A Tale of Two Tales by Nancy L. Eady

 Meet Max. 

Max is a pound puppy that came to live with us on December 27, 2022, when he was three months old. 

At seventeen months, he is now an adolescent puppy.  (Most dogs are considered an adult at two years.)  As you can see, he has grown considerably. 

If you look up “happy-go-lucky” in a pictorial dictionary, Max’s image should appear. He likes being a good dog until something more exciting, like a counter to surf or a trash bag to sort through, comes along. 

The other day, I was at work while my husband and daughter were at home. When I checked in with Mark to see how his day was going, he mentioned that Max had gotten into a mud puddle in the back yard, and Kayla had to wash him. Facts communicated; end of story. 

Compare his version to the following telephone colloquy between me and my daughter, Kayla, earlier that afternoon. 

Kayla:  Is there any medication for getting angry? 

Me [not prepared for the pop quiz]:  I don’t think so. Why? 

Kayla:  Because I’m pretty sure our neighbors will never hire me to clean their houses after hearing me scream at Max today. [Note:  She wants to start her own cleaning business.]

Me:  What happened? 

Kayla:  I let Max outside and he wouldn’t come when I called. 

Me:  Oh? 

Kayla:  When he didn’t come, I walked out into the yard, and he thought we were playing chase. He ran around the yard six times, stopping to drink from a mud puddle each time, and I kept scolding him for it. Then I got tired of waiting for him and turned my back to walk a different direction in the yard for a second, and when I turned back around, he looked like a chocolate lab. 

Me:  Oh? 

Kayla:  Yes. I turned back around and he had run and splashed through the mud puddle and got mud all over him. It smelled bad, so I think there was something in the puddle besides just mud. I was so mad, I started screaming at him. 

Me:  Oh? [I realize my end of this conversation is less than scintillating, but so far, I had not been called upon to offer advice, fix anything, comment on anything or do anything other than listen.]

Kayla:  And then he ran inside, ran all over the house, and got mud everywhere. 

Me:  Does Dad know? 

Kayla:  Yes. 

Me:  What did he say? 

Kayla:  He left. He had been waiting on me to go to Sam’s Club with him, but when he saw Max, he said he couldn’t wait any longer. 

Me [admiring Dad’s perspicacity]:  Did you wash him? 

Kayla:  It took two hours. The mud was caked on his underside so badly that I had to rinse him seven or eight times before I could even get to his hair to put the shampoo on. He kept shaking the dirty water off him too, and now my bathroom is covered in an inch of brown water. He made me so mad I had to leave him in the bathroom while I went to sit in the hall for twenty minutes to calm down.

Me: [ignoring the physical impossibilities of a two-hour dog bath and an inch of standing water confined solely to the bathroom, and pondering the amount of damage Max could do to a bathroom in twenty minutes, unsupervised]:  Is he clean? 

Kayla:  Yes, but I don’t know how he’ll get dry. He kept shaking the water off so I couldn’t dry him. Now I’ve locked him in his carrier so the blankets in there are wet too. I’m leaving him there until I finish mopping the whole house. 

Me [not sure what else to say]:  I’m sure he’ll dry off soon, but I have to get back to work. 

End of story. 

One story; two tales. A facet of writing is knowing when to use which version:  short and succinct, or dramatic, laden with details. How do you decide? 

Showing Not Telling by Nancy L. Eady

 As writers, we are constantly bombarded with the advice “Show don’t tell.” If you’re reading this post hoping for the magic secret that makes you automatically show instead of tell, I apologize for not having it. But I did notice something today that might help.

As we get ready for our house to sell, we are stumbling across various odds and ends. Each item we find, and our reaction to it, says something about the members of my family as individuals, as does the furniture we cherish versus the furniture we only use. If my family were characters in a novel, descriptions of the items we find and our reaction to them would be part of how the novelist could sketch out our character.

Meet Ruffy, who arrived at our house when my daughter was about 6 as part of a set of three Build-a-Bear animals she acquired over the course of a year. When we found Ruffy today, my daughter (now 21) couldn’t help giving her a hug. What would that say about a character in your novel? 

While admittedly she has seen better days, this Raggedy Ann doll has been well and truly loved. My aunt made Raggedy Ann for me when I was a small child, and I still have her. I tried to mend the neck and legs when I was in high school because she was in even worse shape than she is now. My sewing skills obviously were lacking. That doll caught many silent tears and comforted me for more years than I like to count. She now resides on my closet shelf. (I pulled her out specifically for this photograph.) And yes, she will be making the move to Huntsville with us.

What might this small vignette from our study/dining room show a reader if it was described in a novel? Letting a reader know that the grandfather clock belonged to my husband’s parents, while the pitcher and washbasin belonged to his grandmother, shows them something about us. So does the fact that the round table the washbasin is sitting on probably won't make the move.  (Underneath the tablecloth, it is falling apart.  We bought it about seven years ago.)  The shoe on the dining room table might mean we’re messy, careless, or easily distracted. In our case, what it really means is that my daughter left her shoes in the hallway to the garage, where one of them was discovered by our youngest dog Max, who is only one year old and loves to chew. We barely rescued it from his clutches in time; he had retreated to his carrier to begin a peaceful afternoon of chewing until we interrupted him. In a novel, a character’s noticing the presence of the shoe, or another character’s leaving the shoe in place for days, gives the reader a clearer picture of some facet of their personality. 

So, as I edit my work, I’m going to look for places where I might be able to use settings to help with characterization and see if it gets me closer to that ever-elusive goal of showing, not telling. 

What suggestions do you have that help with showing rather than telling? 

A Rose Isn't Always A Rose by Nancy L. Eady

          I did online research this week on jewelry because I was looking to buy a present. Then the week finished with the receipt of a beautiful rose-gold diamond ring for my 35^th wedding anniversary present (a little early due to anonymous packaging and the mistaken belief that the package was a replacement outdoor light for our RV, another story entirely). In looking through the possibilities for jewelry I was astounded by the variety of ways in which jewelry can be defined. I was equally astounded by how precisely devoid of any emotional content those descriptions were.

         For example, my favorite jewelry metal is rose gold, with non-tarnishing silver second. Why? Rose gold has a subtle warmth, richness and kindness that to me is absent from yellow gold.  It’s okay if you don’t agree with me.  But when you read a description of rose gold, you are told something like “rose gold is an alloy of 24 K gold and copper.” That description, chemically and metallurgically correct, does not begin to convey the same emotions that words like “subtle warmth” and “richness” do. (In the “it’s amazing what you learn from Google” department, gold rose is harder and wears better then pure gold because of the extra copper.)

          White gold is similarly described as combining pure gold with zinc and nickel. But to me, a desire for white gold is somewhat mystifying, since white gold looks pretty much like silver, which is less expensive. 

Gemstone definitions are similarly technical. Gems (in which I include semi-precious stones) are classified by type (topaz. emerald, ruby, diamond) and by grade. The distinctive characteristics of a gem include color, cut, clarity and carat weight and all of those characteristics are figured into the grade a gem stone is to receive. According to Fire Mountain Gems and Beads, gemstones are rated between A and D, with A being the best quality and D being the poorest quality. In addition, some sources I’ve read suggest that for stones such as emeralds and rubies, the rating can increase from A up through AAAA. There may even be a category above AAAA called “heirloom.” The more “A’s” the better the quality of the gemstone, and the more expensive the gem stone is. All of which is very useful if you’re going buy an expensive piece of jewelry but which does nothing to excite the imagination or give a glimpse into the character of person wearing the gemstone. 

For example, all of the above doesn’t tell you nearly as much about me as a person as would knowing that I love the color and variety of gemstones to the extent that most of the time (with the exception of my anniversary ring) I prefer them over diamonds. Diamonds are brilliant, and hard; emeralds, for example, are inviting, mysteriously green and dancing with reflected color.

What do you think a person’s jewelry tells you about their character? How would you use it in a story or novel of your own?