{"id":5806,"date":"2016-06-24T07:48:59","date_gmt":"2016-06-24T11:48:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5806"},"modified":"2016-06-24T07:48:59","modified_gmt":"2016-06-24T11:48:59","slug":"hush-now-dont-explain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5806","title":{"rendered":"“Hush Now, Don’t Explain”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Billie<\/a>

Click photo for “Hush Now, Don’t Explain”<\/p><\/div>\n

When I read a vivid description of a particular disease or condition, I confess I start feeling a slight pain in the target spot, an itch, a touch of malaise, a sink of nausea. (All the while being perfectly healthy.) Face it, lots of us suffer from–to put a positive spin on it–this kind of excessive empathy.<\/p>\n

That tendency seems remote kin to the feeling I have when I read “advice for writers.” No matter how awful the writing habit is, “I do that!” “My writing is full of it!” But when I ran across fiction editor Beth Hill’s terrific essay<\/a>, this time, I really, really think she’s diagnosed something important to me. Her brilliant Editor’s Blog essay is “Don’t Explain, Don’t Explain, Don’t Explain.” Let me explain.<\/p>\n

Hill says the problem of overexplaining comes up repeatedly in fiction manuscripts. Fundamentally, her common sense advice requires us, as authors, to trust our readers<\/em> to understand what we’re writing about, without banging them over the head with a 2×4 of explanation. Hill says:<\/p>\n