The Confabulator Cafe

Category: Mechanics

  • Surprise!

    In character development, as in a lot of other aspects of writing, having a good reader is an essential part of the writing process.  A response helps clarify if you have communicated what you intended to, or if you have written down quite another world than the one inside your head.

    Classic writing class instruction includes the axioms “Show, don’t tell,” and “specific is terrific.”  These have good ideals at their heart, especially concerning character development. Only Republican presidential debate transcripts are more agonizing to read than paragraphs of development through description.  “Mary Sue was a brave girl, intelligent, but understated.  She enjoyed eccentric clothing and pop music of the indie persuasion, and her kindness was obvious.  But she had a dark side, too.  Mary Sue was a passionate mix of the good and evil that lies in all of us.”

    However, if an author eschews explicit narration altogether, s/he may find that the audience takes away some surprising notions about a character.  This is where a good reader comes into the mix.  My brother is probably my best reader (as my husband has to be more supportive than critical), and after he read one of my novels, he asked me, “Was the judge supposed to sympathize with the government or the protestors?”  I launched into a tirade of explanation–how could this have even been in question?  Alas, if I wanted the audience to understand the judge’s motivations, I would have had to tell them what they were.

    When I’m writing, I always know if my character is inscrutable or creepy.  Sometimes I don’t let my audience know, though.   I know who I meant to introduce; only my audience can tell me who they met.

  • POV Corrupts

    Here’s my new saying: “POV corrupts. Omniscient POV corrupts absolutely.”

    Alright, I’m butchering the popular euphemism about power and corruption, but I think I can use my new quote to make a fair point. Bear with me.

    When writing fiction, I only have a few choices for point of view. I’m going to ignore the bizarre (e.g. second person view, or even weirder, first person plural) and focus upon the most common choices in modern fiction: third person limited, third person omniscient, and first-person.

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  • How documentary films show the need to show.

    One of the things I write is scripts for documentaries. If you’ve ever seen a documentary you may have asked yourself “I wonder how much this has been manipulated to bolster a certain point of view?” The answer is, that varies a lot! It ultimately depends on how much the filmmaker tries to “tell” the audience what conclusions to come to. I think at the heart of this question is the matter of showing versus telling and here’s how it applies to writing as well as filmmaking.

    I often hear the writing advice “Show don’t tell.” I agree with this most of the time, in writing and in filmmaking. For example in a documentary it might be easier to interview a subject about an exciting event, but it would be more satisfying to show the audience that event by filming it directly! The pitfalls of telling not showing are clear. But what happens when a movie is all show and no tell?


    When a piece of art is experimental there is more heavy lifting required of the audience and therefore more possible interpretations of the work. This doesn’t only go for films. I can think of examples of writing that are experimental and require some work from the reader. These include the stream of consciousness writing by William S. Burroughs, the postmodernism of Kathy Acker and the babbling prose of Steve Katz.

    In film school I had to watch a lot of experimental films. Some of them were more enjoyable than others, but overall the experience of watching experimental films taught me how to meet my audience halfway. What I mean by this is that I learned to strike a balance between showing and telling, between spoon-feeding the audience a message or leaving everything ambiguous and making the audience do all the work of interpretation. I don’t want to manipulate my audience into seeing only a certain point of view on a subject, but I think relying on audience interpretation too much is an unfair onus to place on people who come to my work with some expectation of being entertained.

    So, mostly show.

  • Show and Tell on a Dark and Stormy Night

    There’s a reason we hear “show, don’t tell” all the way back to elementary school. It’s sound advice. It’s the bedrock of a good story. It’s not just a good idea—it’s the law.

    Despite being repeated forever, the advice isn’t entirely clear, especially to early writers. In fact, the advice is very “telly” and not at all “showy.”

    Let’s see if I can clarify the difference between the two.

     

    Telling:

    It was a dark and stormy night. Mortimer drove his yellow and green Ford pickup truck up the winding road toward the haunted castle. He was dressed in jeans and a red striped shirt with three buttons.

    He saw lightning flash in a jagged spike that hit the topmost turret built of ghostly gray stones. The road was muddy and filled with potholes, making it difficult to drive. A second flash of lightning struck the road in front of him, revealing the pale form of a woman dressed in a white gown with billowing sleeves and a bodice laced up the front. Her golden hair was dry and didn’t flutter in the wind.

    She lifted her arm and pointed at Mortimer. The woman’s face contorted and aged, and she gave a high pitched wail that terrified Mortimer.

    He lost control of the truck and ran off the road into the darkness below.

     

    Showing:

    Mortimer squinted through the windshield, trying to make out the dark road through the rain and sleet speckling the glass. The cracked steering wheel bit at his fingers, but he didn’t dare ease his grip. Twice he’d lost traction in the mud, and the truck had nearly gone over the side of the mountain.

    Lightning hit the turret of the castle up ahead, and Mortimer winced. He dared to take one hand off the wheel long enough to wipe a trickle of sweat from his temple. The fisherman in the village had told him it was haunted, but that was ridiculous. Wasn’t it? He wiped away another bead of sweat and doubled his grip on the wheel.

    A second bolt of lightning struck, and the road before him lit up like a flare. Mortimer swallowed a yelp of panic. A woman stood out in the cold and wet. Her hair and white dress were still and dry in the storm. Mortimer rubbed his eyes with a white-knuckled fist. It had to be an illusion.

    As he crept the truck closer, Mortimer’s headlights illuminated the woman. His hair rose from his arms and scalp. The woman lifted her arm and pointed, and her face morphed into a haggish, ugly scowl. She opened her mouth and the scream she let out shot cold fear through his spine.

    Mortimer swerved to avoid coming close to her. The truck’s bald tires slid across the mud and hit a pothole. In panic, Mortimer spun the wheel into the slide, but it did no good. The vehicle jounced against the embankment, slamming Mortimer’s head into the driver’s window, and the truck went over the side into the ravine.

    As he fell, the woman’s wail followed him, drowning out the screams from his own throat.

    So, what’s the difference? One is certainly longer, though that happened by accident. The change has more to do with focusing on the main character. He doesn’t care about the color of his truck. He’s not thinking about that. He doesn’t have reason to think about what he’s wearing, either. And the billowing sleeves and laced bodice of the woman in white aren’t likely to cross his mind unless he happens to be a clothes designer.

    The details are confined to what he sees and what he’s experiencing. It’s not enough to tell us that Mortimer is afraid. Show us the sweat trickling from his hairline. Don’t tell us the road is slick. Show us Mortimer white-knuckling the steering wheel while he fights to keep control of the vehicle.

    There will always be some telling in everything. But where you can, show it.

    Is it clearer, or did I muddy it up even worse?

  • Action!

    I hate writing action scenes. I’m abysmal at it. I write and re-write my action scenes, and even when I’m done I’m not quite sure I got them right. I’d rather just say “and then they had an epic fight” instead of describing the action, blow by blow.

    I skim over the action scenes so I don’t have to explain them. Explaining is hard!

    But it’s not just the action scenes. I have a tendency to want to summarize all of important scenes so I don’t have to delve into the detail.

    I fight with myself constantly to be sure I’m showing, not telling. It’s poor, lazy writing when writers tell instead of show. I think it shows more about the character of the writer, not the character in the story – the amount of telling instead of showing in a novel.

    Telling is heavy handed. It forces your readers to think what you want them to think without any art.

    Showing allows your readers to think for themselves, and apply their own emotions and interpretations.

    But, I’m telling you why showing is better than telling. Allow me to give you an example to “show” what I mean about showing vs. telling.

    Telling: Jasmine was really sad and frustrated.
    Showing: Hot tears coursed down Jasmine’s cheeks and she slammed her fists down on the table.

    I also like to use dialog to show rather than tell. It’s easier than showing by describing.

    Telling: Emma was skeptical of her friend’s claim.
    Showing: Emma frowned. “You really expect me to believe that?”

    Which do you find more engaging? More interesting? Better writing? Do you like it when the writer tells you what to think, or do you like drawing your own conclusions?

    I know which I prefer, which is why I fight with myself so hard to be the writer I like to read.

  • Is that a banana in your pocket, or are you trying to kill me?

    What do you see?
    What's important in your scene? Show, don't tell.

    I’ve already blogged here and elsewhere about my difficulty writing description. My prose tends to be terse and action-oriented, much like the television, movies, and comic books that have influenced my work. I think in pictures, and write only what needs to be shown.

    This was not always the case.

    Back in college, the most baffling comment I ever received from an instructor was to “show, don’t tell.” I had no idea what this meant. I assumed that it meant that I needed more description, but I discovered it was really more than that. It was about setting the scene and putting the reader there with my character.

    It’s one thing to say, “There was someone in my apartment.” That’s telling. It’s quite another thing to show the scene. In order to show the reader what was happening, I had to learn to write on a different level.

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  • Show Me Yours, and I’ll Show You Mine

    For a couple semesters in college, I tried my hand at being a photographer.  I was average at best, but enthusiasm carried me through the classes.  Of all the things that I learned from both a technical and aesthetic standpoint, the critique sessions are what stick with me.

    I have very clear memories of my professor standing in front of the far wall of the classroom where all the students’ assignments had been mounted.  He’d walk up to each photograph, hunch over to examine it, and scowl.  Then he’d invariably say the following, “You shouldn’t need a caption to tell me what it’s about.”

    I think about that phrase all the time.

    Maybe it’s because our defeats cut sharper memories than our victories.  Perhaps that’s why they motivate us so well, because they don’t easily fade.  I prefer to think that this particular memory endures because it was really great advice.  In essence, the professor was saying to any of us who were listening: show me, don’t tell me.

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  • Handing Over the Keys

    “All meanings, we know, rely on the key of interpretation.” – George Eliot

    The axiom in writing is always “show, don’t tell.” With due respect to the originator, sometimes in writing, you should tell. In fact, that is one of the advantages of prose over screenwriting. In screenwriting, you are forced to show out of an inability to tell without seeming fake.

    The question becomes, how much do you want to leave open for interpretation? If you want your reader to really get your theme, you can hit them over the head with it. I know a writer that once told me you should never leave anything open to the interpretation of your audience. I disagree. I want the reader to think about what I wrote and what it might mean.

    There are a lot of readers out there who like to work a little bit when they read. They like to think about the message of your story and decode the various metaphors. There are some that would rather you tell them. Generally, however, you can tell them your theme without bludgeoning them with it.

    Character is defined by thought and action. Story is essentially putting characters in a situation and seeing what they do. What they do, and what they think about their situation is how the reader gets to know them.

    These days, everyone wants to see action and dialogue. Readers have been conditioned by film to look for those two things.  Still, we cannot forget that prose writing, is in essence an interior art. We have the ability to hear our POV characters thoughts. We should take advantage of that.

    Humans think about what is happening to them. Characters should do the same when there is time to do so, and when it doesn’t slow down action.  Action and dialogue are generally vague conveyors of message. Thought is more specific. The art is in finding the balance between the two.

    Writing is a very personal art, a conversation between two people, the artist and the reader. Trust your reader and work with them. Know the expectations of readers in your genre and write to them, then defy them. Make them think. Make them feel like they are a part of your art.  Some genres allow more introspection than others, so know what your readers’ expectations are. Some allow more telling, while others only want action.

    As you can see, I will not suggest doing one and not the other. I will not say “never” tell. Never doesn’t exist in writing. There is only what works, and what doesn’t. Whatever you do, if you do it well, that is all that matters.

    Show, tell, allow interpretation, or explain it all. What matters is that you keep writing, and you write the way you love.  Personally, I love handing over the keys to the reader and letting them drive awhile.

  • Character development

    In the past – say around Dickens’ time – often writers would employ the clunky technique of establishing characters by stopping the story and then describing a character in detail: clothing, shape of brow, past indiscretions, jaw shape, blemishes, the whole bit. Characters were doomed to their roles from the start by birthmarks, the shape of their heads, club feet, curly hair, a “laughing mouth” – both negative and positive visual descriptors chosen by authors to pre-dispose their characters.

    Of course, that method was passé when Hemingway started his writing career in the 1920’s and thoroughly obsolete within another ten years as authors realized that stories should be developed by characters who reacted to forces around them and revealed their true natures as the story progressed.

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  • On Setting the “Scene” in Technical Writing

    All writing is persuasive writing—first you must persuade the reader to keep reading, if for no other reason than to justify your labor. You must persuade those who paid for your work that their money has not been wasted, and you must persuade your inevitable critics that you have sufficient credibility to make your argument. A fiction writer might have five pages to make their case. A technical writer is lucky to have five paragraphs to cover the same territory; more likely, five sentences. Nobody is reading your work for fun, so you have to set your scene quickly, directly, and elegantly.

    Who, what, when, where, why, and how? Who is involved, what is the situation, when did it start, where can it be found, why do we care, and how bad is it? There are potentially carcinogenic fracking chemicals in drinking water in Pennsylvania. The city council needs to know more about backyard chicken raising before changing an ordinance. Congratulations, you have just purchased our software! In the case of Smith vs. Jones, the defendant requests a dismissal on the grounds that the plaintiff has not suffered damages. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, … a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

    As far as the mechanics goes, just say it straight out, using clear, direct language that commands the reader’s assent. Don’t imply, don’t infer, don’t force the reader to come to their own conclusions. Imagine that they are busy people who want to be told what to think, preferably somewhere on the first page.

    Note: this is for non-fiction writing. In fiction, half the fun is in implying things. However, setting up a red herring in a policy document? Ninety percent of your audience will come to the wrong conclusion.