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Thank you for welcoming me into your virtual home as the guest host of this week's WDC For Authors Newsletter.
  
Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.
Anne McCaffrey
I want story, wit, music, wryness, color, and a sense of reality
in what I read, and I try to get it in what I write.
John D. MacDonald
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Let's Play Show and Tell
Greetings,
Remember back when you were a kid in school and you got to take something to school for ‘show and tell.’ You and some of your classmates sometimes had like items (a doll, a fire truck, skates, a Transformer, perhaps), but no two were the same. Because each had its own story, and you each shared it with your friends and classmates.
Maybe one time you brought a red fire truck that had a working ladder that looked just like the one that went all the way to the roof of your house when your dad went part way through it while he was stringing Christmas lights (back then they weren’t yet ‘holiday lights’). Each child brought a cherished toy to show and tell why it was special – and important or interesting to behold.
As we got older, we were taught to narrow our focus. We learned to respond to questions with succinct answers; to show what we knew, without telling how or why we knew it. Many of us, over time, perhaps forgot altogether to notice or seek the ‘why’ of things.
I submit that we, as writers, have an arrested development. We’ve not given up, or have recalled, the joy of searching, of questioning, and of sharing the journey behind the quest. We observe and explore, we imagine and postulate, then regale ourselves and our readers with the details of our journey. We do some ‘telling.’
Numerous “How To” writing books and articles instruct us to ‘show, don’t tell’ in order to keep our readers in the moment and grab their attention. When writing a chase scene, a gunfight, an alien to mortal brain transplant, or a haiku snapshot of a moment in time then, yes, one needs to show the event unfold in real time to draw the reader viscerally into the story or poem. But then, to hold your reader’s attention, to make him/her want to stay for a time in the ‘otherworld’ you’ve created, I think you have to tell your reader the why of it, of the chase or gunfight. To turn a scene into a story, a chapter, a novel, an epic poem or ballad, you want to make the reader care about the ‘why’ of it. You’ve shown your reader the cherished item, now tell him/her why it’s important or interesting.
As writers, we use ‘backstory’ to do this. We know the details behind our characters’ actions; we know how the ‘snapshots’ of poetic stanzas evolve to reach their full-screen resolution; we know what each of our characters does, looks like, thinks like, fears and hopes. We share with our readers only enough of this information to draw them into the story and make them understand why events are unfolding as they are, why characters act as they do, and make them want to know more. We don’t want to give them everything, they don't need an information dump to distract them from the world we’re creating for them with our story or poem. Your reader doesn’t care, and doesn’t need to know, what each character had for breakfast (unless perhaps poison is involved). In my example above, the kids in class didn’t need to hear a distracting litany of the swear words dad used when his foot went through the old roof shingles. Those had nothing to do with the hook and ladder rescue; they didn’t move the story along. Telling them that would not have shown why the toy fire truck was interesting or special.
When the details are important; when they draw the reader further into the story; when they show the ‘why’ of things, then a writer has several ways to ‘tell’ readers.
There are several you can use as a writer to 'tell' your reader things about your characters, your idea, your 'otherworld'; things that make him/her understand the why of things, and to make your reader empathize with a character, want to turn the page, read the next stanza, join you for a time in the literary world you've created. But give no more than what's necessary (no litany or information dump), that your reader can follow the story, be it in prose or verse.
 Prologue - establishes something that your readers then want to see answered. It provides the premise for what is to follow. To make your readers want to learn more, engage their emotions, remember to give just enough information to to actively engage them with your characters or ideas; jump them into your 'otherworld.' By otherworld, I mean taking your readers on a journey for a time away from their immediate surroundings by engaging them with the images created by your words poetic or prosaic. By revealing some dynamic event or interplay between characters, you can make your reader want to learn more. By telling them a little bit up front, you can make them want to know more, and they will turn the page to find out.
Flashback - on the other hand, answers a question you've posed for your readers; tells them something in response to action that's taken place. It's an effective way of weaving history into your ongoing story. For example, Mike will not consider living in a house without a basement, one without a foundation. He becomes again the five year old running for the door his grandpa held open against the storm. His grandpa stopped smiling as the oak hit the trailer, mashing it, and his grandpa, into the unyielding ground.
Dialogue - is a dynamic way of engaging your readers in backstory, and give depth to the characters themselves. Conversation among characters is an effective way of telling why they are taking one action over another, foreshadowing events to come by alluding to events in the characters' past. It can be overt or subtle, proclaim deeds done or allude to the motive for what may occur.
Narrative - is another way that you can tell your readers something, either using your character's voice or your own author's omniscient voice. Your character can provide background, internal and external, for action taking place or perhaps yet to occur. Or, as the omniscient author, you can offer third-person narrative to explain the present by relating it to the past.
So, don't be afraid to show - and tell - your readers your story, in prose or verse. Each of the above techniques can be effective, used judiciously, to add that flavor to your story or poem that will make your readers want to know more, make them want to enter more deeply into your world built of words.
Try it! Show them a bit of your 'otherworld', and tell your readers just enough to make them want to stay awhile.
Keep Writing!
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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As a guest host, I have but the present to share with you in thanks for this welcome to your virtual homes and warm hearths.
Hope I haven't overstayed my welcome, and look forward to getting in on the show and tell, myself
Until we next meet,
Write On
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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For Authors: October 19, 2011 Issue [#4674]
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