1. ✏️ Camera Test

Content

The “Camera Test” is a great way to see if you’re showing the important parts of your story.

Ask yourself, “Can a camera see this?” If the answer is “no,” then you have some work to do. Consider the following example:

*Tell-land is a peaceful kingdom with happy, prosperous citizens. The king is beloved by his people and both rich and poor live in harmony.*

Can a camera see what Tell-land looks like? Not really! The camera would need much more information: is the kingdom by the sea? In the mountains? Are the streets paved with cobblestones? Bricks? What does living in harmony mean? What does it look like? Without a clear description, the camera (and your reader) will be left to fill in the gaps themselves.

If an area of your document is flagged as needing more “showing” ask yourself if it’s camera-ready. If it’s not, add in details that the camera could pick up.

Let’s take a look at a good example of showing:

*The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about. High mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows, slowly revealed in the reluctant light.*

In this passage from The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien paints a vivid picture of Mordor’s terror. If he had just said, “Mordor was frightening,” the reader wouldn’t have such a visceral understanding of Mordor as a place. By showing, rather than telling, we get a specific sense of the danger that awaits the heroes as they venture into this place of doom.