I often see students working too much in state of mind. f I can get you to learn through narrative distance what the state of mind looks like and then get you to move away from that, there are three things to focus on: action, description, and dialogue.
Using Action, Description, & Dialogue
These three are the ones who do the most showing. When you use action, description, and dialogue well, the state of mind is something that we are able to read and understand as as readers. When I can fill that in for myself as a reader instead of having it told to me, it works so much better for me.
When you use these three elements well, you can pick up on things like a character being distraught. If a book says something like, “She’s distraught. She was pissed off about the neighbor and the bloody shirt.” It doesn’t land as in as much of an interesting way.
Using Exposition
Another element to balance with scene work is exposition. When you jump in to give background, that’s exposition. If you’re in the middle of an interesting scene of dialogue or action, it’s not the place to jump into exposition.
You could do exposition at the beginning of the story. For example, “I had already left my wife and kids, my home in
Syosset.”
This writer is establishing that the character was drunk, down and out, left their job, and here we are. This is the summary part, and then we get into the story and we get dialogue.
Dialogue is generally always in scene, so that really puts us into a present.
