The Narrative Craft Forum Show Don't Tell - Exercise 3

SHOW DON’T TELL

This is the most fundamental aspect of effective writing.  Whether writing a term paper or the next best American novel, this piece of advice applies. Nothing persuades your audience more than concrete and specific details. Details create the intensity of the situation and characterize the people in your story. Beginning writers want to tell you how they feel about their characters, versus letting the character�s actions define them.

�Clark was a mean man who treated his family badly. He was an alcoholic with a temper who liked to beat up on his son. However, his wife planned to kill him and stop the abuse. �

This example is just, well, horrible. And you will see it thousands and thousands of times when you read beginning writers.

A standard rewrite would characterize Clark through his actions and his family�s reactions to him.

�Vera stiffened when she heard Clark�s car door slam. Already, in the driveway, she could hear him spewing profanity at any and every thing. The front door whipped open and Clark strode in, his hands already curled into fists.  �Where�s that damn boy?� He said. His tongue poked at the beads of green snot on his moustache.  He stomped into the kitchen, carrying away the smell of Bourbon and sweat. Vera caressed the butcher knife below her seat. �Soon, you son of a b***h.�

This rewrite is much longer and pulls the reader into the action. Show show show. Pick details that illustrate the personality of your characters and put them into action.  Does that mean your story is going to be longer? Yes. No. Both. Active details fill the page with a scene but also they hasten the action and tell the story without having to �tell� it. As Mark Twain says �Don�t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.�

The Five Senses

On the top of each of your stories you should write The Five Senses. Too often when a writer tries to show and not tell she focuses on the visual aspects of the scene. To convince somebody that the world you have created is real you must mimic reality and how we experience it. When you bite into a lemon you taste the tart on your tongue, you feel the sticky juice running down your fingers, you hear the crisp snap of pulp, the bitter air fills your nose, and finally you see the shredded rinds on the ground. 

Pay attention to all of the senses and people will pay attention to your stories.

Excessive Detail

Pick details that further the story along. Don�t write about every damn dust mote in a room unless every damn dust mote is going to come alive and kill the character. Leave out the parts that people would skip when reading. 

Linda Seger in Making a Good Script Great says �no scenes off the spine.� She is referring to screenwriting but part of this principle applies to fiction. Avoid unnecessary scenes and details. Your details and character actions should move the story along and mean something. In a novel we are allowed a little more freedom. We get to look inside the character�s head and feel their response to the situation. We develop an intimacy with the protagonist and want to know more. That�s why you read the novel first and see the movie later. However, each of their thoughts should reveal, should do something for the story.

Below is an example from Cormac McCarthy�s Child of God, which effectively characterizes the protagonist with proper use of detail.

 �She was lying as he had left her and she was cold and wooden with death. Ballard howled curses until he was choking and then he knelt and worked her around onto his shoulders and struggled up. Scuttling down the mountain with the thing on his back he looked like a man beset by some ghastly succubus, the dead girl riding him with legs bowed akimbo like a monstrous frog.�

It is your use of details that creates your voice. Contrast the rugged and filthy voice of  McCarthy to the serene tone of Alice McDermott.

From Charming Billy, by Alice McDermott.

�It had rained that day, too, but the crowd at the cemetery was so thick that their umbrellas had made a solid canopy. And even if you weren�t standing under it, you were so well flanked by people that only the top of your head and shoulders could get wet. And out of the crowd, in one silent moment as the coffin was lowered into the grave, Billy Sheehy�s dad, all unrehearsed, began to sing. �Danny Boy,� of course. A lovely tenor that almost sounded like a record being played, what with the raindrops on all the umbrellas.�

Tip

Upon Mark Twain�s death it was discovered that he had ledgers filled with observations of people and crowds.

Sit in a crowded area and write down everything you see people doing. Keep author intrusion out. 

Instead of writing -

�She spilled soda on her dress and I wondered if she was going to be late to class. �

Write -

�The soda fell from the blonde girl�s fingers. It cascaded down her white dress leaving a stain like an inkblot. She cussed under her breath and gathered up her books. . .�

Exercise 3

Write a scene about a character with a villainous profession. Hitman, slumlord, mugger, lawyer, whatever. Show us what they do without telling us. Here�s the catch, make the character likeable.