Hello again, fellow SteemFictians… FicSteemians… Steemians who write fiction! Sorry, but you just can’t portmanteau some things. You also can’t verb every noun but I’ll try my damnedest! At least here, where we’re being casual, just feet up, sipping on some java and chewing the fat.
But let’s get down to business, as promised I’m going to talk about “Show, Don’t Tell.”
As it pertains to fiction, you perv!
Good fiction should bring your reader into the world you have created, and if you manage to get them there, nothing will boot them right the hell out faster than interrupting their illusion with clumsy explanations. As much as you possibly can, you want to show the reader what you want them to see rather than saying, “Hey! Hey! Excuse me, but SEE THIS!”
If I tell you Mary is nervous, you’re like, “And? So? I don’t even know Mary.” But if I get Mary in front of you at the Starbucks and she’s sweating a lot, looking around furtively, chewing her nails to the quick, fumbling with her purse, and banging into people as she tries to get out of line, you’re going to at least want to know what’s up with that crazy woman. If you have even an ounce of empathy, you may begin to feel unsettled yourself. Now you’re looking over your shoulder wondering if she knows something you don’t. And even if you don’t believe me - and you say you’d be every bit as interested in Mary if I just said she was nervous – the latter is still better writing, I don’t care who you are.
There. I said it.
This can be difficult, but it is worth it to take the time and make this happen for your audience. You want to look for places in your story where you explicitly describe a characteristic, emotion, or relationship, and try to think how you could alter it to implicitly convey the same understanding to the reader without interrupting the forward momentum of the story. For example:
Mary had beautiful, blue eyes. John stared into them as he moved toward her. He could tell she didn’t like him.
Becomes:
Focused on the beautiful blue of her eyes, John moved toward Mary, sensing her stiffen in discomfort at his nearness.
So now instead of interrupting the action to address the reader with descriptions of Mary’s eye color and feelings, the action keeps going and the information is conveyed in the context of it.
There is an additional benefit to this kind of writing. Because the narrator didn’t explicitly say Mary doesn’t like John, and instead allowed readers to draw that conclusion for themselves, the reader gains a level of participation in the story. They become invested and derive a sense of accomplishment that they caught on to Mary’s subtle (or not so subtle) body language. Interrupting the dream world that a reader enters in the midst of a good story, to tell them something that you could have let them see from within that dream, not only is counterproductive to keeping readers, it’s downright mean.
Leave your readers alone!
I hope this has helped clarify the “show versus tell” dilemma. If you found this helpful, you might also enjoy Part 1 – The Writer’s Guide to Getting some Action
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