I'm not sure if you run into this as often as I do. You're writing along, and you write a line and the narrative seems to stop. Suddenly you can't think of a way to start the very next sentence. Sometimes you stare at it, and sometimes you walk away, but when you break that block, you realize the problem was in the last sentence you wrote: it was "turned back" toward the previous text rather than being "turned forward" toward the next part of the story. Once you change it and turn it forward, the next sentence appears with no trouble.
Transitions can be tricky. So what is it that "turns" a sentence forward rather than backward?
The answer is in the content - but that's too vague to be much use, so I'm going to consider a couple of examples from my day of editing.
I've been working with integrating existing material for a chapter with new material that takes the ending in a different direction. In the existing material, a newly hired servant (Aloran) gets introduced to his new colleagues and shown his quarters, but when he realizes he's not fully prepared, he's too frightened to ask his mistress permission to go out and get new supplies. In the new ending, one of the things he needs in order to be prepared is to take her measurements for a pair of gloves, so in the end he must go back to face her despite his fear.
Here are the two lines where my scene ground to a halt:
Every member of the Pelismara society in a single room pressing hands, when one of their own had just died of Kinders fever? How could he stop Lady Tamelera from touching anyone?
These lines set up a significant question - the question of how to take Lady Tamelera safely to a party where disease might be passed around. However, they could serve quite well as the cliff-hanger ending of a chapter. I think this is because there's the declaration of a serious problem that Aloran will face at an upcoming event, but no hint of what solution he might need. Thus the final sentence has a threatening ring - perfect for a cliffhanger ending that will send readers forward across a chapter break looking for an answer, but not so good for a smooth shift of the chapter into the next section where Aloran pursues a solution. I therefore revised it as follows:
Every member of the Pelismara society in a single room pressing hands, when one of their own had just died of Kinders fever? With that kind of contagion risk, he'd be tempted to wear his treatment gloves.
Suddenly I had the way forward. The sentence about contagion risk references Aloran's medical training, and in that context the solution is obvious to him. The idea of "gloves" appears right where it needs to, and can easily be extended conceptually from "I should wear gloves to protect myself" to "I should get my Lady to wear gloves to protect herself." That's a motive he can act upon right away.
I ran into another block in a spot where Aloran decides to leave his room (because he wants to figure out what she'll be wearing, so he can make gloves to match). He faces a decision of whether to exit into his Lady's room or not:
He found his service speaker and flicked it on, but heard only silence in his Lady's chamber. If he opened the small door with the crescent-moon handle, he could go and study her wardrobe. But if she were still there, sitting quietly, she would be angry because she wanted to be alone. Lady Tamelera, angry.
In the earlier draft, his next thought had grown directly out of the idea of her anger; he'd decided he had to get away from the whole situation. This no longer fit with the requirement that he deal with her in the course of the chapter. After some thinking I decided that he was too rattled just to steel himself and go in, but that he could ask for help from someone who knows her better. I could have continued with "He went looking for Serjer," but I wanted to use a word-link to smooth the transition. In this case, since there are two doors out of Aloran's room, I chose opening the door as the link. The next line became:
He opened the door into the Maze, and went looking for Serjer.
This created an explicit parallel between "If he opened the small door with the crescent moon handle" and "He opened the door into the Maze", thus bringing attention to the fact that in the end he decided not to open his Lady's door.
I enjoyed working through this material and trying to create links where there had been none before. It put me in mind of something I learned about when I studied classical Japanese poetry: the idea of a "kakekotoba," or pivot word. A pivot word has two meanings. It serves as a pivot because one of its meanings should fit with the lines of poetry that precede it, but its other meaning should fit with the lines that follow it. If, for example, the pivot word were "matsu," then on one side of it we should find lines that speak of pine trees (matsu=pine), and on the other side, lines that talk about waiting (matsu=to wait). This concept spoke to me, because in each of these cases I could identify a critical element that allowed me to make the link forward to the next section: gloves, in the first instance, and the door in the second.
I suppose the main things I took out of this afternoon's editing were these:
1. The implication of a large unsolved problem is good for a cliffhanger, but not for a minor transition.
2. At the end of a sub-scene, consider "seeding" a motive for the sub-scene that follows, in order to smooth the transition.
3. If the implications of the last sentence you wrote seem to take you in the wrong direction, look back further, because you may find something you can use to turn the text the way you want it to go.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
Link: Staring contests can be reflexive
I picked up this link from Manon Eileen (@manon_eileen) on Twitter, and it's a fun one: a study has been done to see whether people engage reflexively, that is automatically, in staring contests. The result? People with a dominance motive will indeed engage in a staring match with an angry face without even thinking about it. People with other motives will gaze on other types of faces longer. Here's the link.
What leaving home means in different cultures
The other day I was inspired by Melissa Crytzer Fry's post about home, and the things we associate with it. Home is a concept that is so basic to us that invoking it brings an enormous amount of dimension to our storytelling. Today I thought I'd turn it around and look at leaving home.
If I asked, "What did it feel like when you first left home?" the likelihood, at least in the US, would be that I might get someone telling me a story about going to college for the first time. I might hear about how strange it was not to know anyone, how it was hard to keep a schedule what with classes and parties and just plain old not-having-parents-around-to-manage-stuff. However, leaving home doesn't always mean going to college, just as going to college doesn't necessarily mean leaving home. In Australia, for example, people usually stay home and attend university classes (my husband says the university in Canberra is an exception "because nobody lives there," but I'll take his quips with a grain of salt).
What other kinds of leaving home might there be?
In fairy tales, what we commonly find is a young man growing up and going off to seek his fortune. Not exactly like going off to college. Usually this journey results in wild and crazy adventures which threaten the young man to within an inch of his life but usually end with him gaining the fortune he sought. In real life people have left home to seek their fortunes, with more mixed results.
I think of a beautiful Irish song in which a young man convinces his young lady to elope with him because he's leaving the next day for "far-off Columbia's shore."
There are also the marriages of pre-Revolution China. The young woman would leave her home with great ceremony and ritual, and travel to the home of her husband's family, where she would be subject to the directives of her husband's mother.
I also think of people who leave their home countries for a better life elsewhere - notably, immigrants to the United States, whose stories are often harrowing and don't always end well. Some of these are fleeing war or persecution in their home countries. This type of leaving-home story was brought to life for me by the true stories I heard from young people when I helped them with story writing. By contrast, what would a refugee's story be like? What would a defector's story be like?
The context of home-leaving varies widely, but in many cultures it takes on an iconic significance. It is a major turning point in life, sometimes accompanied by ceremony. It is something that people remember and carry forward with them as they continue their lives. "When I left my home." Therefore I think it's an important thing to know about characters in my books. Did my character have a happy home life and leave as an accomplishment, as when going away to college? Did he leave home as a child and go to boarding school? Did she run away from home because she was miserable at age 15? It's worth thinking through these very personal stories, and how they would affect the behavior and emotional states of a character in the context of story action - even if the particular events of the backstory are never explicitly mentioned.
It's something to think about.
If I asked, "What did it feel like when you first left home?" the likelihood, at least in the US, would be that I might get someone telling me a story about going to college for the first time. I might hear about how strange it was not to know anyone, how it was hard to keep a schedule what with classes and parties and just plain old not-having-parents-around-to-manage-stuff. However, leaving home doesn't always mean going to college, just as going to college doesn't necessarily mean leaving home. In Australia, for example, people usually stay home and attend university classes (my husband says the university in Canberra is an exception "because nobody lives there," but I'll take his quips with a grain of salt).
What other kinds of leaving home might there be?
In fairy tales, what we commonly find is a young man growing up and going off to seek his fortune. Not exactly like going off to college. Usually this journey results in wild and crazy adventures which threaten the young man to within an inch of his life but usually end with him gaining the fortune he sought. In real life people have left home to seek their fortunes, with more mixed results.
I think of a beautiful Irish song in which a young man convinces his young lady to elope with him because he's leaving the next day for "far-off Columbia's shore."
There are also the marriages of pre-Revolution China. The young woman would leave her home with great ceremony and ritual, and travel to the home of her husband's family, where she would be subject to the directives of her husband's mother.
I also think of people who leave their home countries for a better life elsewhere - notably, immigrants to the United States, whose stories are often harrowing and don't always end well. Some of these are fleeing war or persecution in their home countries. This type of leaving-home story was brought to life for me by the true stories I heard from young people when I helped them with story writing. By contrast, what would a refugee's story be like? What would a defector's story be like?
The context of home-leaving varies widely, but in many cultures it takes on an iconic significance. It is a major turning point in life, sometimes accompanied by ceremony. It is something that people remember and carry forward with them as they continue their lives. "When I left my home." Therefore I think it's an important thing to know about characters in my books. Did my character have a happy home life and leave as an accomplishment, as when going away to college? Did he leave home as a child and go to boarding school? Did she run away from home because she was miserable at age 15? It's worth thinking through these very personal stories, and how they would affect the behavior and emotional states of a character in the context of story action - even if the particular events of the backstory are never explicitly mentioned.
It's something to think about.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Detailed link about POV techniques
You may have noticed that when I speak of point of view, I don't necessarily like to put a lot of stock in the simple distinction of 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person. This is because a lot of what point of view really rests on is not pronouns at all, but all kinds of other factors. Today LaceWing at the Absolute Write forum put me onto this link. This is an article by David Jauss which goes into depth about point of view techniques. It's not for the faint of heart: it's a long article, and analyzes point of view in a way I'd call "crosswise," distinctly contrasting with the way POV is most commonly discussed. If you've reached the point where "person" isn't enough to satisfy you any more, I highly recommend it as food for thought.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Link: listen to real speech accents!
I found this link today, thanks to Jami Gold on Twitter. It's a website where you can go and listen to recordings of different speech accents. They have a terrific search page where you can specify the native language of the speaker, gender, place of birth, and age. You can even specify details about the accent itself! This is a fantastic resource for those working with dialects.
Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop: Metaphors and Magic in a Blended World
Welcome to week eight of the Wednesday Worldbuilding Workshop! This week's entry comes from Harry Markov. Harry's piece is different from those which I've seen previously, because these are not the first 500 words of his work in progress, but taken from further in. He told me, "I wanted to include more magic, so it's not the opening." In my comments, I'll try to take that into account. Below, I'll start by highlighting in blue the words that give me worldbuilding information, because we should expect (and we find) that this information is available throughout the work.
***
“You talking to the night again, Lord Sith?” Hank sputtered and laughed, while Tina provided a giggling soundtrack to the drunken pun.
“Yes,” I replied; heat like cotton in my mouth. “And it tells me oh so wondrous things. Tina is a slut and Hank would lick his balls, if he could bend that low.” I hummed in my mysterious voice, face in deep concentration and index fingers circling my temples.
The humming subsided, a pause followed and then we all burst out laughing, two sets of self-conscious laughter and one hollow chuckle. After that Hank and Tina fondled each other and I wished I did speak to the night. Then my lungs wouldn’t contract as much and my skin sweat.
The night knew all. Unlike the day, the night collected secrets, spied and gossiped, if provided with a bribe. My fingers twitched, thinking about the night as invaluable resource. But only spoke to Abyssus, truly. Bastard.
I huffed and scratched my scalp, enflaming my skin. It was a slow acidic sear, which inched over my whole head. A cringe worthy sensation, which scattered my thoughts. I tugged and pulled on my hair, hoping to catch a misled breeze from the river. But the air didn’t shift and the silence, as if forced at gun point, remained intact.
It didn’t weigh down, but it was strained, holding off a scream, a secret the silence wanted to bellow. My skin prickled, hair after hair on my arms spearing in a slow crawl and I knew that tonight was the night. There was undeniable expectancy in the quiet and it never lied to me. I could read into it. Nothing supernatural, but with its uses.
My mind unclotted from the tequila and I was aware of the countdown, punctuated by each jet of blood to my brain. Fever rose and broke through the layers of makeup, now sliding down my face. Aristomache had instructed me well, provided me with the tools and the strategies. I had little to do.
Tonight, I’d get blood on my hands for the first time. And sure enough, my mind picked it up. It was a small speck, which grew to a dot, then a circle and the circle malformed into a hungry pond. All red and bright like traffic light in my mind’s eye. Blood, fresh at that, had been spilt and marked the spot, where we had parked a few blocks away from the museum.
As we traced our way to the parking lot the blood hummed to my senses and my blood vessels throbbed in response. The lot came in view and so did the wet smell of iron. I glanced at Hank and Tina, who staggered on in convenient ignorance.
I looked beyond them, spotting a blotch of thicker shadow under the tree next to the lot. It shifted and gained shape with each foot behind my back, bobbing in an unbothered rhythm.
***
Our first piece of information is the phrase talking to the night, which at this point we have no reason to interpret in any literal way. It obviously leaves a lot of possibilities open but suggests that we can expect normal things like nights. The next word, Lord Sith, says to me immediately, "Star Wars" (was that what you intended?). However, any possibility that we might be in a Star Wars universe is immediately negated by the next word, Hank, and its accompanying name, Tina. These say clearly that we're in our own world, a conclusion supported by the laughing and giggling, and by the pun. The word soundtrack references technology that fits with a post-Star Wars real world.
Once readers establish they're in the real world they may become more relaxed and somewhat less attentive to possible conflicting information. Most information that follows serves as confirmation of the ongoing reality, like the comparison of heat to cotton, the presence of human physiology (mouth/balls/temples), and the use of modern slang (slut, and later, cringe worthy).
Things change, though, as we go into the next paragraph and reach I wished I did speak to the night. Because it's a wish, we can't unequivocally conclude from it that literal speaking to the night is going on, but we have returned to the idea, and the fact that it has consequences for the protagonist (lungs contract/skin sweat) puts a seed of doubt in my mind. The real departure happens thereafter, when night is portrayed as an entity: The night knew all... the night collected secrets, spied and gossiped, if provided with a bribe. The idea of night knowing all or collecting secrets might be merely metaphorical, but when we get to spied and gossiped, and especially the idea of negotiating bribes, I reach the conclusion that we've entered the realm of fantasy. The presence of fantasy is confirmed by night as invaluable resource, and by the name Abyssus.
When such distinct elements of modern real world and fantasy are juxtaposed, you can be pretty sure you're looking at a blended world. This one looks like an urban fantasy - urban because of the parking lot, if nothing else.
At this point I'm going to go back through the excerpt with my thoughts marked in brown. These comments are mostly a think-aloud for me, and are not intended to be corrections - however, I will point out the few minor points of confusion I had.
***
“You talking to the night again, Lord Sith?” [I instantly think Star Wars. Was that what you intended? Without the earlier context it's hard to tell.] Hank sputtered and laughed, while Tina provided a giggling soundtrack to the drunken pun.[Oh, okay, we're in the modern real world with movies and soundtracks. I wonder what the pun is a pun on; that may be outside the excerpt we're looking at.]
“Yes,” I replied; heat like cotton in my mouth. [what an unpleasant sensation! Interesting simile.] “And it tells me oh so wondrous things. Tina is a slut and Hank would lick his balls, if he could bend that low.” I hummed in my mysterious voice, face in deep concentration and index fingers circling my temples. [Now I see a contrast between the slang insults to Hank and Tina and the deliberately mysterious behavior of the protagonist. I wonder if this is just a randomly assumed mysterious pose, or whether it has some specific significance. Perhaps the latter, if there is a real magic system at work (as it appears further into this excerpt).]
The humming subsided, a pause followed and then we all burst out laughing, two sets of self-conscious laughter and one hollow chuckle.[Is this hollow chuckle the protagonist? I'd be curious to get a sense of the feeling behind that chuckle.] After that Hank and Tina fondled each other and I wished I did speak to the night. [Here I'm getting more curious about what this means.] Then my lungs wouldn’t contract as much and my skin sweat. [I'm wondering a lot about the relationship between the protagonist and Hank and Tina here. This may be information that is established in parts of the text previous to this excerpt, but it would help me if the protagonist's response to them had a clearer judgmental label. The protagonist's physical response is ambiguous and might suggest more than a single possible emotion. There's a good opportunity here to show social structure/age.]
The night knew all. [This is the third time we've returned to the idea of the night, so I've decided it has a distinctly unusual significance.] Unlike the day, the night collected secrets,[this would be possible in a metaphorical sense] spied and gossiped, if provided with a bribe.[these last activities, though, require distinct agency on the part of the night, so it looks like night is either an entity or a force at the basis of a magic system.] My fingers twitched, thinking about the night as invaluable resource. [this might support the force model] But [it?] only spoke to Abyssus, truly.[I'm assuming this means that the night only truly speaks to someone named Abyssus, possibly introduced earlier (or to be introduced soon). This could support an entity model.] Bastard.[I'm assuming the bastard is Abyssus, since you've already called night a "resource."]
I huffed and scratched my scalp, enflaming my skin. It was a slow acidic sear,[is this an injury on the protagonist's head, or a description of the sensation? The reason I'm not sure is that the sensation seems extreme for a mere scratching of the scalp.] which inched over my whole head. A cringe worthy [more definitely modern slang] sensation, which scattered my thoughts. I tugged and pulled on my hair,[this appears to be a response to the sensation, possibly also indicative of anxiety but we're not told explicitly] hoping to catch a misled breeze from the river. But the air didn’t shift and the silence, as if forced at gun point, remained intact. [here silence joins night as an anthropomorphised entity, and I become curious again as to how literally I can take the description. If it's more literal, then who is forcing the silence to behave? Is it the night? Is there more than one driving force in this magic system?]
It [the silence?] didn’t weigh down, but it was strained, holding off a scream,[is the silence struggling to keep itself quiet? Interesting.] a secret the silence wanted to bellow. My skin prickled, hair after hair on my arms spearing in a slow crawl and I knew that tonight was the night. There was undeniable expectancy in the quiet and it never lied to me. [At this point I'm placing silence->protagonist alongside night ->Abyssus, as though each has their own force they can access for foreknowledge.] I could read into it. Nothing supernatural, [I'm surprised by this. It seems quite supernatural, even if silence is less powerful than night.] but with its uses.
My mind unclotted from the tequila[an additional hint of context; I didn't know they were drinking tequila. I'm not sure what "unclotted from" means in this context.] and I was aware of the countdown,[is this a countdown you've referenced before? or a new one? It's not clear what this is a countdown to.] punctuated by each jet of blood to my brain. Fever rose and broke through the layers of makeup[makeup makes me suspect the protagonist is female; not much evidence either way to this point], now sliding down my face. Aristomache [another fantasy name; I assume this person is officially introduced before this excerpt] had instructed me well, provided me with the tools and the strategies. I had little to do. [I wonder about this. So the protagonist has tools and strategies, but that suggests she does have something to do. Or does this mean she feels trapped by the circumstances? Her anxiety would make sense.]
Tonight, I’d get blood on my hands for the first time.[wow, she'll kills someone?] And sure enough, my mind picked it up.[the idea?] It [blood?] was a small speck, which grew to a dot, then a circle and the circle malformed into a hungry pond. All red and bright like traffic light [this is fun and fits well with the world as it has been created.] in my mind’s eye. Blood, fresh at that, had been spilt and marked the spot, where we had parked a few blocks away from the museum.[I'm curious about this but assuming it refers to something outside the excerpt.]
As we traced our way to the parking lot [this is very urban!] the blood hummed to my senses and my blood vessels throbbed in response.[dramatic metaphors] The lot came in view and so did the wet smell of iron.[into view?] I glanced [back?]at Hank and Tina, who staggered on in convenient ignorance.[I do wonder why she's not trying to get away from them. I start suspecting maybe she intends to use them somehow...]
I looked beyond them, [so this is further behind]spotting a blotch of thicker shadow under the tree next to the lot. It shifted and gained shape with each foot behind my back, bobbing [is the blotch bobbing? Or is this H & T's footsteps?] in an unbothered rhythm.
***
First, I'd like to thank Harry for submitting this piece. I found it dramatic and interesting. I think that the blending of the worlds, i.e. modern/gritty real world and fantasy magic system, is well done. The two seem not to struggle against one another; I can accept that a night-based magic system exists in this world.
One thing I'd like to know more about, and more clearly, is the magic system. A lot can be implied with just a few words, and because of the vividness of the metaphors in this piece, I do find myself wondering just what is metaphor and what is an actual description of features of the magic system. One thing that might make this clearer is if we readers could have a better idea of who Abyssus and Aristomache are - even just a word or two to establish if they are enemies, or his teachers, etc. It would also be good to know just which sensations felt by the protagonist are magical ones, and which mundane (provided of course that she herself knows the difference).
A better sense of the protagonist's social judgment could not only help the magic, but also help to disambiguate the larger situation. I would be interested to understand better her relationship with Hank and Tina and her opinion of them, as well as how she perceives her role in the events which are soon to take place (relative to the possible involvement of others).
Thanks again for submitting. I hope you find my comments helpful.
Any constructive discussion is welcome.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
TTYU Retro: Show Don't Tell - Exposed!
This post is in fact a piece of informal research that I did back in 2008 about the writing advice, "Show, Don't Tell," taking a detailed look at what different people thought it meant. I hope you enjoy it.
Show Don't Tell - Exposed!
"Show, Don't Tell" is clearly a phrase that a lot of people have heard, and I'd guess most of those have done some work on trying to apply it usefully to their own writing. This is not always easy, however, and (like me) not everybody considers the phrase helpful, because it takes a lot of complex, rend-my-paragraphs information and extrapolates it into a beautifully phrased general principle.
A beautiful concise principle is harder to apply to one's writing.
Greg Ellis of the Analog forum wrote,
I can hear Yoda in the back of my mind right now.
Try? Try? Do, or do not.
There is no try.
And then there was Josh, from Backspace:
It's like telling someone how to ride a bike: a person needs to try to do it if they want to learn.
So it's a beautiful principle that I need to figure out by doing it rather than hearing about it?
How do I know if I'm doing this right? Okay, let's try the ultimate source of knowledge and wisdom...
WIKIPEDIA
(excerpted)
"Show, don't tell" is an admonition to fiction writers to write in a manner that allows the reader to experience the story through a character's action, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the narrator's exposition, summarization, and description.
...
Janet Evanovich: ". . . instead of stating a situation flat out, you want to let the reader discover what you're trying to say by watching a character in action and by listening to his dialogue. Showing brings your characters to life." [1]
...
Orson Scott Card: ...objective is to get the right balance of telling versus showing, action versus summarization. Either could be right; either could be wrong. Factors like rhythm, pace, and tone come into play. [4]
Showing can be done by:
* writing scenes
* describing the actions of the characters
* revealing character through dialogue
* using the five senses when possible
James Scott Bell: "Showing is essentially about making scenes vivid. If you try to do it constantly, the parts that are supposed to stand out won't, and your readers will get exhausted."[7].
The experts have spoken, and they've said first, that telling is basically giving narrative summary, and second, that showing is dramatizing a scene with action, dialog, and sensory information. They have also said that you can't show all the time, that you have to know when to do it and when not to do it.
Clearly, "Show, Don't Tell" is to be taken with several grains of salt, and applied when it's needed, and not when it's not. Here's what I heard about it on the forums:
RALovett of Analog Forum wrote:
I just read a mainstream novel in which the author rigorously showed everything, and the result was a whole book in which precious little of import actually happened.
damiengwalter of Asimov's forum wrote:
I've noticed a lot of writers, particularly those who write novels over short stories, refer to 'show don't tell' as using scene and dialogue instead of narrative voice. IMHO that advice is not very helpful. Narrative voice is pretty essential in a good story, and trying to stick to this idea of 'show don't tell' is a mistake.
Okay, now I have a problem. Because obviously I have to "show, don't tell," but at the same time I have to know when to show, and when to tell, and I bet you any money that readers will be able to tell if I haven't figured it out naturally! Before my head explodes, I think I'll take a step back.
One thing to do is to go and read a pile of books, to look at how others have done it. But as you may already have guessed, I've done that two or three or ten times... The good news is, I think at this point I've figured out "show, don't tell" - but what I haven't figured out is why it stays alive, and is used so often - and more importantly, how to give helpful critique about these issues without using a phrase that so often seems meaningless.
So this whole forum exploration was intended to take all the advice I've heard in a different direction. I asked in four different online forums frequented by writers: Analog Forum, Asimov's Forum, Backspace Writers' Forum, and SFF Chronicles forum (links provided at the end!), to see what people had to say about what "show, don't tell" meant to them. [Note: two Backspace writers asked me to take down their quoted comments. Sorry for the error.]
I came up with four (four!) different meanings.
1. Showing is dramatization, and telling is descriptive summary
2. Showing is story action, and telling is backstory or worldbuilding infodump
3. Showing is using a limited or internal point of view, and telling is using an omniscient or
external point of view
4. Showing is making the reader think, and telling is not making the reader think
Now, let's break 'em down, one at a time.
1. SHOWING = DRAMATIZATION vs. TELLING = DESCRIPTIVE SUMMARY
This is the primary opinion of Wikipedia, and a lot of people at the forums agreed.
Sam Wilson of Asimov's forum wrote:
I think showing happens in realtime and telling is a sort of narrative summary. Both are effective in their place. I got some good advice from a pro once: ration author commentary.
Marian of Analog forum wrote:
In my critique group, I usually say that this paragraph could be a scene (or should be a scene) instead of a description.
Okay, so it seems to me that advice is pretty clear. Instead of saying "John got even with Mary," send him into a scene that shows him achieving this comeuppance. Of course, there are potential hazards involved in showing of this nature, because dramatizing a scene requires the author to pin down a lot of factual and setting details about what happens in it.
As Marian of Asimov's forum wrote,
...that's why novices tell instead of showing. If they just say "One night Harry sneaked into George's house and murdered him" they don't run the risk of getting dinged on errors. Of course they do risk getting dinged on being very boring.
Mike Flynn of Analog forum gave an interesting example:
"Father and brother had a terrible row, and many terrible things were said that could not be unsaid, and in the end brother stormed out and I have not seen him since." This is probably more effective than if the author had tried to show the argument in process. What terrible things could he show being said? No matter what, it runs the risk of not being terrible enough to support the consequences.
I guess what that means is that you can go both ways on this piece of advice. Sometimes taking the reader into a scene is going to make for a better experience, but sometimes it isn't. I guess I have to come back later (below!) to figure out when one might be better than the other. For now, let's look at the second meaning for "show don't tell."
2. SHOWING = STORY ACTION vs. TELLING = BACKSTORY/WORLDBUILDING INFODUMPS
Any of us who have been exploring the world of science fiction and fantasy writing are familiar with the concept of the infodump. The author has some really vital information they have to get across about how the world works, or about a principle of physics which will be vital to a final understanding of the story, or about the main character's childhood which establishes the motivation that will carry him or her through the story, etc., etc. So they put it in. Maybe they write a paragraph about it, or worse, an entire page or more, losing track of the main storyline in the process.
Bill Gleason of the Analog forum described it beautifully:
I think with regard to SF, there's a particular kind of "stuff getting conflated" in the show-don't-tell advice, because in SF there is often the need to convey highly technical information. As has been noted elsewhere, this is why so much SF involves scientists as characters, since it is far more plausible when they drift into discussions of esoteric science than when, say, a couple of professional athletes do it. ... So there does seem to be an inherent challenge that is perhaps unique to SF writers in terms of fiction.
Yes, I can easily see how this one has gotten incorporated into "show don't tell." Here's what some other people were saying on the forums:
Zubi-Ondo of SFF Chronicles wrote:
I personally find myself falling into the "tell" mode when I'm still fleshing out some part of the story or action.
Well, all right. But is it really so bad to write down the things that people really need to know about a world? Here's why Tom Ligon of Analog forum says it's all right:
Telling is fine in a first draft. Go ahead and get the ideas down.
I've seen this a lot in my critiquing experience. The writer starts writing down tons and tons of stuff that's really really important to understanding the story - if you're the writer. Sure. Of course the writer has to understand this! But the reader doesn't necessarily need it. So get it down, learn what you need to, and then write the story as it needs to be written, which is a separate job. About "telling" in that context, Tom Ligon says,
"Telling" can be done well. ... The trouble is, it can be awfully dry and uninteresting if you're just laying out facts or some history. If people are involved, why not incorporate the facts into a personal experience?
Maybe in some sense this is a subset of number one, where we talked about dramatizing instead of summarizing. But dramatizing information isn't the best road, and it often turns into a situation where two people are talking and one is "telling" the other what he needs to know.
Greg Ellis of Analog forum wrote:
Conveying information in science fiction is sometimes, I think, critical to science fiction and sometimes there's just no other way to convey it other than in a "telling" manner (in my case it was a very descriptive scene between 2 scientists looking at the pathways involved - one a specialist in photosynthesis and plant biology, the other an experienced biologist in another field, several years away from his photosynthesis classes).
Zubi-Ondo of SFF Chronicles wrote:
One way to get away with "telling" is to have one of the characters explain something in dialogue. Again, if you do too much of that it will become transparent to the reader, and they will catch on.
And here was RALovett of the Analog forum:
There's also a huge amount of borderline in this whole show/tell arena, that most folks dismiss by stating an overly simple rule. Dialog, for example, is often cited as the epitome of "showing." But the words of the dialog themselves can also be the character "telling" something.
Infodumping is definitely something to watch out for, and I've talked about it in other places on the blog, so I'm not going to be offering lengthy suggestions here. I'm sure it will come up again.
On to the next meaning of "show don't tell":
3. SHOWING = USING A LIMITED OR INTERNAL NARRATOR vs. TELLING = USING AN OMNISCIENT OR EXTERNAL NARRATOR
This one really took me by surprise, I'm not sure why. Maybe I should have realized that "show don't tell" would be linked to the literal idea of "telling" a story. Here's how Mike Flynn of Analog forum put it:
When you can get away with telling[:] I think when the narrator is first person you can get away with this more than when the POV is third person. It may be that omniscient can get away with it, too, because the telling is part of the ambiance of the omniscient voice.
Okay, this is intriguing. When the narrator is first person, it's possible that this person can be cast as a person telling a story about past experiences, in which case that person is literally "telling" the story. In third person omniscient, it's similar - you've got a narrator "telling" a story, even though that story is about other people and not him/herself.
Tom Ligon of Analog forum takes the idea further:
American Indian legends are frequently "told". Just reading them can sometimes be a bit dry. But many of you will remember the opening to a SF TV series years ago which uses a tribal storyteller, and I have a print of a painting called "Buffalo Tales" hanging beside my writing desk that illustrates a storyteller and seven kids around a campfire. ... he is no doubt "telling" with great flare and expression, and the kids are digging it (each affected in a unique way). If you must "tell", try to tell it with a bit of flare.
Bill Moonroe of Asimov's forum added,
I suppose that sort of leaves each storyteller to make their mark via delivery; it's the difference between a gifted preacher telling the Christmas story, and, well, my Shakespearean teacher giving the sermon; one would bring tears to a moai's eyes while the other could put a tiger to sleep. But the use of show vs tell can be the difference between a new look, a new use of the power of myth in a new way and an academic's faithful yet lifeless transcription of ethnic folktales.
Surely, though, there's more to this than just oral delivery of the story in question. Storyteller narrators can be effective or ineffective. Why should that be? This question brings me to the last meaning I found for "show don't tell":
4. SHOWING = MAKING THE READER THINK vs. TELLING = NOT MAKING THE READER THINK
Vague from the Analog forum summed up this definition most succinctly, as follows:
If you 'tell' the reader too much you risk setting them at a distance; because you're interpreting things for them they don't need to think about what they're reading, coasting along, attention drifting.
RALovett from the Analog forum took it further, though, with a terrific example from "A River Runs Through It" by Norman Maclean:
The first few pages of that, available by google on the publisher's website are a classic example of how you can indeed get away with "telling" a story. The first paragraph:
"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman."
Now, I would bet dollars to donuts (not as strong odds today as when I was a kid, admittedly) that a lot of writing groups would flag that as "telling," and advise the writer to show his father talking about the disciples. And I would also be quick to add that this is a book that you either love or can't get into at all. That's because what it's truly about is voice: Maclean's crotchety old-man voice looking back on his Montana childhood. So ultimately, it is showing, not telling, but it's showing the narrator, via the way he tells about Montana, and fishing, and etc.
Really what we're looking at here is a case of "telling" a story - but this kind of "telling" is actually "showing" something else at the same time. So while the reader is engaged in hearing about the narrator's father and his love of fly fishing, he's also learning about who the narrator is and how he thinks - critical information, as I noted above in the section about backstory and infodumping. So in a sense, here's one great way to incorporate backstory - telling a small piece of the backstory that is highly relevant to our understanding of the narratory himself.
Zubi-Ondo of SFF Chronicles wrote:
I consider the rule of show don't tell as part of a bigger rule which is "keep the reader engaged".
And here's one way of doing it: offer the reader more than just the "flat" story being told. Offer the reader a chance to engage in the narrative by constructing information about the narrator while listening to his story.
All of this reminds me of a class I took in college. It was a class about doing qualitative research, and in particular, about the principles behind anthropological field notes. I've heard people who are familiar with large-scale statistical studies say unkind things about anthropologists who go into situations and study them from the inside, but in fact, I found the entire process fascinating - and empirically solid.
The idea behind writing field notes is this. Don't say "there's tension in the room." If you do that, you'll be drawing conclusions from what you see, and writing them down, and people who read your notes will have to choose whether to believe you or not. On the other hand, if you write down what you see, the evidence for the sense of tension in the room (people pacing, wringing hands, sitting awkwardly etc.), then when a reader looks at your notes, that reader will be able to see what you saw and draw conclusions along with you.
I think that is in fact a lot of what's going on in "showing."
Okay, so we've got four different meanings. What can we get out of the whole process, to take forward into our writing in meaningful ways? After all, the rule of "show don't tell" still stands, but it still stands as something we should do sometimes, but not others, or we should do in one way, but not another.
Are we back where we started? No, I don't really think so.
RALovett of the Analog forum wrote:
... the core word to what I'm talking about is "priorities." Otherwise, you'll never get your character out the door.
Forgive me for being a linguistics geek (but it's what I am!) - all this sends me back to H.P. Grice's Cooperative principle, which I discussed in an earlier post. Today I'm going to take it and turn it into:
THE COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE OF STORYTELLING
"Make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged."
This is actually a direct quote from Grice 1975, via Wikipedia. If it seems obvious, then let me explain.
What we've been seeing up here is a situation where "telling" (of types 1 and 2 at least) is summary material that does not engage the reader's attention and effort as much as "showing." Excellent. But if as readers we're constantly required to engage at the same level of effort, then we'll become exhausted (and with some authors, we do!). So in a sense, dramatizing and "showing" is a way of indicating that a particular part of the story is important.
The more words you put on something, the more attention it requires from the reader. So the question then becomes, "is this where I want the reader to be placing their effort?"
If all the people in a room are wearing hoods to show their social status, for example - here I've got two pieces of information. I could "show" one person, then another, wearing hoods or doing things with them, so that the reader can conclude that everyone is wearing them. But why should I do that, when the fact of the hoods is less important to the story than what the hoods mean? This is a place where I would simply tell a reader about the hoods, and spend more time exploring their social status and what it means to them using various types of information including the hoods.
My friend Janice Hardy would probably say, "focus on the story." Identifying exactly what the story is can be tricky - it's that elusive thing that hooks us and draws us through, following characters through settings and situations of all sizes and shapes, because we CARE about them. So in the end the process of writing isn't much easier, because we still have to figure out which parts of what we write are vital to the story, so we know where we want to have people engaging, expending effort and attention.
But I hope this discussion has shed light on the topic of "show don't tell," and given you some useful approaches to the question in your own work, or the books you're reading.
Links:
Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Readers Forum: http://www.analogsf.com/aspnet_forum/
Asimov's Science Fiction, Readers Forum: http://www.asimovs.com/aspnet_forum/
SFF Chronicles forum: http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/
Backspace, the Writers Place (paid registration): http://www.bksp.org/
Show Don't Tell - Exposed!
"Show, Don't Tell" is clearly a phrase that a lot of people have heard, and I'd guess most of those have done some work on trying to apply it usefully to their own writing. This is not always easy, however, and (like me) not everybody considers the phrase helpful, because it takes a lot of complex, rend-my-paragraphs information and extrapolates it into a beautifully phrased general principle.
A beautiful concise principle is harder to apply to one's writing.
Greg Ellis of the Analog forum wrote,
I can hear Yoda in the back of my mind right now.
Try? Try? Do, or do not.
There is no try.
And then there was Josh, from Backspace:
It's like telling someone how to ride a bike: a person needs to try to do it if they want to learn.
So it's a beautiful principle that I need to figure out by doing it rather than hearing about it?
How do I know if I'm doing this right? Okay, let's try the ultimate source of knowledge and wisdom...
WIKIPEDIA
(excerpted)
"Show, don't tell" is an admonition to fiction writers to write in a manner that allows the reader to experience the story through a character's action, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the narrator's exposition, summarization, and description.
...
Janet Evanovich: ". . . instead of stating a situation flat out, you want to let the reader discover what you're trying to say by watching a character in action and by listening to his dialogue. Showing brings your characters to life." [1]
...
Orson Scott Card: ...objective is to get the right balance of telling versus showing, action versus summarization. Either could be right; either could be wrong. Factors like rhythm, pace, and tone come into play. [4]
Showing can be done by:
* writing scenes
* describing the actions of the characters
* revealing character through dialogue
* using the five senses when possible
James Scott Bell: "Showing is essentially about making scenes vivid. If you try to do it constantly, the parts that are supposed to stand out won't, and your readers will get exhausted."[7].
The experts have spoken, and they've said first, that telling is basically giving narrative summary, and second, that showing is dramatizing a scene with action, dialog, and sensory information. They have also said that you can't show all the time, that you have to know when to do it and when not to do it.
Clearly, "Show, Don't Tell" is to be taken with several grains of salt, and applied when it's needed, and not when it's not. Here's what I heard about it on the forums:
RALovett of Analog Forum wrote:
I just read a mainstream novel in which the author rigorously showed everything, and the result was a whole book in which precious little of import actually happened.
damiengwalter of Asimov's forum wrote:
I've noticed a lot of writers, particularly those who write novels over short stories, refer to 'show don't tell' as using scene and dialogue instead of narrative voice. IMHO that advice is not very helpful. Narrative voice is pretty essential in a good story, and trying to stick to this idea of 'show don't tell' is a mistake.
Okay, now I have a problem. Because obviously I have to "show, don't tell," but at the same time I have to know when to show, and when to tell, and I bet you any money that readers will be able to tell if I haven't figured it out naturally! Before my head explodes, I think I'll take a step back.
One thing to do is to go and read a pile of books, to look at how others have done it. But as you may already have guessed, I've done that two or three or ten times... The good news is, I think at this point I've figured out "show, don't tell" - but what I haven't figured out is why it stays alive, and is used so often - and more importantly, how to give helpful critique about these issues without using a phrase that so often seems meaningless.
So this whole forum exploration was intended to take all the advice I've heard in a different direction. I asked in four different online forums frequented by writers: Analog Forum, Asimov's Forum, Backspace Writers' Forum, and SFF Chronicles forum (links provided at the end!), to see what people had to say about what "show, don't tell" meant to them. [Note: two Backspace writers asked me to take down their quoted comments. Sorry for the error.]
I came up with four (four!) different meanings.
1. Showing is dramatization, and telling is descriptive summary
2. Showing is story action, and telling is backstory or worldbuilding infodump
3. Showing is using a limited or internal point of view, and telling is using an omniscient or
external point of view
4. Showing is making the reader think, and telling is not making the reader think
Now, let's break 'em down, one at a time.
1. SHOWING = DRAMATIZATION vs. TELLING = DESCRIPTIVE SUMMARY
This is the primary opinion of Wikipedia, and a lot of people at the forums agreed.
Sam Wilson of Asimov's forum wrote:
I think showing happens in realtime and telling is a sort of narrative summary. Both are effective in their place. I got some good advice from a pro once: ration author commentary.
Marian of Analog forum wrote:
In my critique group, I usually say that this paragraph could be a scene (or should be a scene) instead of a description.
Okay, so it seems to me that advice is pretty clear. Instead of saying "John got even with Mary," send him into a scene that shows him achieving this comeuppance. Of course, there are potential hazards involved in showing of this nature, because dramatizing a scene requires the author to pin down a lot of factual and setting details about what happens in it.
As Marian of Asimov's forum wrote,
...that's why novices tell instead of showing. If they just say "One night Harry sneaked into George's house and murdered him" they don't run the risk of getting dinged on errors. Of course they do risk getting dinged on being very boring.
Mike Flynn of Analog forum gave an interesting example:
"Father and brother had a terrible row, and many terrible things were said that could not be unsaid, and in the end brother stormed out and I have not seen him since." This is probably more effective than if the author had tried to show the argument in process. What terrible things could he show being said? No matter what, it runs the risk of not being terrible enough to support the consequences.
I guess what that means is that you can go both ways on this piece of advice. Sometimes taking the reader into a scene is going to make for a better experience, but sometimes it isn't. I guess I have to come back later (below!) to figure out when one might be better than the other. For now, let's look at the second meaning for "show don't tell."
2. SHOWING = STORY ACTION vs. TELLING = BACKSTORY/WORLDBUILDING INFODUMPS
Any of us who have been exploring the world of science fiction and fantasy writing are familiar with the concept of the infodump. The author has some really vital information they have to get across about how the world works, or about a principle of physics which will be vital to a final understanding of the story, or about the main character's childhood which establishes the motivation that will carry him or her through the story, etc., etc. So they put it in. Maybe they write a paragraph about it, or worse, an entire page or more, losing track of the main storyline in the process.
Bill Gleason of the Analog forum described it beautifully:
I think with regard to SF, there's a particular kind of "stuff getting conflated" in the show-don't-tell advice, because in SF there is often the need to convey highly technical information. As has been noted elsewhere, this is why so much SF involves scientists as characters, since it is far more plausible when they drift into discussions of esoteric science than when, say, a couple of professional athletes do it. ... So there does seem to be an inherent challenge that is perhaps unique to SF writers in terms of fiction.
Yes, I can easily see how this one has gotten incorporated into "show don't tell." Here's what some other people were saying on the forums:
Zubi-Ondo of SFF Chronicles wrote:
I personally find myself falling into the "tell" mode when I'm still fleshing out some part of the story or action.
Well, all right. But is it really so bad to write down the things that people really need to know about a world? Here's why Tom Ligon of Analog forum says it's all right:
Telling is fine in a first draft. Go ahead and get the ideas down.
I've seen this a lot in my critiquing experience. The writer starts writing down tons and tons of stuff that's really really important to understanding the story - if you're the writer. Sure. Of course the writer has to understand this! But the reader doesn't necessarily need it. So get it down, learn what you need to, and then write the story as it needs to be written, which is a separate job. About "telling" in that context, Tom Ligon says,
"Telling" can be done well. ... The trouble is, it can be awfully dry and uninteresting if you're just laying out facts or some history. If people are involved, why not incorporate the facts into a personal experience?
Maybe in some sense this is a subset of number one, where we talked about dramatizing instead of summarizing. But dramatizing information isn't the best road, and it often turns into a situation where two people are talking and one is "telling" the other what he needs to know.
Greg Ellis of Analog forum wrote:
Conveying information in science fiction is sometimes, I think, critical to science fiction and sometimes there's just no other way to convey it other than in a "telling" manner (in my case it was a very descriptive scene between 2 scientists looking at the pathways involved - one a specialist in photosynthesis and plant biology, the other an experienced biologist in another field, several years away from his photosynthesis classes).
Zubi-Ondo of SFF Chronicles wrote:
One way to get away with "telling" is to have one of the characters explain something in dialogue. Again, if you do too much of that it will become transparent to the reader, and they will catch on.
And here was RALovett of the Analog forum:
There's also a huge amount of borderline in this whole show/tell arena, that most folks dismiss by stating an overly simple rule. Dialog, for example, is often cited as the epitome of "showing." But the words of the dialog themselves can also be the character "telling" something.
Infodumping is definitely something to watch out for, and I've talked about it in other places on the blog, so I'm not going to be offering lengthy suggestions here. I'm sure it will come up again.
On to the next meaning of "show don't tell":
3. SHOWING = USING A LIMITED OR INTERNAL NARRATOR vs. TELLING = USING AN OMNISCIENT OR EXTERNAL NARRATOR
This one really took me by surprise, I'm not sure why. Maybe I should have realized that "show don't tell" would be linked to the literal idea of "telling" a story. Here's how Mike Flynn of Analog forum put it:
When you can get away with telling[:] I think when the narrator is first person you can get away with this more than when the POV is third person. It may be that omniscient can get away with it, too, because the telling is part of the ambiance of the omniscient voice.
Okay, this is intriguing. When the narrator is first person, it's possible that this person can be cast as a person telling a story about past experiences, in which case that person is literally "telling" the story. In third person omniscient, it's similar - you've got a narrator "telling" a story, even though that story is about other people and not him/herself.
Tom Ligon of Analog forum takes the idea further:
American Indian legends are frequently "told". Just reading them can sometimes be a bit dry. But many of you will remember the opening to a SF TV series years ago which uses a tribal storyteller, and I have a print of a painting called "Buffalo Tales" hanging beside my writing desk that illustrates a storyteller and seven kids around a campfire. ... he is no doubt "telling" with great flare and expression, and the kids are digging it (each affected in a unique way). If you must "tell", try to tell it with a bit of flare.
Bill Moonroe of Asimov's forum added,
I suppose that sort of leaves each storyteller to make their mark via delivery; it's the difference between a gifted preacher telling the Christmas story, and, well, my Shakespearean teacher giving the sermon; one would bring tears to a moai's eyes while the other could put a tiger to sleep. But the use of show vs tell can be the difference between a new look, a new use of the power of myth in a new way and an academic's faithful yet lifeless transcription of ethnic folktales.
Surely, though, there's more to this than just oral delivery of the story in question. Storyteller narrators can be effective or ineffective. Why should that be? This question brings me to the last meaning I found for "show don't tell":
4. SHOWING = MAKING THE READER THINK vs. TELLING = NOT MAKING THE READER THINK
Vague from the Analog forum summed up this definition most succinctly, as follows:
If you 'tell' the reader too much you risk setting them at a distance; because you're interpreting things for them they don't need to think about what they're reading, coasting along, attention drifting.
RALovett from the Analog forum took it further, though, with a terrific example from "A River Runs Through It" by Norman Maclean:
The first few pages of that, available by google on the publisher's website are a classic example of how you can indeed get away with "telling" a story. The first paragraph:
"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman."
Now, I would bet dollars to donuts (not as strong odds today as when I was a kid, admittedly) that a lot of writing groups would flag that as "telling," and advise the writer to show his father talking about the disciples. And I would also be quick to add that this is a book that you either love or can't get into at all. That's because what it's truly about is voice: Maclean's crotchety old-man voice looking back on his Montana childhood. So ultimately, it is showing, not telling, but it's showing the narrator, via the way he tells about Montana, and fishing, and etc.
Really what we're looking at here is a case of "telling" a story - but this kind of "telling" is actually "showing" something else at the same time. So while the reader is engaged in hearing about the narrator's father and his love of fly fishing, he's also learning about who the narrator is and how he thinks - critical information, as I noted above in the section about backstory and infodumping. So in a sense, here's one great way to incorporate backstory - telling a small piece of the backstory that is highly relevant to our understanding of the narratory himself.
Zubi-Ondo of SFF Chronicles wrote:
I consider the rule of show don't tell as part of a bigger rule which is "keep the reader engaged".
And here's one way of doing it: offer the reader more than just the "flat" story being told. Offer the reader a chance to engage in the narrative by constructing information about the narrator while listening to his story.
All of this reminds me of a class I took in college. It was a class about doing qualitative research, and in particular, about the principles behind anthropological field notes. I've heard people who are familiar with large-scale statistical studies say unkind things about anthropologists who go into situations and study them from the inside, but in fact, I found the entire process fascinating - and empirically solid.
The idea behind writing field notes is this. Don't say "there's tension in the room." If you do that, you'll be drawing conclusions from what you see, and writing them down, and people who read your notes will have to choose whether to believe you or not. On the other hand, if you write down what you see, the evidence for the sense of tension in the room (people pacing, wringing hands, sitting awkwardly etc.), then when a reader looks at your notes, that reader will be able to see what you saw and draw conclusions along with you.
I think that is in fact a lot of what's going on in "showing."
Okay, so we've got four different meanings. What can we get out of the whole process, to take forward into our writing in meaningful ways? After all, the rule of "show don't tell" still stands, but it still stands as something we should do sometimes, but not others, or we should do in one way, but not another.
Are we back where we started? No, I don't really think so.
RALovett of the Analog forum wrote:
... the core word to what I'm talking about is "priorities." Otherwise, you'll never get your character out the door.
Forgive me for being a linguistics geek (but it's what I am!) - all this sends me back to H.P. Grice's Cooperative principle, which I discussed in an earlier post. Today I'm going to take it and turn it into:
THE COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE OF STORYTELLING
"Make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged."
This is actually a direct quote from Grice 1975, via Wikipedia. If it seems obvious, then let me explain.
What we've been seeing up here is a situation where "telling" (of types 1 and 2 at least) is summary material that does not engage the reader's attention and effort as much as "showing." Excellent. But if as readers we're constantly required to engage at the same level of effort, then we'll become exhausted (and with some authors, we do!). So in a sense, dramatizing and "showing" is a way of indicating that a particular part of the story is important.
The more words you put on something, the more attention it requires from the reader. So the question then becomes, "is this where I want the reader to be placing their effort?"
If all the people in a room are wearing hoods to show their social status, for example - here I've got two pieces of information. I could "show" one person, then another, wearing hoods or doing things with them, so that the reader can conclude that everyone is wearing them. But why should I do that, when the fact of the hoods is less important to the story than what the hoods mean? This is a place where I would simply tell a reader about the hoods, and spend more time exploring their social status and what it means to them using various types of information including the hoods.
My friend Janice Hardy would probably say, "focus on the story." Identifying exactly what the story is can be tricky - it's that elusive thing that hooks us and draws us through, following characters through settings and situations of all sizes and shapes, because we CARE about them. So in the end the process of writing isn't much easier, because we still have to figure out which parts of what we write are vital to the story, so we know where we want to have people engaging, expending effort and attention.
But I hope this discussion has shed light on the topic of "show don't tell," and given you some useful approaches to the question in your own work, or the books you're reading.
Links:
Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Readers Forum: http://www.analogsf.com/aspnet_forum/
Asimov's Science Fiction, Readers Forum: http://www.asimovs.com/aspnet_forum/
SFF Chronicles forum: http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/
Backspace, the Writers Place (paid registration): http://www.bksp.org/
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