Advice versus Advise

"Advice," rhyming with "spice," is a noun. You give advice and receive advice.

"Advise," rhyming with "wise," is a verb. You advise someone by giving them advice.

Don't be confused by the ‘s’ in "advise." It is pronounced ‘z.’

Show Don't Tell

This one is for the fiction writers out there. This is one of the most-repeated rules in fiction writing, but it's not an easy rule to understand and follow.

Show, don't tell. Telling is easy and simple. Showing is much harder. Showing takes more work and more words. Showing also works much, much better.

I grew up reading the Hardy Boys, the classic stuff published in the 60s. In pretty much every novel, Frank and Joe would get the same sentence of description. Frank was the serious and thoughtful one, while Joe was more impulsive. How much better it would have been to craft a scene that would demonstrate these traits and give us a chance to get to know the characters on our own.

Imagine if the Sherlock Holmes stories began by telling us that Holmes is brilliant, moody, and eccentric, while Watson is an earnest and not as bright. Anyone who has read a few of the stories knows exactly what Holmes and Watson are like. We don't have to take the author's word for it. We've seen the two men in action.

There are, of course, pitfalls to the rule of showing and not telling. We can indicate an emotion in someone by describing their body language. Someone might stiffen, sneer, or clench their fists. However, sometimes it is better to be succinct. Sometimes it is better just to say that a character is annoyed, rather than running through a list of twitches and clenches.