Show Versus Tell in the Movie, The Life of 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.

June 13, 2022June 13, 2022

Breaking the Continuous Dream

As discussed in the previous post, the writer’s job is to create a continuous dream for his readers. When he can’t, the reader is confused or bored or will abandon the reading. The breaking of this dream often consists of inadvertent slips by the writer—ones which are eminently avoidable.

Here are some ways writers can break the continuous dream for readers:

Implausibility in plot

If the reader ever thinks anything like “He wouldn’t do that,” or “That wouldn’t happen,” or “How did she get there?,” you’ve pulled the reader out of your world by making him skeptical of events in the novel. The detective who just happens to be in the right place to catch the murderer, the heroine who overcomes using a power the reader didn’t know she had, the lightning which luckily hits the secret cache—all of these can make the reader pull her head figuratively out of the continuous dream enough to have a moment of doubt, confusion, or disbelief.

Erratic characters

By erratic, I don’t mean ‘runs around a lot’ or even crazy. Rather, I mean characters who suddenly become different people in the middle of the novel, usually because the writer needs them to do something uncharacteristic to move the plot along. The loving devoted father who suddenly slaps his son so hard he crashes into the secret room; the villain who frees the hero in a sudden rush of sentiment (thus allowing the hero to live on for a sequel); the taciturn and sulky teen who suddenly breaks into a peon of love for his would-be significant other.

I don’t mean to suggest that none of the above could happen, but you’ve at least got to give the readers enough clues to this surprising aspect of the character that they don’t get confused about who the character is. If it comes out of the blue, it breaks the continuous dream.

Diction

I once read a mystery novel where a psychologist, a biker and a model were talking (don’t ask how that happened—another example of breaking the continuous dream). I suddenly realized that I couldn’t tell who was saying what unless the author tagged the dialog with a name. They all used the same kind of vocabulary, had similar insights on the world, and spoke in beautifully formed sentences. I don’t think so.

You don’t have to stereotype your characters but you do have to be aware that how they say something can be as important as what they say.

Otherwise, you again pop the continuous dream.

Grammar and other stuff

I know, totally boring. But if the reader starts to think, “Shouldn’t that be ‘affect’ not ‘effect?,’” or “Which ‘he’ are we talking about? Jordan, Guy, Allan?” or “Is that the right spelling?,” you’ve lost them. They’re thinking about the mechanics of the work and not where you are hoping to drive to (dangling participles also a problem but I like them).

Keeping a continuous dream is not the same as magic

Dodging these pitfalls can up the chances of your reader remaining in the continuous dream. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that doing this conscientiously is a necessary, but not sufficient condition, to great writing. This is where craft, practice, and magic come in. It’s one of those unfair things—if you commit these errors, you and your reader pay for it. But avoiding them doesn’t guarantee an enthralling narrative. Sorry to have to break this to you (pun intended—breaking your continuous dream—might not be a pun if I have to explain it. Sorry).

June 4, 2022June 4, 2022

Creating the Continuous Dream

John Gardner wrote The Art of Fiction, a classic coverage of learning to write. If you haven’t read it, it is worthwhile although I find him a bit rigid (e.g. he believes that people can have such faults of the soul that they should just walk away from the keyboard). However, he does have one concept—creating the continuous dream—which I find immensely helpful when talking about the difference between a reader and a writer. Okay, the obvious—one reads and one writes—but the continuous dream helps reveal their different roles in fiction.

The reader, the writer, and the continuous dream

As a reader, I want to sink into the world created by the author, to immerse myself completely in the story, to identify with the characters, to feel at home in the writer’s world whether it be a planet in outer space, a different reality, or the story of your life.

When you’re successful in creating this continuous dream, the reader will not even realize he’s in one. He’s likely to experience it as, “I couldn’t put it down,” or “I wanted to make sure the guy got his comeuppance.” For me, I know the continuous dream is working when I near the end of the book and am worried that things are not going to turn out as I want them to for the protagonists.

So, according to Gardner, the job of the writer is to create this continuous dream—that is, a world that a reader can drop into and remain in happily until the end. You want to weave a world which is completely engrossing and persuasive.

Easier said than done, of course. This is where our creativity and mastery of the craft come in. Which is, of course, the subject of this entire blog. But there is one aspect of the continuous dream I want to focus on: the breaking of it.

Breaking the continuous dream

When the reader gets pulled out of the world you created, when she momentarily ‘wakes up,’ she doesn’t say, “Oh, gosh, the writer broke my continuous dream.” Instead, she’s likely to experience this discontinuity as boredom, disinterest, or confusion. She’s more likely to say, “I put it down and just couldn’t get back to it,” or “I tried to get into it, but it didn’t grab me” or, the worst, “I lost interest.”

The problem for the writer is that these types of comments are minimally useful because they provide no clues on how to make the novel fascinating and unputdownable. Nor, realistically, is it the job of the reader to do so. The reader’s job is to read; it’s the writer’s job to figure out how to make the writing compelling so the reader will want to read it.

Of course, writing can be successful largely because of the magic I discuss elsewhere. But there are other, more mechanical means, by which the writer can inadvertently break the continuous dream. What these means are and how to fix them is the subject of the next post.

May 28, 2022May 28, 2022

Description Gone Wild

First off, let me admit I’m not much of a description gal either in reading or writing. In many novels, I have to force myself to slow down enough to read the description or go with my default which is to skip more than three of four lines of it. In my own writing, I rarely describe the characters physically and my descriptions of the environment are, to be kind, limited. So, you need to factor this in when you read what I have to say about description.

Sensuous detail

Writers are exhorted to include all the sensuous detail. And by and large, that’s good advice. You want the reader to smell the coffee, feel the silk of the pillow, hear the rattle of the car, see the volcano erupting, and maybe even gasp aloud at the plot twist you cleverly inserted.

Having said that, it can go too far. I recreate a piece I once heard at a writing workshop.

I arrived at the entrance. It was a big grey stone building with bars on the lower windows and mesh on the upper ones. I knocked at the door. It was opened by a guard. He had on a grey uniform with a black belt. He had me sign in. He handed me a pass. The buzzer sounded to let me through the door. I walked down a long corridor. The walls were painted grey and nothing was hung on them. I got to the next checkpoint. There was another guard, also in grey with a black belt. He looked at the pass the first guard had given me and pressed the button which buzzed the door open. I walked down the long grey corridor, then took a left turn down another and found room 45.

I’ll quit before I fall asleep. This blow-by-blow description includes a lot of detail (although sensuous is in question). To my mind, it is not a useful piece of description.

I take that back, perhaps. In the hands of a skilled writer, the entrance into the building could have been valuable if the intent was to show the grey hopelessness of the surroundings. But then you need to rejigger it to emphasize this. In its present iteration, it is more a litany of steps rather than the creation of a specific mood.

The use of description

Description needs to be in service of the story. That is, an account of the countryside view is to establish how isolated the mansion is; you have to mention that Alice has dark hair so she’s less likely to be seen in a dark corridor when eavesdropping. Every part, including description, needs to be in service of the narrative. If it is not, no matter how beautiful, you need to give it a good hard look to decide if it stays or is consigned to the ‘extra’ file.

The annoying part of writing is, of course, that there are always exceptions to every rule. Some writers’ descriptions cause swoons in their readers’ ranks and perhaps you aspire to that. Okay, fine. However, I bet if you did a close analysis of a novel whose descriptions you particularly admire, you’d find that the descriptions by and large still are in service of the story as well as being beautiful.

The trick is to know whether you can ignore this practice or are better off sticking to the tried and true. See my upcoming post on breaking the rules. Obviously, and ultimately, only you can make that decision. But for the rest of us, I think it is well to keep in mind that description should be in service of the story, whether to establish mood, or anchor a plot point, or anything else which will help the reader stay in the continuous dream.

April 1, 2022March 25, 2022

If You Write, Do You Enjoy Reading Less?

I have at least one friend who has accused me of spoiling mystery novels for him. Every change of point of view, forced plot point, or Deus ex Machina moment kicked him out of the story. It spoiled his enjoyment of the whole book. Will this happen to you?

Yes

Unfortunately. At least, when you first start paying attention to your own choice of words and methods. As you perfect your technique, it’s natural to notice when others do it well or poorly.

So you project a future of reading pleasure destroyed just to build up a shaky repertoire of story-telling skills. Hardly seems worth it, does it?

Okay, bad news but the good news is that it is a temporary condition for two reasons: it eventually enhances your enjoyment of reading and there is a way to still enjoy novels short on craft.

Reading augmented

In the by-gone days when you were ‘just’ a reader, there would have been at least some novels of which you said, “I couldn’t get into it” or “It was kind of confusing” or “I didn’t like the main character.”

You put them away unsatisfied. It looked like it would have been a good story. Other books by this author have been. This leaves you with a vaguely uncomfortable feeling. However, since you have a life, you move onto the next novel on your list.

But as a writer, you start to see why the novel didn’t work. There wasn’t enough forward action. All that description slowed down the plot. The biker, the psychologist, and the fashion model all sounded the same (in a mystery novel I actually read).

Won’t make you like the novel any better but it provides you with the satisfaction of solving the puzzle of your reaction.

In fact, a good grasp of writing principles actually heightens your enjoyment of really fine novels. I first realized this when reading No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod. Two parts of my brain were operating simultaneously. One part was crying and being completely with the character and the other was admiring. So that’s how he did it.

You can remark on how skillfully the author included scenes where the hero was a fine but troubled fellow so that your heart aches for him when he causes his own downfall. You can see why the marriage of two minor but charming characters is told rather than shown to allow the romance of the main characters to keep center stage by being shown

So in the end, understanding what makes a good story allows you to enjoy good ones more and identify mistakes in others’ writing which you can avoid in your own.

Getting around this problem

But you don’t want to spend the next however many years hating to read while you build up your writing skills.

I have a simple but effective answer. Pick what you like in the particular novel or author and read for that.

Agatha Christie was a great plotter but her character development (aside from caricature) was practically nil. But I go back to her again and again.

Other authors may write a nail-biting cliff-hanger by having his character do a completely unlikely thing. Enjoy the nail biting, ignore the pushed around heroine. The hero flourishes his hat with the plume of feathers in the novel set in the Victorian era. Ignore the historical anachronism and enjoy the romance.

If you focus on what the author does well, you can still enjoy her work even if she might be wanting on other fronts. After all, you’re not perfect either, are you?