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No. Trust your reader's intuition for the obvious. If the first lines of your book read: "Put that back!" Alicia scolded. "No! Mine!" Richard said, defiant. She grabbed the plastic bo...
Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-19T22:13:51Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46794 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T12:30:45Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46794 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
No. Trust your reader's intuition for the obvious. If the first lines of your book read: > "Put that back!" Alicia scolded. > > "No! Mine!" Richard said, defiant. > > She grabbed the plastic bottle of cough syrup from him, and put it back on the grocery shelf. He started crying, and reached for it again, Alicia moved the cart to the center of the aisle so he couldn't. > > "Mine!" > > "No it isn't." Reader's aren't stupid, and writing is not a mathematical or scientific proof. They will infer Alicia is an exasperated mother, Richard is a very young child, they are in a grocery store, and you don't have to tell them any of that. You want to be clear, but you definitely can identify a new speaker without any description and just "blah blah blah," Charname said. You can even give clues to their appearance by action, instead of telling. > "Let me get that for you," Michael said, easily reaching the top shelf, seeing the young woman was about to climb the shelving to reach it. > > "Oh, thank you," Britney said. "Would you mind grabbing another one?"
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2019-07-21T21:09:38Z (almost 5 years ago)
Original score: 14