High Stakes and Showing Vs. Telling

It's so important to show your conflict

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Thanks for your patience everyone! As I mentioned last week, I’m currently on deadline for my next adult novel, which means these posts will be coming a little less frequently than usual. I love this substack and very much want to keep doing it, but my fiction has priority, I’m afraid. I’ll do my best to keep posting as frequently as possible!

With that out of the way, I can’t wait to dive into our page for the week! This fantasy is called The Eyes of the Starry Jewel. Enjoy!

xx

d

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THE EYES OF THE STARRY JEWEL

The paper before the monk remains blank. Beyond the canvas, pale as the ghostly shroud that is to fill his dreams, lay the words that escape him.

DV: Interesting start! I like some of your wording here, “pale as the ghostly shroud” is particularly good!

But they are already there, he thinks, in the ink and the paper, and in his hands and his thoughts. Like the mountain’s stone always fated to be shaped in just one way by the chisel, they hide from sight, unwritten and unformed.