Blurb
Born disfigured and forgotten, I never expected a second chance. But when my sister runs away and threatens our family’s legacy, I’m forced to take her place as the Emperor’s bride. Assassins come for me, court intrigue surrounds me, and my life hangs by a thread—but this time, I won’t be a pawn. I will survive. I will take control. I will rewrite my fate.Original (First 500)
In Tang Qin Shang dynasty strength was everything, Magic ruled the world, it was said that from birth a child could already sense the mana in the world and have an idea of which element they had an affinity to, be it water, air, fire, earth, light, darkness, space, time, wood etc., people with two elements were usually extremely rare, same with people with three element, as four elements it was a legendary level.
A child was born useless, a total trash to such a world where power was everything and to make matters worse his face was disfigured, his unfortunate circumstances made his father General Lei despise him, to General Lei this child was cursed, a stain to his unblemished name.
General Lei strongly believed that this child was sent by the heavens as punishment to him for betraying his one true love by having an affair with a low born despicable, conniving servant who once tended to his beloved needs.
The pitiful child without a name knew fully well that his father was not been fair to his naïve and innocent mother, she could never have seduced him because she wasn’t that type of person, Although General Lei tried to paint himself white by plastering dirt all over that child’s mother the truth could never be hidden forever and there where people who knew that he was the one that forced himself on his wife’s servant girl and the fruit of this ugly was the child without a name.
The child knew the truth and felt his mother’s grievance but just like her he couldn’t voice out his resentment and pain.
When the incident was found out by the legitimate wife of the Lei’s manor she ordered that both mother and unborn child be thrown out of the Lei Manor and going forward this pair that only had each other were made to live in a deserted thatched house by a hill in the forest.
“Mother why don’t I have a name like other people, please give me one” The child had once pleaded and his mother shown a solemn expression, one that he had gotten accustomed to and hated seeing the most on his mother’s face.
“Don’t be sad mother, I don’t mind not having a name” the child said as he tugged on his mother’s sleeves and tried to smile to lighten the mood, she ruffled his hair and smiled back while saying, “I am sorry for been so useless son, I am so sorry” a tear fell down from her eyes and she quickly raised her sleeves to wipe it off, she had to be strong for her precious son.
The powerless child soon got to find out that the reason he could never bear a name was because his mother had been told by his father’s beloved wife not to give him one and his father stood strongly behind his dear wife despite his mother pleads.
After the child’s mother’s death when he was…
My Edit
“Mother, why don’t I have a name like other people?” the child asked, clinging to her knee.She didn’t answer, but he saw tears fall into the dough she was kneading. The dumplings were salty that night, and the room felt heavy with sorrow. He never asked the question again.
He never asked why they no longer lived in a manor, why they had been sent to a dusty shack at the forest’s edge. In the end, he realized he didn’t mind. Here, there was no one to glare at his disfigured face, no one to tease or strike him for lacking magic.
His mother cared for the home as if it were a palace. She patched the thatched roof, wove straw into fresh mats, and swept the floor until it gleamed, scattering rose petals across the dirt. She piled the bed high with freshly plucked feathers.
He helped drag water, bucket by bucket, from the nearby stream, growing stronger and freer with each trip.
And every night, she told him stories of enchanted rings, daring heroes, and legendary warriors who could bend the elements themselves—tales of water, fire, air, earth, and even the rare masters of multiple elements. Those moments were precious, and he clung to them as though they would last forever.
Then, one day, his mother died.
(Original word count: ~500 → Edited: ~200)
Critique
Okay, so, when people talking about "showing", instead of "telling", they're talking about writing like the original excerpt which is almost entirely told. That said, I'm not here to knock the original author's style. There are strengths to telling a story instead of showing. If you have ever read a Jude Devereaux book, for instance, you will feel like you've just read ten novels in the space of one (or two, JD's novels are pretty thicc). This is because JD doesn't shy away from telling the reader things. The point is, the more a story is "told", the more of a story you can "tell".A standard romance novel—even fantasy or paranormal—usually stays pretty focused. You’re following one main POV, usually the woman, and maybe you’ll get a few chapters from the love interest. In stronger books, you’ll also get a b-plot or c-plot—career stuff, friendships—but it’s all still kind of orbiting the relationship.
Jude Deveraux’s have generations, social dynamics, side characters who feel like they could walk off and star in their own novel, and sometimes whole parallel storylines happening at the same time.
There’s just no way to fit all of that into a standard romance word count—even if you doubled it. And that’s kind of the point. To cover that much ground, the story has to do more telling. This is why, aside from the fact that they are period pieces, her novels feel like epic fairytales. Fairytales are almost all told, with tiny moments that focus in on dialogue and immediate action.
So, rather than just a blanket statement to NEVER tell, let's take a moment to explore when it's better to show and when it's better to tell. Now, this is subjective, of course, because we're talking about art. But in general, telling is a great way to "yadda yadda yadda" our way from one part of the story that has a lot of narrative tension to another part of the story that has narrative tension. If your character is learning the ins-and-outs of accounting, but the story is about him eventually becoming dragon wrangler, we'll probably want to say something like, "Calvin settled into his new job as an accountant. It was boring. He hated it. He opened up Indeed and saw a job title that caught his eye." However, if the story is about an accountant named Connie finding out that her boss is cooking the books, then a line like, "Connie found out that her boss was cooking the books. After she figured it out, she called the cops," and the rest of the story is focused on what she made for dinner, that would be inappropriate.
So, in essence, think of telling as a montage and showing as slow motion. An entire movie in slow motion might be an art house favorite, but it would probably be an unbearable slog for most people to watch. So, we want a balance, where we tell the boring parts, show-and-tell the interesting parts, and show the best parts.
Okay, but how do we do that? Good question! Since our original excerpt is almost entirely told, let's take a look at it and decide where we'd like to slow down. First, the most impactful part of the story is when the child asks his mother why he doesn't have a name. So, let's look at the original:
“Mother why don’t I have a name like other people, please give me one” The child had once pleaded and his mother shown a solemn expression, one that he had gotten accustomed to and hated seeing the most on his mother’s face...Don’t be sad mother, I don’t mind not having a name” the child said as he tugged on his mother’s sleeves and tried to smile to lighten the mood, she ruffled his hair and smiled back while saying, “I am sorry for been so useless son, I am so sorry” a tear fell down from her eyes and she quickly raised her sleeves to wipe it off, she had to be strong for her precious son.This passage comes at paragraph seven (out of nine-ish), so toward the end of the excerpt. For my edit, I moved this up to the first line,:
“Mother, why don’t I have a name like other people?” the child asked, clinging to her knee.The showing in the original is the dialogue, obviously, plus the child tugging his mother's sleeves and her ruffling his hair. In my edit, I make the scene a bit more visceral by having the boy cling to his mother's knee, and having her kneed dough. So, instead of the boy and his mother hanging out in mid-air, having a conversation, they're grounded in a setting: a kitchen. It feels more real.She didn’t answer, but he saw tears fall into the dough she was kneading. The dumplings were salty that night, and the room felt heavy with sorrow. He never asked the question again.
The combination of show-and-tell would be the line about the dumplings being salty that night. "That night" is a telling phrase that lets us jump forward in time. The sensory detail of the salty dumplings is where we're showing, and then the part about the room feeling heavy with sorry is back to telling. "He never asked the question again," is also telling because it jumps us forward in time, again. Both instances of telling here add to the impact of the scene. First, "that night" is a direct, physical consquence of that conversation and "never again" is a psychological consequence of that scene. So, again, telling is not always bad. It doesn't always dilute the impact of the scene. In fact, it can deepen the emotional impact of the story in just a few words.
Alright, all that said, let's move onto the usual things I look for in a good story opening.
Setting
We have a couple of settings in the original excerpt; a manor and a cottage. The manor doesn't get a description, and the cottage only gets this: "a deserted thatched house by a hill in the forest". So, the settings do not have strong descriptions in the original. In my edit, I have the mother fixing up the cottage, fixing the roof, and the boy helping by dragging in buckets of water from the stream. It's a simple montage, but it sets the scene so that when she dies, it hurts. It takes the boy and his mother living in this cozy home in the middle of the woods, to the boy, alone. In the middle of the woods. From cozy to isolated and dangerous, in one sentence, because we took a moment to describe the setting.
I didn't describe the manor at all because it was only mentioned as part of the infodump that I cut out completely for my edit, but I think that there's potential of the luxurious but cold manor compared to the rough but cozy hut to be an interesting juxtaposition, especially because we'll be jumping from the hut to a palace, if the blurb and title are anything to go by. Fun transitions, setting-wise, even in a "told" story.
Characterization
We have several characters: General Lei, the legitimate wife, the unnamed child, and the unnamed child's unnamed mother. It would be more impactful for the unnamed child to be unnamed, if everyone else got a name. But neither of the woman have names, which make's the child's plight less dramatic. Even in a fairytale-like structure, where the characterizations can get away with being pretty basic, these characterizations are pretty close to non-existent. The mother is uniformly saintly and imposed upon, the child is sad, the general is selfish, the general's wife is vengeful.
The unnamed child is the only one with built-in conflict. He's ugly or disfigured in some way. That, combined with the blurb and title are enticing enough to carry the first 500 words, but the original excerpt doesn't really set him up well. He's entirely passive and pathetic. In my edit, I gave him a bit more agency, giving him buckets of water to carry, and with the part about him asking for a name, he never brings it up again after his mother cries. I think that's more effective than immediately apologizing and calling himself useless. He's still a character that draws on the reader's empathy, but giving him the tiniest bit of agency gives the reader a chance to root for him, instead of only feel sorry for him.
Conflict/Tension
The situation itself is rife with conflict. We have a boy and his mother being exiled. They go from a comfortable manor to a ragged hut in the middle of nowhere. They only have each other, and then the boy has no one. The way the excerpt is written doesn't do much to highlight these conflicts. Everything is told, almost in one breath, with equal weight.
For my edit, I gave one sentence of back story: "He never asked why they no longer lived in a manor, why they had been sent to a dusty shack at the forest’s edge." All of the back story is interesting, but it doesn't give the reader anything to focus on. Most people don't know how to start a story, so they front load it with backstory. The biggest clue to what the author thinks is important in the story is dialogue. Dialogue is a zoomed-in, character-driven moment. Dialogue evokes a sensory experience (sound), and I often count it as action, or at least, activity. Dialogue is where conflict is often expressed (or repressed).
In this case, the author's only dialogue in the original excerpt cuts right to the heart of the story. He wants to know why he doesn't have a name. This is a heartbreaking moment, and that's the moment I decided was the real start to the story. The next pivotal moment is when the mother dies, so in between the child asking that question and his mother dying, the challenge is to endear the mother to the reader so that the loss comes as a blow to the reader as well as to the child.
To do this, I made the mother create a home out of the hut, played up her sorrow when her son asks why he doesn't have a name (the original excerpt focuses on the child's distress), and generally made her a more active, albeit gentle character. I had her tell the child stories every night, made that a ritual -- and just when we're starting to feel a rhythm, a building of contentment -- that's when I killed her.
