Oh Please, Do Tell

By on September 30, 2013 ·

 

Show, don’t tell. Put the reader in the moment. Activate the senses with detail. Be specific.

These are all necessary lessons and they’re repeated like a common mantra in just about every creative writing course. It’s not bad advice. There’s nothing wrong with learning how to show a character with action or set the theme with an image of the natural elements. But when writing is burdened with too much showy detail, it’s more distraction than illumination.

What if the slap of frigid cold air, the sting from the stench of rancid cooking oil, sweat dripping, palms itching, nose twitching and fingers fidgeting was all crammed into the first page of a story? Does the reader really need to be reminded of every bodily function a human being could feel in a ten second interval?

Gravy

Gravy (Photo credit: Knile)

“Show, don’t tell” can persuade the beginning writer to add oodles of boring minutia, killing the pleasure of the story, and overwhelming the plot. It’s detail for detail’s sake and the results are typically clumsy and amateurish. I know because that’s the feedback I received from an early piece. It didn’t have details sprinkled or woven into the story. Rather it was image after image, ladled on like thick gravy covering the main course.

I had over-learned the lesson “show, don’t tell.”

Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.

This famous passage from The Great Gatsby is in the first chapter when Daisy and her cousin are sauntering out to the patio. It captures the setting wonderfully and deserves its place up on the literary pedestal of imagery par excellence.

chase: 100 pts: the great gatsby

chase: 100 pts: the great gatsby (Photo credit: emdot)

But well before this lovely sentence Fitzgerald had used a “tell”, so plain and effective, it laid the foundation for the showy parts to work their magic.

Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.

The narrator had already pulled us into the story by telling us who he is, and how a certain man had altered his moral compass.

And this is the lesson I wish I’d heard early on—writing is all about how to balance show and tell.

Narration, exposition, stream of consciousness are needed to move the story along or reveal an internal frame of mind. Learning to write narrative that doesn’t sound like a lecture or feel heavy handed and intrusive, that skill is possibly the most important. Because a string of images needs a narrative spine to hold the story together.

... it was the season of Darkness

… it was the season of Darkness (Photo credit: Avital Pinnick)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …

Can’t you just see young Dickens in a creative writing class at his local community college? He turns in the first chapter to A Tale of Two Cities only to be told the opening lines are too general and excessively broad. The instructor hates the comma splices and suggests he try to give a specific example, to learn to “show, don’t tell”.

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Story Forge – Scales and Betrayals

By on November 27, 2012 ·

The following was written from a Story Forge card layout.  To see what Story Forge is all about, see the first post in this series. You can see all of our Story Forge inspired pieces here.

Bacon-wrapped filet mignon

Bacon-wrapped filet mignon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I should have known it couldn’t last.  Who was I kidding?  Myself, apparently, and others, as well.  But, I was in so deep that I started believing the lies I had spun each and every day, the lies that had kept me as close to safe and sound as anyone in my line of work could hope to be, hour after hour, day after day, case after case.  One last job, one last collar, one last bad guy to put away, and I, so my boss had said, was the only one that could pull it off, the only one that had the trail of credentials to get in, get close, get it done.  They just forgot that there should have been one more “get” in there: get out alive.

That last one was pretty important to me, of course, but it wasn’t looking too good as of late.  I had let my guard down, actually trusted one of Don Gardino’s crew, someone I thought was a kindred spirit, as close to a kid brother as I had ever had.  But, like a kid brother, he’d tried just a little too hard to help me out, got them just a little paranoid about me, led them to discover the faulty chink in my otherwise solid armor.

Still, I couldn’t give up and risk the mission, not with so much on the line.  Don Gardino, we’d been after him for way too long and he’d tipped the scales way too far toward the evil side, like some butcher with his thumb in the mix, charging filet mignon prices for ground beef.  I chuckled thinking just how apt an analogy that was, given the number of witnesses that had been laid out cold along the way.

There was no way I could have known that Big Jim Fairbanks, Gardino’s former lieutenant was going to be my downfall.  He’d been put away, far away, at least that was my understanding.  Not that I was going to be getting any answers about how, what, who, when, why.  He was here, and looking straight at me, just one of those bum rolls of the dice that life sometimes throws your way.

All my training, all my carefully built up persona, it all came crashing down, and here and now was all I had left.  And that smug bastard, Don Gardino, he’d get away with it, probably even profit by it in some way.

***

This was my first exercise utilizing the Story Forge cards.  I would say I got hung up a little on the process and tried to adhere very closely to the touch points, one at a time, versus taking in the whole bunch and letting them drive a complete story.  I did make one full editing pass through to improve flow a little after getting all the ideas in place. I thoroughly enjoy writing in the film noir, hard-boiled detective style and have used that type of voice in a number of previous pieces.

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Literacy Rant: The Estrogen Version

By on May 26, 2011 ·
Hollywood, California. Young woman standing on...

Image via Wikipedia

There was a decidedly testosterone slant to Eric’s list of “must read” books, probably because it was intended for a young man, the one affectionately referred to as the Idiot.  But what if you were making a list for a young woman?  Not that any of his recommendations were specifically unsuited for the female psyche, but suppose this young woman only reads fashion magazines, and she’s never picked up a book for pleasure?  Perhaps she’s entering the work world, the one still dominated by those with a Y chromosome.  Maybe she’s searching for something more than surface-skimming, page turning best sellers that are forgotten as soon as the last page is read.  What would your reading recommendations be?

Well, here are mine.  None of them are considered high art, a couple might be classics, and at least two are definitely in the pulp fiction category.  A few mirrored the cultural shifts that affected women during a particular era, some even contributed to the changes.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn has a wonderful opening about the Tree of Heaven that only grows in cement.  It’s a poignant coming of age story:  a smart, observant young girl struggles to make sense of life with an alcoholic father in a household forever battling poverty.  Getting an education was the underlying theme and that’s an especially vital message to women.

Gone with the Wind has the most memorable and well-known female character of the twentieth century, mostly because of the movie.  Reading the book, though, gave me a deeper appreciation for the tragic nature of Scarlett’s blind infatuation.  There was a brief, intimate scene that wasn’t in the movie.  It showed Scarlett’s vulnerability with Rhett and drove home the message that if you open your eyes, you might actually find you have something better than what you thought you wanted so desperately.  Or, maybe I recommended this one because I just love it and think any young woman who reads it will get hooked on reading.

Valley of the Dolls exposed the sick depravity behind the glamour of Hollywood and Broadway.  It made a splash in the ’60’s for its tell-all approach to sex, drugs, and the power struggle within all relationships — not just the ones between men and women, but also the ones women have with each other and with their own bodies.

Fear of Flying was a liberating soft porn novel that arrived in the early ’70’s.  Its legacy was the phrase “zipless f**k” which is how the author, Erica Jong, described a chance sexual encounter on a train with an anonymous stranger.  She tapped into the secret longing for sex without emotion or attachment that many women harbor.  But the book had a creepy, bleak view of life and that’s probably why her subsequent work never commanded the same level of excitement.  Without hope, it’s hard to pull off a second act.

The Group by Mary McCarthy was a disturbing portrait of eight Vassar women pursuing love and work after graduation in the early ’30’s.  The story reveals many of the traps that can destroy a promising future.  The characters were all bright, educated, upper income women, yet oddly, the underlying message was that while an education is important, it’s not a guarantee for success in real life.

The important questions in all these stories evolved from a woman’s relationship with the men in her life — drunken fathers, lost lovers, and disappointing husbands.  Every generation seems to grapple with the same universal questions about education, marriage, career, and motherhood.  Their choices may be nuanced by the time and place they were in, but essentially the questions are the same.  I think each of these novels offered a take on the contemporary feminine narrative of their day.   Sometimes it’s easier to see the potential consequences of our choices when we live it vicariously through a well told story and an engaging character.

Fiction can be for more than entertainment, it can be a thread that links one generation to the next, offering a nugget of insight into life.  And, it’s cheaper than therapy.

What great novel for a young woman do you think I missed?

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Missing In Action – 20th Century Iconic Romantic Heroine

By on October 18, 2010 ·
Kathleen Woodiwiss's The Flame and the Flower
Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been wracking my brain to come up with an Iconic Romantic Heroine for the 20th century.  Soliciting advice from others, more often than not, I received the suggestion of Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind.   She’s an iconic character no doubt, but of the Anti-Heroine variety.  While Scarlett’s embedded in our cultural psyche, ultimately she’s a tragic figure.  The ending to Gone with the Wind was intentionally vague and certainly not in the “happy” category.  So, I quickly dismissed Scarlett and continued my search.

Next I considered Lucy Honeycutt from Room with a View by E.M. Forster.  This was an early 1900’s novel published during the narrow era of the Edwardian age.  She was a heroine who exemplified the transition for women coming out of the rigors of Victorianism but before the full effect of the 20th century took hold.  She was more transitional than iconic, so I moved on.

Finally, I had to realize that the suffrage movement, which culminated in the USA with the passage of the 19th amendment, was a distinct pivot point that changed the way women viewed their place in society. A new perspective challenged the notion of dependency on men for a woman’s sense of happiness and fulfillment.  Not surprisingly, within ten years of women getting the right to vote, there was a new heroine on the block – Nancy Drew.  Ostensibly written by a female author, Carolyn Keene, the books were actually written by a collection of ghostwriters, both male and female, working under the tight strictures of a single editor.  Nancy Drew became the strongest female role model for young girls in that large swath of the middle to late twentieth century.  Her original persona was a spunky, independent young woman with a boyfriend comfortably in the background.  She was updated in the fifties to offer a less threatening, more submissive role model.  Her character make-over is a prime example of the pendulum that swings with the conflicting desires of  the female audience.  Ultimately, Nancy Drew is a heroine but with no romance, so she too fails the test for the iconic romantic heroine.

In the seventies a new subgenre emerged in the historical romance trade.  The realities of the sexual revolution with reliable, female controlled pregnancy prevention and the opening up of higher education to woman produced a new need to fill – how to romance a woman who wasn’t supposed to rely on a man to fulfill her destiny.  The answer was one of the biggest ironies of feminism – the glorification of rape fantasies and unwanted pregnancy.  The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen Woodiwiss was one of the first in describing sex with intimate detail.  Soft porn became the essential ingredient for a successful historic romance novel in the ‘70’s.  The modern romantic heroine now needed to be skillful between the sheets and willing to tell all about it.

In the nineties there was Bridget Jones as the bumbling, ditzy, slightly slutty heroine.  She may endure as an iconic heroine but more than likely she’ll be one of the countless characters that sparkle for a few years and then pass into oblivion when the next new swing of the pendulum comes round.

There was another heroine that came close – Joan Wilder in Romancing the Stone.  She was pure and modest, and had the perfect job for a modern woman – romance writer.  It was an entertaining story, but it too falls into the transient category.

I finally came to the conclusion that the Iconic Romantic Heroine may have met her demise in the 20th century, or at the very least she’s still Missing in Action.   If there is a 20th century iconic heroine out there, who gets her man and a happy ending, I’d love to know.  Please tell me if you think of one.

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“Try to See It My Way” (Writers and Negative Capability)

By on October 13, 2010 ·
LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 22: Portraits of poet ...
Image by Getty Images via @daylife

“The wise man questions the wisdom of others because he questions his own, the foolish man, because it is different from his own.” —Leo Stein, American art collector and critic

In an 1817 letter to a friend, the poet John Keats describes one of the qualities that makes writers like Shakespeare so great: negative capability. Keats defines this trait as “…when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” In other words, this is the ability to sublimate one’s own individual assumptions about the world and write about uncertain (or potentially polarizing) topics in such a way that the author’s own views remain unknown. It is also the recognition that there are often grey areas in life which cannot be resolved through rational means. This requires an extraordinary degree of objectivity, and it’s much harder than it seems.

To enter into the mind of other people (or things) and speak from their point of view is an essential goal for writers, and certainly Keats demonstrates this skill in “Ode to a Nightingale,” “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” and “Ode On a Grecian Urn.” Often some of the most engaging literary works are those where there is no clear side taken on contentious issues (such as the free will versus predestination dichotomy in Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex). But the question is, how can writers break free from their own personal perceptions and approach subjects from a more objective point of view? Consider these strategies:

1. Read writers who are good at negative capability. I’ve mentioned Keats, Shakespeare, and Sophocles. But there are plenty of other notable authors, such as Emily Dickenson, William Wordsworth, Anne Rice, Walt Whitman, and John Updike.

2. Learn to view situations from other people’s perspectives. Imagine not what you would do if you were facing their circumstances, but rather think about what they would do and why.

3. Step into the unknown. Force yourself to write about subjects or situations you are uncomfortable with (or know little about).

4. Write in a new genre. Tell a familiar tale in a different format. For example, if you normally write short stories, turn your narrative into a poem (or vice versa). Or you could try turning a poem into a screenplay (or vice versa). Different literary conventions require different sensibilities, and this can lead to breakthroughs in our perceptions of subjects.

One of the joys of reading is having the opportunity to experience situations from someone else’s perspective. To do this convincingly, writers must learn to put aside their own ideas about the world and imagine alternative possibilities. This is terra incognita for many people, but by embracing this approach, you may discover new avenues of creative potential.

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