Show, don’t tell?

 ‘Show, don’t tell’ is one of those phrases which every writer comes across at some stage of learning their craft.  But, of course, things are never as simple as that.

I think a better version is: ‘Show key scenes, tell unimportant or linking information”.  It might not have the same catchy ring to it, but I think it’s more accurate.

If our characters go on a long car journey and nothing impotent happens on it, then we don’t want a blow-by-blow account of that journey,  We only want the details if something relevant to the story happens on that journey.

If your character is trying to get away from someone, then details of them constantly glancing in the rear view mirror and seeing that person following them can certainly add tension to the scenes. But if the only thing which happens to your character is that they get held up in traffic and are then late for a crucial meeting, then we don’t want to know the details of the hold-up.

When to show and when to tell becomes a process of selection.  We identify the important events in the story and show those in detail, and the rest we tell.

So what does showing look like?  Think of it as seeing the scene through the viewpoint character’s eyes.  What are they seeing?  This means you’ll select out the elements of the setting which are relevant to that character, and relevant for your story.  There’s no point in having your character spend half an hour outside a florist’s appreciating the gorgeous blooms if that has no relevance for the story.  If, on the other hand, your character is also a florist, and has come to check out the new competition in town, well then showing the scene could well be relevant.

We need to show not only what our character sees, but also what they smell, taste, and touch.  What’s the character’s emotional response to the place they are in?  Do they have bad memories of the place, or is it where they had the best day of their lives?  Showing that scene should certainly include the character’s emotional responses, and maybe their internal dialogue too.

With all the years I’ve been writing you’d think I’d have licked this by now, but I came up against an unusual challenge in chapter one of the novel I’m currently writing.  In my first draft I had only one character throughout the scene,  He’s an AI waiting to meet his new pilot. I ended up with the whole chapter being told, and with a massive information dump.  So I had to change it.

My solution was to turn most of the AI’s internal dialogue from draft one into direct speech with another AI in draft two.  That effectively left my character still alone and nervous about meeting his new pilot, but the information I’d dumped on the page in the tell version was mostly now contained in the dialogue between the two AIs.

My writing group thought the second version worked much better, and so do I.  I really need to be more aware of where I’m telling too much.