For the last two years I’ve done NaNoWriMo and really enjoyed it. I’ve had two friends review my output and while they both liked it, they both came back independently with the same criticism: “too much telling and not enough showing.” I was forcing the readers to get the whole picture instead of letting the story show it.
It’s easy to get into that habit and I want to become a better writer. Right now, I’m reading a book called “Feed” by Mira Grant which does this in spades. Even though I’m only half-way done with the book, I’m gonna spoil it a bit:
The book is written as a blog in the future with the protagonists reporting news. The thing that keeps taking me out is that the protagonist keeps giving detailed backstory that everyone living during that time would see as elementary, annoying or redundant so it keeps taking me out of the story.
It’s easy to critique, hard to do. So what are some techniques, exercises, or good examples of books to read to learn to show instead of tell?
Listen to good songwriting. Which is better: “I am lonely” vs. “all the flowers that you planted in the backyard all died when you went away” (Prince, Nothing Compares 2 U)
Watch introductory scenes in good movies - I will never forget the first shot we see of Peter Gallagher’s adulterous husband in Sex, Lies and Videotape - he’s on the phone, spinning his wedding ring on his desk like a toy, talking about how more women hit on him now that he’s married - could you have a clearer signal that he is a dick?
“Avoid writing like popular millionaire novelist Dan Brown, author of many best-selling novels including The da Vinci Code, whose digressions are entirely artificial and take the reader completely out of the story,” he said knowingly.
Write more like Hemingway. Hemingway always showed. He never told. He did so on a way that relied on the reader’s intelligence. The details built on each other. At first they were hints, then they were confirmed.
Here’s a superb example of this: A Very Short Story. Have a look at the first paragraph:
There is just so much information there - yet none of it is didactic. Some bits are hints, but enough to build a pretty full picture. But it is all incidental information during the progression of the narrative:
“One hot evening” - it’s probably spring/summer
“in Padua” - in Italy
“they carried him” - the protagonist is somehow incapacitated and being cared for
“up onto the roof” - in some kind of institution, probably in a hospital
“the searchlights came out” - during wartime - so he’s probably a wounded soldier
“The others went down and took the bottles with them.” - he was drinking with people, presumably alcohol, and so presumably “they” are his friends.
“Luz sat on the bed.” - he is severely incapacitated as he’s on the roof in a mobile bed - probably a hospital bed
“She was cool and fresh in the hot night.” - we learn Luz is female, and there is a hint of some prurient interest conveyed by this simple comparison, assumed, but not insisted on, to be from the protagonist’s point of view
The next paragraph confirms a lot of the above suppositions, and so on throughout the story. It’s just staggering how he does this.
In A Moveable Feast he writes about his style in some detail. I highly recommend it for those bits (even though a lot of it is just a bitch-fest about people he didn’t like).
No one rights omniscient. 99% of omniscient is just a lack of understanding of point of view.
Also, though “show, don’t tell” is a reasonable guideline, there are plenty of times when it’s better to tell. Knowing when to do it is why it’s harder to write than most people think.
How to do it better? By having the characters act out a scene. Consider this. Note that I don’t tell people what Rose is; you learn about her from her actions and words. I also don’t go into the details of her past; that, too, is suggested by the characters’ words and actions.
Part of this is due to the fact it is a short short, of course, but the principle applies to everything. Don’t talk about something; dramatize the scene.
Telling:
Ann and Karl had a terrible fight.
Showing:
“You bitch!” Karl shouted, his face red as he screamed. “What did you do?”
“What I had to,” said Ann. “I’m not proud of it, but I’m not ashamed, either.”
Karl repressed the urge to slap her smirking face. “You lied to me.”
“Our whole marriage is a lie. You’ve known that for years.”
Would you like to have a go at the current ‘SDMB Short Fiction’ contest? You might find it useful, and you might get some very good feedback, both from participants and casual readers.
The best example I can think of right now are some choice phrases from Small Favor, book 10 in The Dresden Files. One character drives a Hummer. Rather than describing it blandly, as (for example), “a really large SUV that stood about seven feet tall,” the main character refers to it obliquely:
Screen plays are specifically in the business of saying/showing as much as possible in as little space as possible. The high content, sharp line of dialogue often becomes memorable. Here’s one that came to mind as I read through this.
From a TV movie some years ago: an older woman in her 40’s (Cloris Leachman) moves in with a man she thinks her ideal: smart, sophisticated, artsy. It didn’t work out, and she has to move, later explaining why to her 20-something daughter in a remark that tells the whole story: “My bathrobe didn’t match his decor.”
I also like the scene in “No Country For Old Men” in which the wife refuses to call a coin to decide whether she will live or die. You can return to think about that simple act for years.
I’m currently reading “All the Pretty Horses,” by Cormac McCarthy. It’s rich in narrative visuals while spare in dialogue. Comparing how those two play off and convey information is interesting. For example, I’m about halfway through and I haven’t seen the year in which the story occurs specifically stated in the text(though many hints run through the story). However, early on, John Grady Cole’s father looks briefly at a newspaper and comments bitterly on the front page news that Shirley Temple is getting a divorce. That’s how we know the starting point of the story. Wiki says December of 1949. That’s cleverly indirect and involves the reader in the story by making him work a bit for information. Tell him everything and you have a lazy reader: one soon bored.
