IV. SHOW AND TELL:
Learning writers in workshop settings often hear the phrase ‘show this, don’t tell it,’ and they may wonder what this means. Even when the concept is explained, the learning writer may struggle to differentiate between a passage that is ‘told’ and the same passage that is ‘shown.’ Perhaps one way to illustrate the difference is to have you imagine a rehearsal session for a Broadway play. Two actors and a director are gathered on the stage. Seated in the first row of the empty theatre is an investor who may invest money to produce the play. He asks what the scene is about, and the director tells him it’s about two characters struggling against one another for the love of a third character. The director has just ‘told’ the investor what the scene is about. That’s the ‘telling.’
Then the rehearsal begins, the director takes his seat beside the investor, and the actors begin to act out their parts, with dialog and stage directions as provided in the play. That’s the ‘showing.’
‘Showing’ can best be accomplished with the use of concrete sensory detail, using the five senses: see, hear, touch, taste, smell. Let’s use an illustration from literature. Suppose you have a friend who’s just read a passage from Thomas Mann’s The Confessions of Felix Krull, and she wants to tell you how beautifully it’s written. You ask her to describe a passage, and she says it’s about a young boy standing alone in a candy shop, looking at all the candy. ‘Big whoop,’ you say, ‘that doesn’t sound so great.’ But then she hands you her book. “No, read it,’ she says, and you read:
It was a narrow room, with a rather high ceiling, and crowded from floor to ceiling with goodies. There were rows and rows of hams and sausages of all shapes and colors—white, yellow, red and black; fat and lean and round and long—rows of canned preserves, cocoa and tea, bright translucent glass bottles of honey, marmalade and jam.
I stood enchanted, straining my ears and breathing in the delightful atmosphere and the mixed fragrance of chocolate and smoked fish and earthy truffles. I spoke into the silence, saying; “Good day” in quite a loud voice; I can still remember how my strained, unnatural tones died away in the stillness. No one answered. And my mouth literally began to water like a spring. One quick, noiseless step and I was beside one of the laden tables. I made one rapturous grab into the nearest glass urn, filled as it chanced with chocolate creams, slipped a fistful into my coat pocket, then reached the door, and in the next second was safely round the corner.
No dialog, but it’s a scene, and we can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell that wonderfully depicted shop. Not ‘there was lots of food and it smelled good,’ but ‘the mixed fragrance of chocolate and smoked fish and earthy truffles.’ Do you see the difference? Not ‘I called out and no one answered,’ but ‘I spoke into the silence, saying, ‘Good day” in quite a loud voice; I can still remember how my strained, unnatural tones died away in the stillness. No one answered.’ Can you see the difference? That’s ‘showing.’ Thomas Mann did it, and so can you, if you concentrate on concrete sensory detail: the kinds of things that your reader can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell.
Some helpful quotes:
1) “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader; not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” E.L. Doctorow
2) “Good writers may ‘tell’ about almost anything in fiction except the character’s feelings. One may tell the reader that the character went to private school (one need not show a scene at a private school if the scene has no importance to the rest of the narrative), or one may tell the reader that the character hates spaghetti; but with the rare exceptions the characters’ feelings must be demonstrated: fear, love, excitement, doubt, embarrassment, despair become real only when they take the form of events–action (or gesture), dialogue, or physical reaction to setting. Detail is the lifeblood of fiction.” John Gardner, On Becoming A Novelist
3) “In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations! Be sure not to discuss your hero’s state of mind. Make it clear from his actions. Nor is it necessary to portray many main characters. Let two people be the center of gravity in your story: he and she.” Anton Chekhov, in a letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886
Another illustration:
Jenny came down from her bedroom and sat at the dinner table. Then her mom began to argue with her about what she was wearing, and Jenny argued back, and after a few minutes Jenny got up and left the table and stormed out of the house.
That’s telling, of course. Here’s showing:
The pungent aroma of marinara reached up the stairwell and down the hallway, rubbing Jenny’s nose with fingers of bitter garlic and crushed tomato. She slipped the second earring in, lifted her black sweater from the bed, and went down the stairs to the dining room.
“Where do you think you’re going?” her mother said.
“Out.”
“Not dressed like that,” Dotty said. “You can go right back and change.”
Jenny pulled the chair and sat down.
“You can sit and you can eat,” Dotty jabbed a wooden spoon in her direction, “but I’m telling you right now you’re not going out like that.”
“Mah- ahm,” Jenny complained.
“Don’t gimme that,” Dotty said. “You damn well know the rules.”
This shows, in a scene, what the first passage only tells in summary. You’re trying to try to paint a picture, a scene, so that your reader can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell what is happening.
A further illustration: I like to say that ‘telling’ is like reading the nurse’s chart:
At two p.m. the nurse entered the room and found the patient having a heart attack. She began heart massage; the patient did not respond. She called for a medic, and sent him for a defibrillator.
That’s the telling version. It can be ‘shown’ if there is more care in painting a full scene for the reader, rather than simply delivering the ‘news.’ For example:
Nurse Jackie flipped the patient on the bed. Her face was blue. She banged with her fist on the woman’s breastplate. Once. Again. Outside the window an ambulance approached the hospital, its siren wailing.
“Wake up, damnit!” she shouted. And then turned toward the hallway, “Emergency!” she shouted. “I need a heart team in here!”
She turned back to the patient as a medic ran to her side.
“She’s cardiac,” Jackie said, and began mouth to mouth. She delivered a breath and then turned to find the medic was still there.
“Hey, Bright-Eyes, wake up. We need a crash cart in here. Now!”
Same information, just ‘shown’ rather than ‘told.’ In the ‘telling’ version, the reader has to imagine all the details, she just has the facts. In the ‘showing’ version, the details are supplied, the reader feels as if she is in the room, watching. That’s showing.
Check out Annie Dillard’s “The Giant Water-Bug,” which is a short chapter from her nonfiction book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:
At last I knelt on the island’s winter-killed grass, lost, dumbstruck, staring at the frog in the creek just four feet away. He was a very small frog with wide, dull eyes. And just as I looked at him, he slowly crumpled and began to sag. The spirit vanished from his eyes as if snuffed. His skin emptied and drooped; his very skull seemed to collapse and settle like a kicked tent. He was shrinking before my eyes like a deflating football.
Notice the use of verbs (crumpled, sag, drooped, collapse), and the use of simile: like a kicked tent…like a deflating football…
And Thoreau; here is an excerpt from Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack:
The breams are so careful of their charge that you may stand close by in the water and examine them at your leisure. I have stood over them half an hour at a time, and stroked them familiarly without frightening them, suffering them to nibble my fingers harmlessly, and seen them erect their dorsal fins in anger when my hand approached their ova, and have even gently taken them out of the water with my hand…. As you stand thus stooping over the bream in its nest, the edges of the dorsal and caudal fins have a singular dusty golden reflection, and its eyes, which stand out from its head, are transparent and colourless. Seen in its native element, it is a very beautiful and compact fish, perfect in all its parts, and looks like a brilliant coin fresh from the mint.
And perhaps it will help to elaborate just a bit on why these passages, in addition to being wonderful passages on nature, are also exemplary of ‘showing,’ as opposed to ‘telling,’ and it’s all about the way that they paint pictures for the reader with similes, metaphors, concrete sensory detail, and descriptive word choices.
Look at Dillard’s word choices: winter-killed grass, wide, dull eyes, he slowly crumpled and began to sag, spirit vanished from his eyes as if snuffed, skin emptied and drooped, skull seemed to collapse and settle like a kicked tent, shrinking…like a deflating football. Every line, every phrase, creates an image in the reader’s mind. It is nearly impossible to find a single line or phrase in this passage that does not paint a picture.
And Thoreau: suffering them to nibble my fingers harmlessly, seen them erect their dorsal fins in anger when my hand approached their ova, its edges… have a singular dusty golden reflection, it’s eyes… are transparent and colourless, looks like a brilliant coin fresh from the mint.
Again, every phrase paints a picture. He could simply have read from the patient’s chart: I stood in the water and watched the breams. They bit my fingers and got agitated when I stroked them. Their fins looked yellow, their eyes clear. But that doesn’t paint a picture, that’s the ‘news.’ Thoreau is not interested in providing the news, he wants to paint a picture, and he does.
There is an element of telling in every narrative, in order to sweep quickly past those events in the present action of the story that we do not want or need to depict in greater detail. The character dresses and brushes her teeth and makes coffee and puts on her coat and goes to the garage and starts the car and backs it from the driveway and puts it in gear and drives to work and hit me over the head with a typewriter, I’m bored to tears. We don’t want or need that level of ‘tracking motion.’ We can simply ‘tell’ that the character got up as normal and went to work, where she found on her desk a dozen roses, with a note written in a hand she did not recognize, and thus begins the present action of the story.
Likewise, we don’t need to describe the journey home; we can begin a new paragraph:
That night she sat staring at the roses, which she had placed in a vase on her table. The note was on the sofa beside her, and she took it up for the twentieth time and read it carefully. It said the same thing it had said when she’d found it with the roses. But when she put it down, she placed it upside down on the sofa and discovered an imprint on the reverse that she had not noticed in the bright glare of the office fluorescents, but which stood out in the soft lighting in her living room.
And even this is not ‘telling,’ but showing, because of the details: on the sofa beside her, for the twentieth time, bright glare of the office fluorescents, soft lighting in her living room. All of these bring an image to mind, and that is the essence of ‘showing’ instead of telling.
Again, there is an element of ‘telling’ in every narrative, and this is usually reserved for ‘exposition.’ What is exposition? Exposition is the background information that the reader needs to have in order to make sense of the present action of the narrative. But even exposition need not be ‘told,’ it can be ‘shown.’ And exposition can come in the form of flashbacks, which can be scenes, with characters and dialog, so that they can be the epitome of ‘showing.’
An example of exposition that is shown:
Sandra brought a carrot cake to my father’s 85th Birthday party, and all the old feelings washed over me in a tidal wave. I had not seen Sandra since 2007, when she’d brought her clarinet into the shop for repair and asked about my father, who had just turned 80. I’d heard the bell ring at the front door and looked up to see her walking through the entranceway, stunning as she had always been.
“Can you fix this?” she’d said, pushing the case across the counter.
I lifted the upper joint of her clarinet from its case. “What’s the problem?”
“The A,” she said. “Lost a pad.”
I toggled the key. “Hmm. Yes. Okay, no problem, I can replace that, just take me a few minutes. Can you wait?”
“Sure,” she said. “And I wanted to ask how your father was doing? Mom says he’s eighty this week?”
“Yes, thanks for asking,” I said, and pulled out the metal file drawer to look for an A pad while Sandra leafed through a book of saxophone scales I had left on the counter, and I tried to imagine what I might say to her. She didn’t know I’d been in love with her since the fifth grade, of course. Nor that I was still smitten. Well, that’s me, just a loser. But I was determined not to let on, don’t you know. I sanded the key and prepped the pad for glue.
“So, James,” Sandra said, looking up from the music book, and I looked up from my work.
“Yes?” I said.
“Are you still in love with me?”
So, this is exposition, it’s background information that the reader needs to have in order to make sense of the present action of the story, which is five years later, when Sandra brings a carrot cake to the father’s 85th birthday party. Moreover, it’s delivered as a flashback, ‘shown’ in a scene, with characters and dialog. So, even exposition can be ‘shown’ instead of ‘told.’
FILTERING:
A word concerning something called filtering. In his book, The Art of Fiction, John Gardner refers to this as “the failure to run straight at the image; that is, the needless filtering of the image through some observing consciousness. The amateur writes: ‘Turning, she noticed two snakes fighting in among the rocks.’ Compare: ‘She turned. In among the rocks, two snakes were fighting.’ …Generally speaking–though no laws are absolute in fiction–vividness urges that almost every occurrence of such phrases as ‘she noticed’ and ‘she saw’ be suppressed in favor of direct presentation of the thing seen.”
Or, again: Bette sat on the porch. A vintage VW Beetle sat parked at the curb across the street (instead of the filter: She saw a vintage VW Beetle). Extend it further: Not: She remembered that her father had one like it when she was a girl, but simply: Her father had one like it when she was a girl. We’re already in a close 3rd Person POV, it could only be her seeing and thinking.
CLICHES:
Clichés are stock phrases have become so overused that they have lost whatever freshness they once held for writers. What exactly is a cliché?
If you’re not sure what a cliché is, lighten up, these things happen, don’t get bent out of shape, let’s set the record straight: needless to say, as luck would have it, the long and short of it is that the devil is in the details. There is no time like the present, so take the bull by the horns, grab the tiger by the tail (kill two birds with one stone!), keep your chin up, it’s not too hot to handle because you’re tough as nails, this is your wakeup call, so take the plunge, go whole hog, the whole nine yards, you know what they say, put your best foot forward and knuckle down for a last-ditch effort, leave no stone unturned, give it the old college try, and you will find it’s easier said than done. It goes without saying it’s better late than never, so count your blessings, this is your moment of glory, and all in a day’s work. Anyway, last but not least, I won’t beat around the bush, that’s my two cents worth, you can bet your bottom dollar.
These phrases are no longer fresh, their meanings are diluted. As writers I always feel it is our job to describe these things with originality; that’s why readers turn to us, it’s why they read.
COMMENTING:
Commenting is when the narrator ‘comments’ on something, providing the reader with a judgment or opinion, in essence ‘telling’ the reader how she should feel about whatever is happening in the present action of the story. It can be a thematic sort of comment, like: …the outside silence–ironically–became deafening. Or it can be a personal comment: This trip was getting long, and not just mileage wise.
This is commenting: …and not just mileage wise. The narrator is pointing out an irony, a level of meaning that the narrator does not trust the reader to ‘get.’ But we have to learn to trust the reader to understand these levels of meaning. Some will get them, some will miss them, but all will resent being ‘told,’ as if they are not sharp enough to comprehend the author’s meanings.
MAKE IT SHORTER:
There is a famous line, attributed to many, about a long letter, that goes like this: sorry this is so long, I didn’t have time to make it shorter.
Revision is the process by which we edit out what is extraneous and sharpen our prose. Revision is the most important part of the writing process; we write the 1st draft just to get the story onto the page, but it is in the revision that we weed out all the clichés, purple prose, and mixed metaphors, etc., and refine the narrative.
ACTIVE VOICE:
An example of the passive voice is: caused her to fight. The passive voice is when the subject of the sentence is acted upon. The active voice is when the subject of the sentence acts upon the object. The active voice for this phrase would be: she fought. Passive: The pen was lifted by Pam. Active: Pam lifted the pen. Use the active voice.
BATMAN CAPTIONS:
Learning writers like to depict collisions, impacts, loud sounds with what I call Batman captions: BAM! POW! ZAP! But it is our job as writers to describe sounds in more original ways than this. TV shows and comic books can rely on this gimmick because they do not have the space for prose narrative; but we do, and we want to think that our readers deserve the real thing: Loretta was awakened from her gin-and-tonic slumber by what sounded like a metal garbage pail impacting against the front of the car, and then the car shifted and she heard whatever it was grinding against the undercarriage as they drove over it and Mick slowed the vehicle.