Are You Guilty of Authorsplaining

Mansplaining, as defined by Wikipedia, is a pejorative term meaning “to comment on or explain something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner.” Or as Urban Dictionary defines it, “When a man explains something to a woman in a patronizing tone as if the woman is too emotional and illogical to understand.” 

Well, authorsplaining, as defined by me, is when an author overexplains something to a reader in a totally unnecessary, exaggerated or repetitive manner, as if the reader is too dimwitted to understand and follow the story. And it is as irritating to read as it is to hear in real life.

If you’re an avid reader, you’ve likely come across authorsplaining in one form or another, and I’ll get to the most common forms of this offense below, but I want to start by saying that I bring this up because authors, no matter how new or how experienced, sometimes feel the need to explain everything to their readers, believing they would otherwise have no clue. However, readers, even young ones, are not clueless and believe me, they will resent being treated as if they are.

Now, sometimes the author might be guilty of a light sprinkle here and there or a subtle line that the reader is able to ignore, while other times, the author is more blatant about it and that authorsplaining is heavily applied.

To be honest, I think we all do it, to a point, and most often without even realizing it, until we start polishing that first draft. That’s when most of us will catch those instances of authorsplaining and remove them. Most of us, but not all.

So if you’re not catching it or not removing it, watch out, because whether one line or several paragraphs, when you allow that authorsplaining to creep into your writing, you invite the reader to start skimming, and skimming can mean the death of your book.

• Explaining Your Own Writing is one of the most common forms of authorsplaining and especially common among newer writers, so I see it a lot while editing or critiquing a manuscript.

  
  

  A good example is if your writing skills are up to snuff, and you’re writing internal dialogue in italics (which is how you are supposed to write it), then adding the words “he thought” or “I think to myself” following the internal dialogue is completely unnecessary.

  
  

  Even your first-time novel readers will quickly understand that when the wording is in italics, it means this was in their heads and not said aloud.

• Repeating Information is another culprit I catch in someone’s writing again and again, even in a traditionally published book.

  
  

  This is where the character or narrator gives us a piece of information, then repeats that same information later on. I’ve even seen the same information repeated two, three and even more times throughout a book, sometimes using the exact wording and sometimes said a little differently.

  
  

  It’s as if the author thinks we’re not paying attention and perhaps missed it the previous time, or just need to be reminded. And if most readers feel the way I do, it’s annoying enough to have me rolling my eyes.

• Overdescribing is a commonly seen form of authorsplaining where the author gets carried away with descriptions.

  
  

  Now, I encourage descriptions as most readers are visual readers, as am I, and we need some description to paint a picture for our mind’s eye.

  
  

  However, ask yourself: was a half-page description of that character really necessary? Or does the reader really need a description of what the character is wearing in the middle of this tense-filled scene? And think about this: We all know what a toaster looks like, so describing to the reader that it’s a four-slice toaster as opposed to two probably isn’t needed.

  
  

  (Actually, there's no “probably” about it.)

• Showing and Then Telling is the last common form of authorsplaining I want to mention, and I’m not talking about show versus tell, as that’s an entirely different discussion.

  
  

  What I’m referring to here is when the author shows the reader what is happening and then proceeds to tell them as well. Why do authors do this? You got me, but again, I see this more often than I’d like.

  
  

  One way authors do this is by using an action tag and a dialogue tag in the same sentence or paragraph. Unless the sentence is written with passive voice, an action tag shows the reader what is happening, so then following that by telling the reader with the use of words like “I said” or “Ted said” is completely unnecessary, as you just showed the reader what Ted was doing.  

So, the next time you’re in the polishing stage, keep a lookout for the authorsplaining and make use of that “delete” button. And with any luck, whatever you don’t catch, your editor will.