Show Don't Tell

Just a few more writing tips before we return to regularly scheduled blogging, I promise. --Ally.

If you’ve been interested in writing for a while then chances are you’ve heard the phrase “show-don’t-tell”.

I first heard it when writing screenplays, and I think that helped me to catch on to the concept faster than a lot of writers do. Here's why.

A screenwriter might write the following:

“MAGGIE comes into the room and nearly stumbles over a body. She looks down at the floor and gasps as she realizes the dead man is her soon-to-be ex-husband who has been stabbed with the letter opener he gave her when she stopped modeling and decided to go back to law school. Maggie screams then runs away.”

That’s what the script says.

But what does the camera see?

“A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN comes into the room and nearly stumbles over a bleeding dead body. She gasps then runs away.”

In the first example the reader is TOLD all about Maggie and her husband and that she used to be a model and is a lawyer now. It’s what some writers (Jennifer Crusie among them) call an infodump.

I hate infodumps. (And so does she.)

Isn’t it more fun to see one of the homicide detectives recognize Maggie and ask if she used to be a model? I’d like to hear them question her about her divorce and why a pretty lady like her would want to read all those thick books.

I want characters. I want dialogue. I want action.

In short, I don’t want to be spoon-fed. I don’t want to lose out on the “what does that mean?” moment that might keep me reading to find an explanation instead of having the explanation dumped in my lap.

This is the first way I ever learned about show-don’t-tell, and I think it’s a good one.

But it’s important to note that show-don’t-tell has many forms and applications. Here are a few:

--narrative passages & descriptions.

Some Show-Don’t-Tell fanatics say that we should avoid “telling” words like was. If you’re starting out this isn’t a bad idea. (It isn’t necessarily a good idea either.)

An author can write, “The sky was blue.” Or the author can say, “White clouds floated across the blue sky.”

In the first the author tells us a piece of information. In the second she paints us a picture.

(But please don’t think this means we need detailed descriptions of every little thing…boring!)

--character feelings and emotions

Show-don’t-tell also applies to what our characters are feeling. Here, I think authors have three options:

Either saying what the character is feeling, showing those feelings through some physical act, or both showing and telling.

There’s nothing that annoys me more than reading something like:

“Julia was so furious she slammed the door.”

Really? Julia was furious? I never would have guessed. (That’s me being sarcastic, by the way.)

I didn’t need to be told Julia was furious--the door slamming was enough for me.

--Backstory, infodumps, and the two comma method of driving Ally insane

For some people, “was” is where the show-don’t-tell debate begins and ends, but I believe it’s actually a much, much bigger issue.

Remember Maggie, the ex-model who finds her dead husband on the floor? Well, the first passage above is the kind of thing I see all the time in books I don’t finish.

The author tells us a lot about Maggie when we meet her, but won't some of that be apparent once Maggie starts talking and thinking and interacting with people?

And if it's going to be apparent later, why tell it now?

And if this info about Maggie isn't going to be apparent later--if it isn’t important--then why tell me about it at all? I'm far more interested in the dead body on the floor.

For me, infodumps are going to either be redundant or forgotten, and worse, they take me out of the scene I was just getting settled into, especially when done in two comma form.

THE TWO COMMA METHOD....

(Note: this is a phenomenon I made up--you're hearing it here first!)

Here's something that will make me throw a book against a wall and scream at the top of my lungs (even on airplanes).

"Maggie, a former model, walked into her new law office and stumbled. She looked down and saw Jack, her ex-husband who cheated on her and always felt threated by her superior intellect and beauty, lying dead on the floor! She was so terrified she screamed. Then she recognized the letter opener, a gift from Jack, and she turned and ran away."

See the two comma sets? I hate them. H-A-T-E. It's a darn easy way to put a lot of information on the page, but notice how they pull you out of the narrative? See how it's just facts and not emotions? For me, this is telling at its worst (and yet it was done with only one "was").

A disclaimer: All of this is my opinion. You can disagree with me—a lot of people do (many of whom have sold about a billion more books than I).

Books are subjective things, and this is probably the most controversial subject I’ll cover here…still I felt it should be covered.

For me, great books require audience participation—who did it? What does that mean? What happened in their past? Where did that letter opener come from and why is she staring at it?

I want to think, hear, taste, and feel. If I don’t, I won’t finish that book.

So how do you write a book readers want to finish?

Pacing.

We’ll get into that tomorrow.

--Ally