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I have six words on my mind. I’ve been mulling over these six words for two months and what they say about the writing process. They are six words that I cut from the first scene of Line of Ascent.

The POV character, Jake, has just met his new colleague, Dr. Freer. He’s a climber, and she picks up a little climbing gizmo called a Camalot and asks him how it works. He answers.

Here is the paragraph after I edited it.

“It expands to fit a parallel-sided crack. That one goes down to an eighth of an inch.”

She squeezed the Cam shut, and the tiny lobes popped out when she released it. “Damn, Keller. You couldn’t even beat an egg with that. Do you really put your faith in this little thing?”

“The lobes are logarithmic spirals. It’s just . . . mechanics.” He rubbed his face. “What time is it?”

Here is how I wrote it originally.

“It expands to fit a parallel-sided crack. That one goes down to an eighth of an inch.”

She squeezed the Cam shut, and the tiny lobes popped out when she released it. “Damn, Keller. You couldn’t even beat an egg with that. Do you really put your faith in this little thing?”

Faith. He’d never call it that. “The lobes are logarithmic spirals. It’s just . . . mechanics.” He rubbed his face. “What time is it?”

Faith. He’d never call it that.

The book is about Jake’s coming to terms with Mystery and the fact that he can’t control everything with his smart scientific approach to life. His comment in this scene demonstrates that he rejects that he puts faith in anything, even the climbing gear. It doesn’t require faith because it works on mechanical principles.

Now when I wrote those six words, I was pretty proud. Here, in the first scene, I had given a nod to the theme of the novel.

But later, a better writer pointed out that I had, in fact, told and then shown. With the six words left in, I’m making sure readers gets it. I’m not leaving them any room to deduce Jake’s character on their own.

With the six words omitted, the reader should hopefully pick up on Jake’s insistence that he relies only on mechanics and that that trait is an integral part of his nature.

How much do we trust our readers?

This is a common mistake of beginning writers. It’s also a natural part of the first draft process. As we write that first draft, we are finding our way. We think: Faith. He’d never call it that. It’s like a note to ourselves. But our hands are busy slapping down all these words popping into our heads, and our little inner discussions get interspersed through the scene.

That’s why it’s important during the revision process to read for these types of notes to yourself and delete them. Let your reader figure the character out from his actions, dialogue, and true thoughts (as opposed to your summary of his thoughts). Trust your reader. Don’t be constantly whispering in his ear.