Now we’re entering the Technique section of section of my book, Flogging the Quill, Crafting a Novel that Sells. is “When to tell, how to show.”
In a recent edit, I pointed out instances where I felt my client was telling versus showing. Even though I included examples of ways to show what she had told, she wrote to me and said, “I’m not sure I know how to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’.”
I can understand why. After all, we use the telling mode all the time in conversations with friends, and it works.
“I was really surprised.”
“I was so pissed.”
“I was incredibly happy.”
When to tell
There are times in a novel when telling is the right thing to do. It’s when you need to summarize an event because to create a scene for it would be wrong in terms of pace, tension, etc. A common example is when you’ve shown an event in an earlier scene and then the story comes to a place where your character needs to pass along what happened to another character. Rather than drag your reader blow by blow through something she already knows, you just summarize:
April told May how June had told Julie where to shove her opinion.
That’s a necessary and effective use of telling.
There are other times when it’s the best thing to do. For example, when what needs to happen is so mundane that to waste words on it is to waste words. For example, a character is talking on his cell phone. When he finishes the conversation, you could show this:
Bob pressed the little blue phone icon on his cell-phone keypad to end the call.
Truly, that wasn’t needed and smacks of overwriting. Instead:
Bob ended the call.
The reader can easily imagine ending a call with a cell phone if they’ve ever used one, and even if they haven’t used one, they’ve seen it on television.
So what’s so bad about a lot of telling in a novel? You “tell” a story, right? Not really. In a novel you dramatize with scenes. When you’re writing for effect, you craft words that create a very specific result in the reader’s mind, a vital sense of what is happening. You can only do that through showing.
Your readers want what they read to trigger in them the sights and sounds and smells of what’s happening in the story. They don’t want approximations, they don’t want a report, they want to experience the story’s reality.
How to show
You spot telling by looking for declarative sentences that tell the reader something. The verb “was” is often a sign of a telling statement.
Showing is using behavior (action, speech, thoughts) to illustrate or dramatize what the character is feeling/doing.
Here are looks at telling versus showing that come from actual writing samples.
The scene: Anna is beat from a long, bad day at work and now she’s spent hours at the hospital with her father, who has been unconscious for days. You want to give the reader Anna’s physical and emotional condition. This author wrote:
Anna was physically and mentally exhausted.
Sure, you get information. You have an intellectual understanding of her condition. But you have no feeling for what Anna feels like, do you? To show that Anna is physically and mentally exhausted, you could write this:
All Anna wanted to do was crawl into bed and go to sleep. But first she would cry. She didn’t think she could be calm and composed for another minute.
The scene continues: Anna’s father suddenly wakes and thrashes around wildly, gasping, making monitors go wild. You want to give the reader Anna’s reaction. The author told us this:
Anna was frightened.
She could have shown us with:
Oh, God, what was happening? “Dad?” Why didn’t he respond? “Nurse, do something!”
Yes, it takes more words, but remember that here you’re not trying to inform the reader but to deliver an experience.
As you go through your manuscript, whenever you come across a “was-type” declarative sentence that simply delivers information rather than shows behavior, you probably have an instance of telling.
Your task then is to visualize the character in that state or situation. See the movie. As the author, you can also “hear” thoughts. Then show the reader the thinking or speaking or moving in a way that illustrates what the reader needs to know.
Another example, one that deals with the use of adverbs.
Telling: He stabbed the man furiously.
See how an adverb tells rather than shows?
Showing: He plunged the dagger into the man’s chest again and again and again, screaming “Die!” each time the blade stabbed into flesh.
One more example. Jesse has been working for hours under the Texas sun. We need to let the reader know how he feels.
Telling: Jesse was very hot.
Seriously, I see descriptions like that in manuscripts all the time. How about this?
Showing: Jesse felt like an overcooked chicken, his meat damn near ready to fall off his bones.
Now, that’s hot. Another thing I often see is where a writer does a good job of showing, but then feels compelled to add an explanation (telling). From a recent edit:
He wrenched her from the quicksand with a last huge pull and fell back onto the ground, panting as if he’d just won a wrestling match, temporarily drained by the supreme effort.
For my money, “as if he’d just won a wrestling match, temporarily drained by the supreme effort” has already been shown by his panting and the effort he put into the rescue, so it’s redundant and repetitive. I would delete it.
Boiled down to essentials:
- Telling is dispensing information.
- Showing is evoking experience.
With each word and phrase you write, slip into reader mode and see what the effect is: is it just informing you, or bringing to life what the character experiences?
For what it’s worth
Ray
© 2011 Ray Rhamey