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| >> Static Item >> Appendix >> Writing >> ID #818096 |   |
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I wrote a piece called "Show, Don't Tell Your Story"
 , but felt I had failed to address the issue of when telling is appropriate. Yes, there should always be more showing, but sometimes, it's better to tell the areas where a little background is necessary rather than a lot. I hope this article will clarify things for you.Show and Tell You've heard "show, don't tell," but using both is better. Lately I've been coming across some stories filled with potential, but missing the mark on holding my interest. Bottom line--I'm too bored to keep reading, so whatever potential was there doesn't matter because I, like other readers, am long gone at the break of yawn. Pun intended. The number one cause of reader boredom is being told what's going on instead of being shown. However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't use telling--just use it sparingly. This delicate balance will be further explained as we go. What sets a book or story apart from a movie or a radio show is that we have the opportunity to see inside the workings of the mind. We delve into what makes the characters behave as they do and we gain understanding of them because of it. We become attached to the events, and the characters through this deeper knowledge of their worlds. We begin to hate or root for the characters as if they were real people because we are invited right into the midst of that make believe world. At times, we need to be shown how a person is thinking through their body language, or the things they do. At other times, it is enough to tell. You know you're showing your story when any of the five (or six) senses are engaged. When you paint a visual with words, you are showing. Saying "He painted the wall an ugly green" does tell us there is a wall that is green, it is ugly, and someone is painting it. Giving added value to any of those elements will change how your readers view the scene. Jimbo laughed hysterically as he jabbed the paint brush into the can of paint. She wanted green walls in the kitchen did she? Great, he thought. Green it is! The label on the can read 'olive.' It was the color of army fatigues or rotted avocados, of grass mulched under spinning tires in the spring; of her horrid bean casserole he'd upchuck into the toilet this coming Saturday--if she kept to her mundane cooking schedule again this week. He knew she would. He'd been eating her bean casserole every Saturday for the last eleven years. "Oh, yeah," he said with a sneer. "You've got green, baby!" The bonus to showing rather than telling is that a little information becomes a LOT of information. Showing can transform a once mundane paragraph into an interesting page, or a novella into a novel. Besides, it's easier to cut out the extraneous information when it seems you have too much, than to stare at the page, trying to stretch nothing into something. There are times when telling may be more appropriate to help the story along. When "showing" would prove to be more information than anyone wants or needs, then telling is perfectly acceptable. A good rule to keep in mind is that if it isn't important to the story, it's okay to keep it to the realm of telling. In the example below, mentioning that her son had gone to bed long before lets us know she is staying up alone, into the wee hours of the morning. We don't need to know what they said to each other, what he wore to bed, what time he went to bed, or any of those things because they have no bearing on the scene. I am of the belief that we learn better by example (showing) than by lecture (telling) so the following will serve to highlight what I mean by finding the balance between the two types of writing. Those areas where I show you what's going on in the scene are written in blue, and the parts where telling is best are shown in red. I don't lay claim to the following pseudo-story being of great interest, but merely wrote it to highlight the differences we're discussing. While some sentences may contain a phrase that could be considered telling, it will also be written in blue because it serves as the anchor to what is being shown in the particular sentence and the description would be useless without it. Kim read Luke's story. She saw many good elements in it. She wrote to Luke and said it would be great if he would show more than tell. Now let's try the new method of showing more than telling. Please note: I don't recommend you always stretch three sentences into several paragraphs, but that you could if you chose to do so. I did this for the purpose of illustrating the point that you have more "story" hidden beneath those few lines you wrote than you may have realized. Kim gazed intently at the computer monitor, trying to stay caught up in the story she read. Luke had written a very intense tale about a woman suffering after her husband's suspicious death, and the woman's solitary attempts to catch the killer. Kim sipped her now cold coffee and clicked the sidebar button to continue reading. She blinked against the glare of the screen as she tried to stay focused on the story. With a yawn, she glanced at the time displayed on the lower right corner of her screen. Ten minutes until midnight. I'll read it through completely or until twelve, whichever comes first, and then I'll take a break, she thought. When she reached the end with a minute to spare, Kim stood up, stretched and ran her hands through her long hair. She nodded and said "I see potential here." No one commented. She was completely alone in the living room-slash-study. Her son, the only other occupant in the house, had long since gone to bed. She pattered to the kitchen, the worn leather of her old ballet slippers making a hushed clicking sound on the linoleum. As if operating entirely on cruise control, she poured herself another coffee. The story played over and over in her mind as she strolled back to the computer, settled in, and prepared to send a review to the author. She stared at the screen, blinked and let her fingers rest on the keyboard for just a moment as she pondered how to begin. First, she knew, it would be important to let Luke know she enjoyed the premise of the story. She knew from personal experience that a review filled with ways to fix the piece, with no mention of the redeeming qualities always left her feeling a little cheated somehow. Once she had let the author know what she liked about the story, Kim added her suggestions for improvement. "Take the reader with you through the nuances of the scene, don't just tell them what's happening," she wrote. Kim clarified her point with an example from the story she had just read. Her fingers danced over the keyboard, pausing only once to sip her coffee, wincing when the steaming brew burned the tip of her tongue. "Note to self," she muttered, "Let it cool!" She returned to the steady clacking of her keyboard as she continued with the review. This particular author had specifically asked Kim for her input on it, had asked that she feel free to "offer any comments or suggestions" she thought would improve Luke's story. Kim took such a request very seriously. Too seriously if you asked her family, maybe even some of her fellow writers. She spent every free waking moment typing incessantly on her keyboard, her love for storycrafting her greatest abiding passion in life. "It's not natural," some said. "It's strange, but then I hear all writers are a little insane," declared others. Kim didn't care. When it came to her own writing or offering help to anyone who asked, Kim was dedicated, bordering on obsessive. Once she was satisfied that she'd made her points as succinctly as possible, Kim reread what she wrote. With a firm nod, she pressed 'send' and the message was whisked away over the internet where it would land, she imagined, with a soft 'plop' in Luke's inbox. She perused the story a second time, and smiled. She hoped Luke would have the same feeling she'd had when a professor had been kind enough to point out to Kim that she was doing far too much telling and not enough showing. She envisioned Luke getting that same look of sudden understanding lighting in his eyes, just as Kim herself had done all those years before. With a happy sigh she logged out of her account, clicked the 'close window' button on the internet page, moved the mouse to start and hit the shut down button. She watched with the same sense of sadness that came over her every night during this ritual. It was almost like watching her life line being turned off. Once the computer's steady hum was silenced, the room seemed to suddenly fill with a quiet calm. She reached over and turned off the lamp so the only light came from the small bulb over the stove in the other room. In the semi-darkness, Kim sighed, and leaned back in her chair, her coffee mug now cradled snug in both hands. She pondered the story again. It was evident that Luke had an incredible imagination, and she only hoped he would take a little of her advice and just possibly make his story into something truly grand. She lifted the mug to her lips, took a sip and frowned, looking hard at her mug as if it were an offensive thing. With a grimace, she strode back to the kitchen and dumped the brown liquid down the drain. Ceramic clanked against stainless steel as she set the mug firmly in the sink. She'd done it again! Promised herself she wouldn't drink coffee just before bed, but as usual, she'd swept into the Land of Literature and forgot the rest of the world and any promises made in it. Tomorrow, for sure, she decided, no more coffee in the evening, and no staying online into the wee hours! Unless of course, Luke answered back. It wasn't a great tale, but it served its purpose. If you go back and read only the red, you'll see how you're simply being told some elements. Try reading only the blue sections. See how you need some sentences where you're told information rather than having it shown to you? Stories must contain both for the piece to be truly effective, and hopefully, entertaining. Try it with your own work. Use red to highlight where you tell, and leave it black for the areas where you show. If you've got more red than black, that's a good sign you could use a little more showing. Some rewriting will take care of the problem and you'll be all set for show and tell! For more articles on writing, see "IMPROVE YOUR WRITING" .
© Copyright 2004 Ms Kimmie (UN: kimmer at Writing.Com).
All rights reserved.
Ms Kimmie has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work. |
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