Part 7 (2/2)
As you can see, we have gone from the general (”She boiled water”) to showing a kettle being put on the stove, which conveys visually to the reader that the character is boiling water. In the third example, the addition of detail makes the visual come alive with more action. Finally, a different approach to the subject matter adds characterization and distinction, bringing us a long way from ”She boiled water.” The key to the improvement is particularity, a subject covered in greater depth in a later chapter.
One of the best examples I know of showing instead of telling is in, of all things, the series of television commercials for Taster's Choice coffee that have become famous for their interest as well as their effectiveness. The commercials consist of extremely short episodes of encounters between two attractive-looking neighbors, a man and a woman about each of whom little if anything is known. The viewer immediately wants them to get together. And the coffee provides the excuse. In one episode, the man shows up at the woman's door. To his dismay, another man opens the woman's door. When we learn the other man is her brother, we experience relief (for him, for ourselves). In a later episode, when the neighbors are cohabiting, the woman's adult son shows up, a surprise. In all of these, the dialogue is minimal and much is left to the reader's imagination. The commercials are lean in the writing and subtle in the acting, in contrast to most commercials in which the writing is excessive, pushy, adjective-laden, and unbelievable in dialogue. If you get the opportunity, tape the Taster's Choice commercials so that you can study them. They const.i.tute a short course in subtle showing, in lively dialogue, and dramatic credibility.
In my novel The Childkeeper, some important scenes take place in a room that the children of the family call the Bestiary because it contains several large stuffed animals. In the first of these scenes, I wanted to make it evident that one of the children, sixteen-year-old Jeb, bosses the other kids around. I could have told the reader that by saying he was bossy. That's telling, now showing. Here's how I was able to get the idea across by showing: In the Bestiary, Jeb, sixteen-year-old caliph, lay stretched on an upper-level bunk bed, fingers twined on chest.
”Dorry!” Jeb's command filled the room.
”Caliph,” which means the head of a Moslem state, conveys the ”boss” idea immediately. ”Fingers twined on chest” helps the image. And Jeb's one word of dialogue seals the matter.
If a writer said, ”Polly loved to dive in her swimming pool,” he'd be telling, not showing. Information is being conveyed to us. We do not see Polly. But the writer I quote below is John Updike, who shows Polly to us in a writerly way: With clumsy jubilance, Polly hurtled her body from the rattling board and surfaced grinning through the kelp of her own hair.
The author is showing Polly in her ”clumsy jubilance,” hurling her body; we hear ”the rattling board,” and see Polly surfacing, grinning through ”the kelp of her own hair,” the last a marvelously precise image. Note that Updike didn't say ”her hair was like kelp” (a simile), but ”the kelp of her own hair” (a metaphor), an excellent example of particularity.
When you stumble upon information in your work that sounds like the author's intervention, try to come up with a simile or a metaphor that shows what you're trying to tell.
Let's look at another evolution from telling to showing: He took a walk tells.
He walked four blocks begins to show.
He walked the four blocks slowly shows more clearly.
He walked the four blocks as if it were the last mile shows more by giving the reader a sense of the character's feelings, which the previous version did not. He walked as if against an unseen wind, hoping someone would stop him shows most of all because it gives the reader a sense of what the character desperately wants.
One clue to whether a writer is showing rather than telling is to determine if the pa.s.sage is visual. In WritePro, the first of my computer programs for writers, there is a protagonist named Beth Reilly. If a hundred writers characterize Beth Reilly, they'll produce a hundred different characterizations. The best ones, however, nourish our eyes.
One extraordinarily successful nonfiction writer, who tried her hand at developing a story with Beth Reilly, imagined Beth as the daughter of Irish immigrant parents, who at eighteen was crowned queen of the Chicago St. Patrick's Day parade, received a scholars.h.i.+p to a fine college and went on to law school, only to have the ill fortune of being seduced by a married neighbor.
As you can see, that is all information pa.s.sed on in a nonfiction vein. What the writer needed to do was to transform the information into a visual scene for fiction. Here's the result: You should have seen the blush on Beth Reilly's freckled face as the Mayor tried to make the too-small crown stay atop Beth's full head of hair. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune handed up two hairpins to the Mayor to keep Beth's crown in place. It seemed as if everyone at the St. Patrick's Day Parade expelled a breath of relief as good Queen Beth curtsied to the crowd and the crown stayed in place. They applauded as she was handed the certificate that would give her four free years at Boston College as her reward. That day it seemed as if she could want and get anything. What she got was a married man introducing himself by handing her an expensive bottle of wine over a fence and with him, a future she kept secret even from her priest.
That's not perfect yet, but conveying the information with visual detail (the blush on Beth's freckled face, the too-small crown, two hairpins) showed the scene to the reader. No longer is the author telling.
Showing need not be complex. Can you show merely by the use of color? One of the students in my advanced fiction seminar, Linda Kelly Alkana, herself a teacher of writing, started her novel this way: Beyond the Arctic Circle, the color of cold is blue. But deep beneath the Arctic water, the color of cold is black.
That's an interesting beginning. We see the water. And the change in color is ominous.
As I've repeated often, what we as readers want from writing is to experience it. Receiving information from the author doesn't give us an experience.
Gloria Steinem quotes an Indian saying, ”Tell me, and I'll forget. Show me, and I may not remember. Involve me, and I'll understand.” I'd like to amend that. ”Tell me, and I'll forget. Show me, and you'll involve me. Involvement is the first step toward understanding.”
If you are concerned about whether in any pa.s.sage or chapter you are telling rather than showing, there are some questions you can ask yourself: Are you allowing the reader to see what's going on?
Is the author talking at any point? Can you silence the author by using an action to help the reader understand what a character feels?
Are you naming emotions instead of conveying them by actions? Is any character telling another what that character already knows?
While showing rather than telling is important throughout a work, it can serve as a miraculous cure for the ailing first pages of a novel or story. Showing means having characters do things that excite our interest, making those pages visual, letting us see what happens firsthand.
I have a small suggestion that carries with it a big reward. In a three-word note to yourself say, show the story. Then hang the note where you will see it whenever you sit down to write. Think of it as an antidote to a lifetime of hearing that a story should be told.
If all but one of the instruments on a surgeon's tray had been sterilized, that exception would be a danger to the patient. It can be said that one slip of point of view by a writer can hurt a story badly, and several slips can be fatal.
The term point of view as used by writers is misdefined even in good dictionaries. It means the character whose eyes are observing what happens, the perspective from which a scene or story is written.
Without a firm grasp of point of view, no writer of fiction is free to exercise his talent fully. This chapter is designed to help you understand the advantages and disadvantages of each point of view so that you can choose knowledgeably which to use to accomplish what you have in mind.
Each point of view available to the writer influences the emotions of the reader differently. Since affecting the emotions of the reader is the primary job of fiction, deciding on point of view is important.
In general, I advise the less-experienced writer not to mix points of view within the same scene, chapter, or even the same novel. It is unsettling to the reader. If you mix points of view, the author's authority seems to dissolve. The writer seems arbitrary rather than controlled. Sticking to a point of view intensifies the experience of a story. A wavering or uncertain point of view will diminish the experience for the reader.
The experienced writer who has mastered point of view can experiment with tightly controlled yet s.h.i.+fting viewpoints. When I started out I used the most neutral kind of third-person point of view. It was only after my confidence increased that I started using multiple first-person points of view in different parts or chapters, with the point of view established and clearly identified at the outset of each part or chapter.
Writers are often confused about point of view when they are presented with an unnecessarily large number of choices. Let's keep things as simple as possible by examining the three main points of view: I saw this, I did that.
No mistaking that one. It's the first-person point of view. What about the next example?
My friends Blair and Cynthia were doomed. I could feel their fervor when I saw them embrace, yet in their eyes there was a wariness, as if each of them knew that their happiness could not last. I must tell you what happened the next day.
That is also first person, a story told from the sole point of view of the narrator. He sees what he believes to be in the eyes of his friends Blair and Cynthia, but it is not their view of how they feel, it is his view.
The narrator can be merely the observer of a story involving other people. This form of first person was more common in the nineteenth century. Today, a narrator is more often the protagonist or a princ.i.p.al character directly involved in the action. He can even be the villain of the piece.
Can you identify the point of view of the following?
He saw this, he did that.
Third person is correct. The simplest way of understanding third person is that it is the same as first person except that you have subst.i.tuted ”he” or ”she” for ”I.”
What about the second-person point of view?
You saw this, you did that.
Forget it. Second person is used so rarely that I suggest just shelving it. I think of it as the crackerbarrel mode, the storyteller seeking to involve the reader in the story as if he were a character. The fact is that the reader is quite prepared to be involved emotionally in the story not as himself but through identification with one or more of the characters.
Now let's look at yet another point of view: Kevin looked longingly at Mary, hoping she would notice him. She not only noticed him, she wished he would take her in his arms. Mary's mother, watching from the window, thought they were a perfect match.
This writer is all over the lot. One moment he seems to be in Kevin's head, the next moment in Mary's, and a second later in Mary's mother's point of view. What's going on?
In that short paragraph the reader knows what Kevin is thinking, and also what Mary and her mother are thinking. The author feels free to roam anywhere. That point of view is called omniscient, which means all-knowing.
Let's recap the three main points of view so that we're absolutely clear about the differences. In first person, the character-frequently the protagonist-tells the story from his or her point of view: I saw this, I did that.
The easiest way to think of the third person point of view is to subst.i.tute ”he” for ”I”: He saw this, he did that.
In the omniscient point of view all characters and locations are fair game.
The usual reaction of beginning novelists is ”Why can't I just use omniscient and be done with it? I can go anywhere, do anything-sounds great.” Imitating G.o.d, by seeing and hearing everyone, is tempting, but maturity usually provides leavening. The Deity can't pay attention to everybody all the time, and neither can the writer. A story about everybody is a story about n.o.body. Before he'll let himself become involved, the reader wants to know whose story this is. He expects the writer to focus on individuals.
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