Things I wish I would have known – 2

Things I wish I had known before starting to write my first book 2.

So in my last things I wish I had known post I talked about sentence length, passive voice, tenses, outlines, etc.  This time round I want to talk about the dreaded Showing not Telling.

Things to avoid

• Adverbs – this one baffles me.
• To Be – learning to write with out using to be or one of its forms is like learning to do Calculus for me.
• ly – words that end in this are taboo.
• ing- words that end in this shouldn’t begin sentences.
• As – should not start a sentence.
• Over doing it – once you get the above down apparently you need to go back and undo some of it.  I believe this follows the getting ready to go out rule of ‘after you’re ready to go out look in the mirror and remove at least one item’ or to much of a good thing is bad.

The problem with these rules is I can’t tell you why you need to do them.  Grammar might as well be a foreign language for me.  I do have access to the internet and can look up articles on how to show and not tell.  I compiled a list of ones I thought I could do.