Right now it feels like
I'm spending all my time editing and rewriting. Here's an article I read
at http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/showing-vs-telling-in-your-writing. We’ve all heard the dreaded "Show don't
Tell" in writing. You can't always see these problems, especially in your
own writing. This article will help you recognize the telling in your story and
turn it into action.
Showing vs. Telling in Your Writing: The
Camera Test
I’ll give you a
little tool here that could revolutionize your understanding of showing and
telling in fiction. I may not be the first person to talk about it in these
terms, but I know I’ve never heard it before I thought it up. So at least I’m
its co-inventor.
Maybe you want to
rid your fiction of telling but you simply can’t see it—not in other people’s
fiction and certainly not in your own. So how can you delete something you
can’t even see? There’s a question you can ask of any passage you feel may be
telling. You ready? Get the passage in front of you and ask this of it: Can
the camera see it?
There are
exceptions, but Can the camera see it? is a terrific tool for
helping you begin to see the telling in a manuscript. Let’s test it:
Urlandia was a
peaceful realm. Peasants and nobles alike lived in harmony despite the
occasional bout with famine or invaders from the neighboring kingdom of Dum.
There were heroes and cads, pirates and tavern wenches, and in all, their lives
were good.
Okay, aside from
this being deadly dull, is it showing or telling? Let’s load up the testing gun
and fire: Can the camera see it?
Your mind might have
conjured up an image of a fantasy countryside with green meadows, vast forests,
and castles with pennants flapping in the breeze, but how could you have seen
“the occasional bouts with famine”? How could you see that their lives were
good? You couldn’t. You weren’t shown any of this—you were simply told. And it
probably left you feeling a little sleepy.
It would be quite
possible to convert this telling to showing by depicting things before
the camera’s lens that suggest each of these elements. But right now
it’s unconverted telling. I can’t tell you how many unpublished novels I’ve
seen that start like this. And I’ve rejected every single one of them. You
don’t want your book rejected, so don’t put telling anywhere in the first fifty
pages.
One more:
Veronica shifted into
park and got out of her VW bug. She shielded her eyes from the afternoon sun
and stared at the house. It was smaller than she remembered. And had it always
been this run-down, or had it fallen into disrepair only lately? It had once
been white, but the siding slats desperately needed a new paint job.
Two giant
antennae poked up from the roof like alien tentacles. They were held in place
by cables, but the one on the right nevertheless tilted at a diagonal. Maybe it
helped with reception. The porch was covered by an awning of flaking wood.
Whether the walls beneath the wood were worse off than the rest or they just
looked that way because they were shrouded in shadow, Veronica couldn’t tell.
She sighed. If
this is where she came from, no wonder she’d turned out as she had.
Okay, load up the
testing gun. Can the camera see this? Actually, yes. Aside from a violation of
the rule not to start a novel with someone getting out of a car, it’s not
terrible prose. It’s description. Some people would be inclined to cut it
because nothing seems to be happening: It’s neither action nor dialogue, so it
must be telling. But that would be a mistake, since a lack of description can
get your book declined. Description isn’t telling because … the camera can see
it. Without description, the reader can’t visualize the story—which means that
your story can’t go forward without description. Don’t leave it out.
As I mentioned,
there are exceptions. The camera can’t see sounds or smells or temperatures or
tastes, though a description of those things would not be telling. Also,
interior monologue—the viewpoint character’s thoughts and interpretations—can’t
be seen by a camera and is therefore not (usually) telling. But on the
whole, Can the camera see it? will help you immediately spot
and eliminate telling.
I think author Jeff
Gerke found the perfect way to focus in on the telling. Now it's time to go
over my novel with my "showing vs telling" camera.
Bring on the Lights, Camera, Action!
