showing not telling
to use words like “interesting” and “fascinating” when describing a subject is to essentially stick styrofoam popcorn into whatever you’re writing. would you be discussing the topic at hand if it were boring? probably not! so don’t use these sorts of placeholder words, because you’re only robbing your readers of finding out why something was worthy of your attention.
I am quite guilty of this! My own code runs as follows:
- “Interesting” means “I’m about to spend a paragraph on this, bear with me, it’s a bit obvious but needs to be in there”
- “Fascinating” means “Actually this bit is interesting”
- “Intriguing” means either “Dodgy” or “I hope someone in the comments box knows more than me about this”
- “Seems” next to any of the above usually means “Isn’t, and I’m going to tell you why”
