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Hey there! You're reading the Tuesday Telegrams, a bimonthly newsletter from author Naseem Jamnia. Every other Tuesday, I send out a Telegram that's either writing related or a personal essay. You're currently reading a writing-related Telegram, which is where I give updates on projects, behind-the-scenes look at my work, craft discussions, recent publications, event news, and other publishing things.

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When you start publishing your work, there's a common adage: don't read the comments. When you start publishing book, there's a similar one: don't read your reviews. I've gotten to a stage where I ignore reader reviews (they're not for me!) for months until I decide to sit down some night when my spouse is out of town and read them. I've also gotten to a stage where reading them no longer affects me, for good or for ill.

(I know I'm a writer's writer. That's not to say I don't want readers who aren't writers not to enjoy my work—I obviously do! But I know the kinds of things I produce, and overwhelmingly, the people who have loved them have been other writers. That's fine with me.)

There are three main points of feedback readers who have criticisms seem to give:

1. There's a lot of telling rather than showing.
2. "Nothing happens" in the middle and the ending is "rushed" (i.e. pacing issues).
3. It should have been longer.

I thought I'd tackle the issue of showing versus telling, because truth be told, I hate that writing advice with a fiery passion. (Although this does seem prime to have pacing and story length as future newsletters—stay tuned!)

I'm not surprised that people complain about how much is told in The Bruising of Qilwa, because it's true—much of it is told, given what I needed to establish in order to write the story I was actually focused on. I chose to tell a lot because while I needed the reader to know whatever it was I was telling, the point wasn't to explore that in a scene. In other words, I was giving the reader certain knowledge they'd need to go into the scene in question, and the point of that scene wasn't that knowledge, but that knowledge impacts how the scene plays out. (I'll elaborate on this a bit below, when I talk about telling information.)

​John Wiswell has a two-part set of terrific essays on showing and telling. I agree with his ultimate argument, that various kinds of showing and telling lead to different effects, and we often combine both. "They’re our tools to connect with our fellow readers," he writes. "The question isn't to show or tell, but how you can best express your next idea." (The second part is about thinking through show vs. tell via disability, which is definitely relevant to think about. Both essays are behind a paywall, which you can get access to if you monetarily subscribe to John's newsletter.)

(Also, I haven't read John's debut Someone You Can Build a Nest In yet, but it's on my shelf and has gotten terrific buzz!)

Ironically, I recently read a(n aggressively mediocre) NYT Bestselling book that I had this reaction to—way too much telling. I was surprised that I had that reaction (given, again, how much I hate "show, don't tell), and as I thought about it, I realized it's because while we're told a lot about how the characters feel or their mindsets or philosophies, we don't see that impacting them in any serious way (for the most part). It would have been the same if we hadn't been told those things at all.

I think what a lot of "show, don't tell" boils down to is that often, when something is told, there needs to be evidence in the text to back it up. If we're told a character's internal state, are they behaving in the following scene as if they're in that state? If we're explicitly told a character's motivations, do their actions line up with those motivations? Does the narrative confront contradictions or any exclusion of these details to tell us those choices are purposeful?

But what about telling pieces of information? I can't show you the history of three people groups if it happened three hundred years before the events of the story; I can only tell it to you. I can't show you Firuz's training as a blood magic user and how that's impacted their relationship with everything around them.

(Well, I could—flashbacks exist! But flashbacks also deliberately slow the pacing of the story, and tbh, my stories are slower paced as it is.)

But I do show how Firuz approaches Afsoneh's training in light of their own experiences. How they shut down and take whatever anyone does to them because of their trauma. How the events at the end are what they are because of Firuz's background.

Maybe those connections aren't always clear. There's a tricky balance of trusting your reader and people being terrible readers and missing all the ways you show things instead of telling them.

There's also this: sometimes, you (the reader) need to know something in order to get through a scene. That "thing" you need to know could be shown in scene, sure, but if the point is the knowledge of the thing and not how the thing unfolds, then it makes sense to tell the thing instead of show it. In the case of The Bruising of Qilwa, I tell almost every political event that happens in the city (like the food riots) because the politics are only important insofar as they affect Firuz's daily life. I tell that Firuz and Kofi stay after hours for weeks to take care of injured migrants rather than show it because I want to show the aftermath of that labor—Firuz's perpetual exhaustion, their compartmentalizing of their responsibilities. The problem with writing a slice-of-life is that things people will see as plot beats are really the events passing by—but if the impact is the point, we may not need to see those events unfold in scene.

(I feel like there's a good "scene vs. summary" craft essay out there I've assigned in the past...)

Of course, the danger in telling is the dreaded info-dump. Here, again, is that tricky balance of how much needs to be explicit versus how much the reader can surmise. Info-dumps happen when the author has decided everything being told in that moment needs to be explicit, and when that information doesn't seem relevant to the scene at hand.

What's interesting is that many times, what is an info-dump to one reader isn't to another. The opening scene of Qilwa is a good example of this. It is heavy in exposition, more than most other scenes in the book (because I generally hate exposition). There are moments of Firuz explicitly considering international politics (told) because they are extremely aware of the precarity of their position (implicitly shown and told). There are a lot of moments of Firuz being extremely anxious and borderline triggered in their body (shown) and why that's the case (told). And many times, the two bounce off each other.

So, for example:

• Told: There's a plague and a refugee crisis, and the migrants are blamed for the plague
• Told and shown: Despite said crisis, the clinic apparently has money (clean and embroidered cushions, tea for patients, a beautiful tapestry; we're also both told and shown how Firuz feels about that tapestry and, by extension, their ethnic background)
• Told and shown: Cultural differences between Qilwans and Dilmunis re: introductions and greetings (see below)
• Told: Firuz is not a structuralist (also shown via the exchange with their pendant) but a blood magic user
• Shown: Firuz's anxiety, especially at being found out; they're stumbling over their words and taking too long to respond and overanalyzing the situation

As I said above, at the end of the day, I think the line between telling and showing can be rather thin. Both are often used together. The pitfalls aren't so much doing more telling than showing, in my view, but of not having one back up the other. Whatever we're being told has to have impact; whatever we're seeing has to mean something in the course of the story.

Of course, as always, take writing adages and advice with a grain (or two) of salt.

Qilwa Corner: Showing vs. Telling

Since I mentioned above that showing and telling can be a fine line (and that some people might view one as the other), I thought it was worth going through an example in that first scene of Qilwa.

Below, I've bolded what we're shown and italicized what we're told.

We're told that Qilwans and Sassanians/Dilmunis (the latter two grouped together) have different customs regarding greetings and introductions: Dilmunis/Sassanians share pronouns and tend to be physically affectionate; Qilwans have gendered language* but are more formal in their greetings and do not necessarily disclose pronouns. But we also see those differences in action: Firuz rises (polite); Kofi has a neutral reaction (neither offended nor impressed); Firuz shakes Kofi's hand (polite); Kofi's handshake is limp (unexpected) to Firuz's firm one (expected); Firuz doesn't wipe their hand (would be rude).

I tend to do this blending of showing and telling a lot in The Bruising of Qilwa. In fact, the immediate following paragraphs tell about Firuz pretending to be a structuralist but show they're more adept than they're giving themself credit for. Their anxiety is embodied (shown) and the reasons for which (that they're a Sassanian refugee hiding blood magic) told.

This is not everyone's cup of tea, and in hindsight, there are plenty of moments I could have cut down on. Firuz's anxiety is so palpable in the opening scene that it often turns people off. What I see as necessary backstory that Firuz is absolutely thinking about—because they are cognizant, in the moment, of power dynamics—could be seen as info-dumping. Your mileage may vary!

*Fun fact related to gendered language in Qilwa: since the movement for independence was so recent, culturally, many people rebel and stop using pronoun introductions (a practice introduced by Dilmunis) for a couple of decades, instead giving pronouns implicitly or having that information disseminated to others by close connections. But rather than that taking hold, because there is an expectation of gender fluidity in society, they revert back to including pronouns in their introductions when the cultural memory of the fight for independence isn't so fresh.

(Another and only tangentially related fun fact: Kofi is also nonbinary but uses he/him pronouns because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ he does not care what pronouns are used for him, hence the "generally acquiesced to moving through the world as a man" line. In the first draft, I used they/them pronouns for Kofi, but decided that with Firuz also using they/them pronouns, it would be a harder sell.)

My offer to match donations to any donation via GoFundMe or a humanitarian organization helping Palestinians—or any other group facing violence—and send you a book is ongoing. Please send me a receipt and link to where you donated and we can go from there.

Links to aid Palestinians who are undergoing genocide:

• ​​​Operation Olive Branch​​​
• ​​Care for Gaza​​
• ​​​Adalah Justice Project​​
• ​​PCRF​​​
• ​​​Jewish Voice for Peace​​​
• ​​​ROOM Magazine's round up of resources​; ​Autostraddle's round up too​​
• ​​The BDS Movement​​​
• ​​​Resistbot to contact your officials​​​

Where you can learn about violence in:

• DR Congo - M23, Cobalt​
• Darfur, Sudan - International Criminal Court, CNN, BBC (Overview); Twitter Explanation on Sudan​
• Tigray - Human Rights Watch (Ethnic Cleansing Report)

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