I had a rare opportunity 10 days ago, and I took full advantage of it.
Sometime in the summer, I got an email from the Kingston Writers Fest that they were hosting a special workshop. This wasn’t just a sign-up-and-come-in event. It was juried. Which meant everyone had to submit 1,000 words to judges, from which 12 writers would be selected.
I was thrilled to be one of them.
I’d e-met the facilitator, Dennis Bock, through a mutual friend but only met him in person recently, so it was super-cool from that angle as well. The full-day workshop consisted of a discussion about narrative in the morning and critiquing excerpts of each other’s work in the afternoon.
I’m a devout show-don’t-tell writer (at least, I try to follow The Teachings), but Dennis convinced me that there is a place for narrative as well. My working theory previously had been: tell the mundane, show the action including the internal ramifications. But Dennis argued that there are other times in which telling instead of showing is better.
For example, how do you “show” ineffable feelings? “Happy” is easy. So is “sad”. But what about envy or jealousy? Possible, but more difficult – especially in few words. Existential dread? Schadenfreude? That feeling you get when the party’s over and everybody’s left?
This is where I’ve changed. For that last one, the old me would have the character nostalgically finger the empty wine glass with the lipstick on the rim and the cigar smoke still hanging in the air. Which would sort of work, but not completely. Not everyone’s mind (or heart) would automatically jump to that happy hollow quiet, tinged with longing when your front door closes for the last time that night.
The new me has a different plan.
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Show AND Tell – but Don’t Explain
I still believe that you can do too much telling. A recent note I had for a book club novel went something like this: “Ironically, this book shows us why we need to show, not tell.”
To be fair, a lot of people in the room liked that novel. But a lot didn’t for the same reasons as mine. I found the endless, endless narration to be tiresome and maybe self-indulgent. Let the characters tell me what’s happening. Let the story unfold in a way that surprises and delights.
Still, telling – narration – has its place. Take my second-last paragraph in the previous section:
The old me would have the character nostalgically finger the empty wine glass with the lipstick on the rim and the cigar smoke still hanging in the air. Which would sort of work, but not completely. Not everyone’s mind (or heart) would automatically jump to that happy hollow quiet, tinged with longing when your front door closes for the last time that night.
That’s narration. In those few words, you know exactly what emotion I’m talking about. I “showed” it (if I’ve done my job right) by describing the feeling rather than trying to demonstrate it. Charged language like “happy hollow quiet” and “tinged with longing” helps too, I think. This isn’t a boring info dump; this is a short, interesting passage that gets to the heart of the emotion in a few words – much fewer than if I concocted a convoluted set of mini-actions to try to show you that emotion.
“Interesting” is key here. For example, as Dennis said during the workshop, “I felt happy” is a boring sentence. He then gave a better example from Alice Munro:
“Frank was in love with Rose. It became a fixed and furious idea.”
Munro is telling us how Frank feels, but in a way that is unique and creative and conveys emotion. “Fixed and furious” uses alliteration with a pair of oxymoronic ideas that together give you a sense of the swirling but obsessive nature of new love. It’s poetic, it sings, it soars – but it’s still narration. She is showing through telling.
There’s an additional point to the Show AND Tell approach: don’t explain. This, I think, is what people really mean when they say “don’t tell”. Narrative relays the story. The characters’ emotions are part of that story. But explaining – telling why this should matter to you, the reader – is presumptuous, breaks the mood, and robs readers of the pleasure of deciphering the “why” themselves.
For example (mine):
“This last remark infuriated Jared. He put down the knife, looked up at Jim, and walked out of the kitchen and onto the back porch because he just couldn’t stand his condescending tone anymore, and besides, he didn’t think it was right to make a sandwich for your enemy, even if the battle was temporary.”
Everything after “because” is explaining. I’ve spelled it out for the reader. Jared feels this way because of this and this and this. There is nothing for us to piece together.
But if we just tell the story as if we’re sitting on the couch in the next room, we get this:
“This last remark infuriated Jared. He put down the knife, looked up at Jim, and walked out of the kitchen and onto the back porch.”
We’re left to puzzle why Jared did this. Certainly, it was because of whatever Jim said. But context is everything, too. What scenes led up to this one that might have added fuel to the fire? Why did he go out to the back porch, not his room or the store? So many questions. Questions that we can now ponder as we read on, because the answers weren’t spoon-fed explained to us.
One last point from my own original example: cigar smoke. That probably stopped many of you dead, and didn’t give you the warm, cozy feeling it was intended to convey. Different people react to different scenes differently. Even a cute, cuddly kitten might be a ball of antihistamine-inducing sneeze fests to some. You might get away with cigar smoke if you associate it with happy feelings in earlier scenes. Non-cigar-smokers still won’t agree, but they may at least understand how your character is feeling.
Choose your trigger words carefully, realizing they trigger different things in different people.
Over to You
What are your feelings on show, don’t tell? Do you routinely explain things to your reader? Any go-to tips? Let us know in the comments below!
Until next time, keep writing with wild abandon!
~Graham
email me if you get lost.