Category: Writers Learning from the World

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Meryl Streep’s One True Thing

Meryl Streep’s One True Thing

Have you ever seen Inside the Actors’ Studio? It was a long running show which interviewed actors about their craft. They have interviewed some greats, one of whom was Meryl Streep.

Is there anything the woman can’t do? She does drama to perfection, sings at performance level, and even though I was a bit doubtful whether she could move into comedy, was killer in The Devil Wears Prada.

Streep’s one true thing

To add insult to injury, she is exceptionally articulate about her craft. James Lipton, the host, asked how she could play unsympathetic characters, specifically an Australian woman in A Cry in the Dark, who was accused of murdering her infant daughter. In this biographical film, the woman was a Seventh Day Adventist who believed that showing emotion was inappropriate as it questioned God’s plan for her. This stoicism was read as unfeeling by the Australian public which turned against her. Thus, Streep had to play a seemingly cold and insensitive character.

Streep replied that when she prepared for a role, she tried to find the ‘one true thing’ which was true about herself and about the character. Once she found that one important thing, she could consult this one true thing within herself when she was making choices for her character. If it felt right for Meryl’s one true thing, it was also right for the character.

I think this is pretty damn brilliant and writers can take a leaf out of her book. Finding one true thing in our characters.

Applying one true thing

So, I have tried it with my writing. What I have found is that there is a spot in the middle of my chest, don’t ask me why, where that connection is made between me and my character. If I really get her desperation, why he would take such a big risk, who she is behind closed doors, then I can write from that spot because I feel what the character is feeling, even if the circumstances which I associate with the feeling might be different from the character’s.

If I can take into me the thing that is true for the character which is also true for me, I can write from that spot in the middle of my chest which connects me with the character in a deeper way than conventional methods.

For more, go to the next post, More on One True Thing.

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Showing Show and Tell

show

Showing Show and Tell

In another post on The Life of Pi, I discussed how the director of that movie gave us a powerful example of the power of show. Let’s look at the uses and effects of ‘show’ and ‘tell.’

‘Tell’ has its uses

Say you are inclined to write something like this:

He listened intently to the orders. He felt his throat tighten at the thought of what Serena told him to do. It was immoral and probably illegal. But he didn’t feel as if he had a choice. He felt as if the walls were closing in.

So, gets across the point that he (let’s call him Matthew) is very unhappy. Efficient way to do it. ‘Tell’ is useful if you need to establish some not very important point in the narrative but which the reader must nevertheless know. But this scene doesn’t seem to be one of these.

The power of show

Let’s rewrite the passage using more ‘show.’

“I can’t do that!” Matthew protested. “Come on, Serena, that’s practically, practically…”

“What, Matthew?” Serena turned the corners of her mouth up but her eyes didn’t change. “Illegal, immoral, unethical, all of the above?”

“I can’t, Serena, I just can’t.” He felt as if the walls were closing in on him.

Serena flipped away his protest. “And yet, you don’t really have a choice, do you?”

See, ‘show’ gives you a much better idea of who the characters are and how they interact. ‘Tell’ is like a semi-transparent screen you put in front of an action you’re observing. You can see but it’s not sharp and clear. ‘Show’ is the screen removed, where you are directly observing what’s going on. And with ‘show,’ the reader can come to his own conclusions about the characters rather than the writer telling how to feel about them.

This distinction is as important in a memoir as it is in fiction. You don’t want to tell your readers what happened; you want them to experience it—‘show’ territory.

Doesn’t ‘show’ take longer?

Yes, it often takes more words for ‘show’ than ‘tell.’ So what? Effectiveness, not efficiency, is what we are after here. The objective for the reader is to live your story not get to its end in record time.

When you want to focus the reader’s attention on particular aspects of the character’s life, these are good candidates for ‘show.’ When you want to glide over some things because they’re not germane to your main point but need to be there for the narrative to hang together, ‘tell’ might be useful.

A rule of thumb: If the point you want to establish is important (Sheila really does hate her brother; Matthew is a wimp; Serena has issues), dramatizing it by using ‘show’ is probably a good bet.

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Show Versus Tell in the Movie, The Life of Pi

Pi

Pi

Show Versus Tell in the Movie, The Life of Pi

Have you seen the movie ‘Life of Pi’? Not the book, the movie.  The book, what can I say? Loved the beginning where the protagonist is sampling different religions, loved the end where (spoiler alert!) it’s not clear which of the stories he tells is true. But the middle? Honestly, a boy—Pi— in a boat with a tiger. For a long time.

I heard somewhere it called magic realism but I guess I’m just not refined enough to get it. To me, it was a boy in a boat with a tiger. For a long time.

So, I was a bit reluctant to see the movie given the boy-boat-tiger thing. However, Ang Lee is such a good director and he was getting a lot of praise for the movie, so I allowed myself to be coerced into seeing it. And, as anticipated, the whole boy on tiger thing played prominently even though Ang Lee did an amazing job with the visuals.

But it wasn’t that which struck me as the master stroke.

Two possible endings in the Life of Pi

In the last scenes, Pi is relating his story to the insurers of the boat. They don’t believe the tiger thing, so to satisfy them, he makes up a story about he, his mother and the ship’s cook surviving in the boat (sans tiger). He says the cook killed his mother and then died himself. The insurers go away with a story they can accept.

But that’s not the brilliant part. The brilliant part is how that last scene is shot. Gérard Depardieu, the famous French actor, appears for about a minute at the beginning of the film as the cook being nasty to the boy’s mother on board before the disaster. That’s all we see of him.

Which was odd. Would Depardieu sign on for a minute on screen? I don’t think any famous actor would accept what is essentially a bit part. And then it hit me.

The power of show over tell

I would bet money Ang Lee (well, a small amount) originally filmed an entire alternate story with featured Depardieu’s character of the cook prominently. But when it came to the editing, he realized that if he showed (SHOW) the scenes with the cook on the boat, it would become too real and compete with the story which we have just spent two hours watching. So, instead, he has Pi just tell (TELL) the story. And because we don’t see the alternate story, as viewers, we believe the one we were shown.

This is a wonderful example of the power of ‘show’. When you tell something, as in the alternate story, it has some power but when you show it, as in the story in the movie, it is the reality we buy.

This is why writing teachers harp so much on ‘show’ versus ‘tell.’ ‘Tell’ gives you one effect and ‘show’ another. In the post called Showing Show and Tell, I’ll walk you through an example how to use the power of show in your writing.

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Author Choices

author

Author Choices

Readers don’t necessarily realize that all along, an author is making choices. The story seems immutable and inevitable and actually speaks well of the writer’s ability to keep the reader in the continuous dream.

But I find that writers can unknowingly believe the same thing. When you’re in the throes of creation or know your characters so well that they take on a life of their own, there can be a sense of the foreordained.

But your choices have an impact that may not be immediately obvious. I want to use the British and Belgian Professor Ts, discussed in the last post, as an example.

Author, actor, director choices

First off, I know that the writer does not reign supreme in TV or films, wrong though that is. The final performance is shaped by the actor, director, etc. But for our purposes, let’s pretend that the writer is in complete control.

The Belgian Professor T has almost no facial expressions, except for a fixed slight grimace/grin like a clown before make-up. His movements are rigid and intonation flat. He makes no eye contact. He seems to have quite a severe case of OCD and/or Asperger’s syndrome.

I think that the British series decided to portray Professor T as less impaired. He has a wider, although still limited, range of emotion. He makes eye contact. His movements, while not fluid, are more a man with extremely controlled feelings rather than one unaware he has a body.

Why this makes a difference

These seem like relatively minor differences but they impact the show and, in my opinion, may even contribute to why the British series is not as fascinating as the Belgian one.

Because Brit Professor T is more connected to his colleagues (eye contact and more emotion), the supporting characters seem to have greater expectations of him for change. They pull him aside to urge him to be less awkward and more tactful.

But in the Belgian version, his coworkers have pretty much accepted him as is. He is so far out of the norm that they make little or no effort to ‘reform’ him. He is the outside observer.

I think the Belgian professor is therefore a more cohesive, if odd, character than the Brit who has one foot in the normal world and one in his own.  The Brit’s duality causes uneasiness in the viewer as you’re not quite sure what or who he is.

So, even a fairly benign choice in a character can affect its effectiveness.

An easier example

The example I just used is so subtle I’m afraid I haven’t been able to make the point. So for my sake, let’s have a more obvious one. The hero betrays his best friend on ethical grounds. The author can go any number of ways from here. The friend can see the error of his ways. Or try to get revenge. The hero might realize he’s been too judgmental. The friend might have a fatal accident as a result of the hero’s decision. Any of these choices take the novel down a unique and mutually exclusive path.

So, sometimes it can produce a better novel if you play with the idea of taking a pivotal moment in the plot and considering a different track. A huge pain in the neck but you may be surprised at how often this results in a better story.

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Professor T

Professor

Professor T

Professor T is a 2015-2018 Belgian TV drama series set in Antwerp about an eccentric professor of criminology at Antwerp University. The professor, played by Koen De Bouw, is called in by the Federal Judicial Police on particularly difficult cases. This, despite having no, or offensive, people skills and a serious case of OCD which manifests itself in a need for routine and cleanliness. But it may be these very attributes which make him so valuable. Social convention doesn’t prevent him from speaking aloud truths others are afraid to voice and his obsessive focus on detail allows him to observe patterns missed by less single-minded colleagues.

Sounds like it might be a bit of a bore, no? An often silent and always awkward main character who has a tight lid on his emotions. An engaging protagonist is usually articulate and willing to share his inner most thoughts. These mechanisms connect us with the fictional character.

But this is a case of the exception proving the rule. Though often silent, when he does speak, Professor T has insights which pull together disparate events into a cohesive whole. And just as importantly, makes observations on the human condition which are both deep and impactful. The latter often through quotes from his wide knowledge of literature and philosophy.

Professor T also has extravagant hallucinations/dreams/imaginings. Students as clucking chickens, the Dean as a Roman senator, detectives as barking dogs. An intense tango with a woman he gives little overt indication of caring for.

In this clever way, the writers imply an active and interesting inner life even though none of the usual literary devices are employed. The viewer likes, sympathizes, and cares about him. And is hooked.

I was sorry there were only four seasons of the show.

Professor T, the British version

I thought, however, that all would be right with the world when a British version of Professor T was announced. Starring Ben Miller, an actor who had played a socially awkward detective in a television series called Death in Paradise. Again, a difficult role as not only can he not express his emotions (such as loving one of the other detectives) but it’s possible that he himself doesn’t know or understand how he is feeling.

A perfect actor for the role, I thought.

So, I was looking forward to the first season.

It was okay.

Not awful but not great.

Even with an excellent lead actor, similar supporting characters, some of the same plots and even the hallucinations thrown in (although not so extravagant as the Belgian production but I think that was more probably the British series wanting to do them on the cheap than the English Professor T’s imaginings being less vivid). Just okay.

Why is that? The quality of the actors? Maybe but not the lead for sure. The subtitles? But usually a program without subtitles, i.e. the Brit one, is easier to watch. Cultural differences? I didn’t notice any big ones.

But I do have a theory and it has to do with the choices the writers made in both the British and Belgium series which made quite large differences in the quality despite the similarities in other ways. In the next post, I’ll discuss the impact of author choices.