I wonder, which is better for NaNoWriMo, and in the long run? Showing, or telling?
If I show when I write, it’ll slow me down. It’s so much easier to tell and then move on. This is a first draft, a “rough” draft, so it’s all right to tell a lot, isn’t it? When I go into the second and third and fourth drafts, I can replace a lot of telling with showing.
For some people, NaNoWriMo is about the 50,000 word count. Even if their story is 40,000 words of content, and 10,000 words of filler, meeting the goal is all that counts. Some people are even find with 10,000 words of worthwhile story, and 40,000 words of filler content. What about me?
I’ve decided already, without thinking about it, that I will not settle on useless filler by virtue of padding toward a goal of 50,000 words. Come December, I might find various things need to be changed heavily, or dropped completely, but they will not have been written with the intent of meeting a word count.
If I can tell my way through a 50,000 word story, how many words will it take to show it all? In the end, the story’s the thing, and word count is merely a statistic.
