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.

June 24, 2022June 24, 2022

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 17, 2022June 13, 2022

Editing While You Write

There are some authors, like Alistair MacLeod, author of No Great Mischief, who are well-known for editing their work in progress–they have a penchant to pause over each word, looking for the perfect one.

Some writers also are in the habit of stopping during a writing session to evaluate the quality of their writing. But by and large, I don’t think it’s a good idea. If stopping to edit resulted in “Hey, what a lovely turn of phrase,” I would withdraw the objection. But more often, it degrades into a negative judgement fest. More typical thoughts are “This is junk” or “I can’t do this” or “It’s a stupid idea.” Or any other phrases which portray the work as flat, stale, and unprofitable.

In addition, if you edit during the creation phase, you may make premature judgments. Half way in, you may convince yourself that a particular character doesn’t work, can never work, and has no right in the novel. But if you continue including the character, you may find that there is a crucial role for him which only reveals itself as the story roles out.

Frankly, I think this is all a manifestation of writer’s block, so I would avoid giving the pernicious phenomenon a chance to infect you.

Isn’t editing a good thing?

Absolutely. It is the time to catch obvious mistakes of place or season but also a chance to decide whether the whole thing hangs together and whether your characters are as compelling as you want them to be.

But you do it once you’ve finished what you have to say. At least the first draft. Then, you can go to town on editing and even should.

How to avoid self-editing while writing

It can be a hard habit to get out of but I encourage you to try. Instead, just keep writing even if you are morally certain that the scene isn’t going anywhere. Take the scene to its logical conclusion before you wash your hands of it.

I know this feels as if you are pushing a rock up a hill, but often I have found that how you feel about the writing as you are writing has little relationship to its quality or usefulness. A piece you are convinced isn’t worth keeping, may be considered by others as a great, or at least a good, piece. I know you don’t believe me, but honestly, it often works out that way.

Unfortunately, the converse can be true. You think the piece you wrote is Booker Prize material only to get a lukewarm reaction. Just goes to show you that you are not good judge of you own writing in the heat of the moment.

It may seem to make sense to edit as you go, but this is your efficiency side talking. I hope you let your creative side take you where it will rather than stopping to judge a work in progress.

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.