, I wrote a books. You know, it is a novel. I published it about 20 years ago. So, I'm also a film writer. I wrote some films. It's about three films. I produced about three household films. So, I'm still writing. So, I write, uh, my language, Hausa language, is very interesting. It's a very interesting language. So, I started writing in English. So, I like English writing. So, it encouraged me to keep on writing. So, I'm very interested. Writing in English. So I have many, many books. Good, good. So you have Okay, well, your English in the writing is very strong. It's great. It's a fiction story. It's a nice fiction story full of adventure. The story is talking about a, that's a war in Africa. So the people in that village, they believe that that war has a link with the sea in North Africa. So, because of that history, some people believe that that sea is the oldest foil in that area. So, one day, an English archaeologist traveled from England down to the small small Africa to find the true story of that world. So, after he came to the plate, he took a journey through a long tunnel that he spread this. And he found that the world has a source from that, from Mediterranean Sea, but on the way he come across a lot of very incredible stories on that ground. Amazing. Okay. Yes, it's about 65, 000 words. You can see all of that alive in your mind? All of that beautiful landscape and everything in Africa. And what we're going to work on here is making sure that that gets onto your page so that readers can see it also. Okay, so when Haman and I met, we had lots of feedback for him. He's got so many cool things going on. I really like the fact that he's writing about this giant. He has a narrator that travels all around Africa and collects these stories in this fictional tale. And so that's what you heard that sort of. Interspersed in there. This is a snippet from the middle of the book. So basically what's happening is the narrator is telling about his journey. So I had a bunch of feedback and the main feedback was when I spoke with Muhammad He really could see all of these things and that were happening to the giant alive in his mind And he could answer the questions I love talking to writers because sometimes when I ask a question about what it looks like The writer looks at me blankly and says, I don't know. I haven't thought of that. And that's usually a problem. Not so with Mohammed. He knew exactly what he wanted to say, and it was so alive in his mind, but this wasn't quite on the page yet. And so that's what we worked on together. So, the first thing in the first paragraph was about just the setting, right? Now, we're not talking about doing pages and pages of setting, but in an opening to a story, or in the opening to, this is in the middle of his book, but it is a new story. There's a bunch of different stories. And in, in this particular story, he hasn't quite done as much as he could to ground us. Right? So we've got this line. He's living on an island surrounded by an orchard, rocks, and mountain ranges. So that is telling when we just kind of list what's there. You could turn that into some beautiful showing details. I'm sure it's alive in his mind that would show us what this looks like because I don't know. I haven't been to this spot. Right? Right. Right. Um, so what my comment here was, was that I would love a detail or two to ground us in that moment, whether it's on earth or it's more fantastical, you know, we have a giant. So is it set in Africa the way that it is, or is it set in sort of a larger than life Africa where everything is really fantastical? I'm not really sure. And so Mohammed will have to decide that as he goes, but gestures that I had were to make it clear, you know, First of all, I wasn't even sure if all of these things listed were on the island or was the island small and plain and these are on the mainland that's surrounding this, so he needs to make a decision there, right? But instead of saying he was surrounded by an orchard, rocks, and mountain ranges, here's some suggestions. So what I usually do is give a suggestion and I tell the writer, If they love the suggestion, take it. As an editor, like, take it. It's yours. Put it in the story. But if you hate my suggestions, sometimes that's even better. Because what happens is, they'll go, But Susie, that's nuts! That, my character would never say that, or never do that, or that isn't what it is. And I say, Great! That's awesome! I'm glad you had that reaction. Because now you know exactly what should be on your page. All right, so my suggestion here, instead of just saying that, was to give me a showing detail or two. Right? Not a whole paragraph, not a whole page, just a couple of words, turns this orchard, rocks, and mountain ranges from flat into something that's 3D and your readers can actually picture. Right? So we could put something like, He was on an island covered with orchards of twisted peach trees, jagged rocks protecting the coastline, and a soaring mountain range hugging the furthest cape. You see what I've done there? We've added like four or five words, not very many words, and yet now you have this 3D image of this island, all of the things on it, rather than just listing. So, I also suggested, you got a giant! His name is Jeremy the Giant, and if he's a giant, I really wanted to know, this is something that we talked really long about, how big a giant is he? Now when we're writing about fables or history, you know, like magical creatures like giants, there's a huge range and you can make up your own. You don't have to go with the conventions. If you think in Harry Potter, Hagrid was a giant, but he's just a large man. He's probably only eight feet or something in the story or in the movies. But there's also giants that could be 30 feet tall or as tall as a mountain. So I really needed to know to be able to picture anything about this story, just how big a giant is he? All right, so if he's a giant, there's an opportunity to show us how tall he is versus the house that he built or versus the mountains, right? Then, he's building this deepest well. My biggest feedback from Muhammad on this page is I don't know why he's building the well. Now, what was really cool was when I talked to Muhammad, his answer. I think my biggest question, Muhammad, on this page is what does the giant want from the well? Right? So one of the things that readers need to know pretty quickly is what does the character that you're writing about, what do they want? And the reason that we need to know this, I'll give you a chance in a second to answer, the reason that we need to know this is because we want to connect with your character. And if we don't know why he's building the well, then it's much less interesting than if we do. So why is, why is this giant building the well? Do you know? Do you know, right, so the giant is building that well because the village is living between the desert and the savannah, so there's need of water. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of scarcity of water in that area. So the, the giant man used that idea to predict that world so that he can help and assist people together. So, so he's helping the village. It's not just for himself. Exactly. They kind of challenged him on this because, Muhammad, that's not here on your page. But it was really alive in his mind. And that's the whole point of Show Don't Tell, is making sure That what you want to say or what your readers need to know is actually on the page because it's alive in the reader or the writer's mind and Muhammad knew exactly what it was going to be and so he didn't feel like it was necessary to put it down or he just didn't know that it wasn't here. But it needs to be here. It needs to be here. And so, when we talked about this, the answer became really clear. The reason that we need to know what your character wants, this is true for every page or every scene that you write, okay? If you can't answer the question pretty quickly on the first page of your scene, what does my character want? Sometimes my clients say, they can hear my voice, like, Oh gosh, Susie's gonna ask me, I know she's gonna ask me, What does your character want? What does, what does Jeremy want? Because if the reader doesn't have this information, they're less invested, they're way less interested. In what's happening on your pages, so this is a great way to hook your readers, but it's also really important because otherwise all you have is a series of events. Every story is about a character's journey, a character's journey of change. Whether that's something really, really small or whether that's something huge is up to you as the writer. In literary books, many times the character change isn't as dramatic as maybe an action adventure like this. Um, this is intended to be. And so we need to know in this story what he wants to accomplish, because as readers, we can sit back then and watch all the events unfolding, and our mind is kind of doing a pros and cons list about whether or not they're succeeding. And when you create a scene, you want to be able to track, are they doing what they want to be doing, or are they not doing it? And either way is interesting, that's up to you as the writer. When you build a scene. There are only three ways to end a scene, really. You can have the character succeed, get what they wanted, get what their goals were in the scene, and that's awesome, except you don't want them to do that very often, because guess what happens when that happens? If your character succeeds, then the reader will be like, Sweet! They did it! They're done! Good! And they close the book and they go make a sandwich and they might not ever come back because they leave, you leave the character in a spot that's pretty good. They succeeded, right? Sometimes, they should succeed, and I'll caveat that in a second. The second way to end a scene? Your character fails. Wah, wah. Right? The character fails! They didn't accomplish it. Guess what? That's awesome. You want lots of failure in your book, because if you resolve things too quickly, your story is too short. So you want to have lots of failure in this case. I didn't only read one page, so I'll be interested for Muhammad to let us know what happens, but it looks like he succeeds in building the well. And so now I want to know what's next. Right? So one thing is when you have a character who succeeds. Then, you need to make sure that before they succeed, or before they get what they want in a scene, you open up another want before, not after. Because then, when they accomplish something, they have another goal already set up and the reader stays engaged. The third way that you can end a scene is by the character discovering something that will help them or send them on a quest. So if they discover a new piece of information that will help them solve the mystery that they're after or help them along the journey that they're going, their bigger want, their bigger desire, or their bigger goal for the entire book, then that is a great way also to end a scene. Okay. Thank you. Excellent. Excellent. What's your big dream, Mohamed? What's the big dream for this book? What do you hope it will do? Well, I want, I want to, I want the book to be the best African book in the next, in the next two years or in the next one year coming. Because, um, there's a lot of, there's a lot, a lot of, A lot of good writing inside the books and encouragement of new writers to write and encourage African writers to write a lot of fiction books. So I'm very, very proud of this book because I love it. I really, I used to read it. I used to read, I read it about three, four times a day. Every day before I go to sleep, I read this book. So I'm very happy to, to add, to add another idea you gave me to make the book very perfect. Thank you very much. You are so welcome. Amazing. Thank you so much for being open to the feedback. Sounds great. Good luck with that. I'm cheering you on, Mohamed. Thank you very much. Thanks for tuning in to Show Don't Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vidori. I'll be continuing to bring you the straight goods for that book you're writing or planning to write. Please consider subscribing to this podcast and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you're listening. Also, visit suzybedorey. com forward slash newsletter to hop on my weekly inspired writing newsletter list, where you'll stay inspired and be the first to know about upcoming training events and writing courses that happen in my community. If you're feeling brave, check the show notes and send us a page of your writing that isn't quite where you want it to be yet for our show don't tell page review episodes. Remember that book and your writing is going to open doors that you haven't even thought of yet. And I can't wait to help make it the absolute best. If you're feeling called to write that book, keep going. And I'm going to be right here cheering you on. See you again next week.
