You've probably heard this piece of advice from every writing teacher you've had since middle school: Show don't tell. This is because showing generally makes for more engaging and evocative prose than telling does.
Consider this famous example from Anton Chekov:
"Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
The second part is way more evocative and engaging, right? But we are storytellers, not storyshowers, so telling is as necessary a part of the writing process as showing is. It's just that most writing teachers fail to mention this.
In Alice LaPalnte's book The Making of a Story, she has a chapter entitled "Why You Need to Show and Tell" where she asks, "why do so many well-meaning—and competent!—creative writing instructors use 'show don't tell' as their mantra? Because good telling is difficult to do."
So today I'd like to cover a few tips for telling and how to do it well.
Showing
I'm sure there are hundreds of other blog posts that explain what showing is and why it's so greatly preferred to telling, but I'll briefly give my own definition here. Showing presents the story unfiltered to the audience. They get to see, hear, and experience the story through actions, sensory details, dialogue and expressions. LaPlante calls this the "eyewitness" mode. It immerses the audience in the story. It keeps them on the edge of the seat, wondering what's going to happen next and lets them try and figure it out. And this is what makes showing so important—it allows the audience to actively participate in the story. And active audiences are usually interested audiences. But showing isn't the only way to engage them.
Telling
When telling, on the other hand, the story is stopped and information is delivered to the audience via a character, narrator, or some other device. In many ways, telling is more efficient than showing as it takes up less time. A lot of important background information can be communicated quickly if told rather than shown. Telling is also important because it lets the writer comment on the most important story moment and focus on theme, but revealing this information, however necessary, risks losing the audience's attention because telling, if done badly, means the story stops. So when we choose to tell, we need to find a way to make it interesting to keep the audience engaged and the story moving forward. And to figure out how to do that, I want to look at one of the best examples of telling that I can think of:
Fleabag
Did you realize that the most engaging parts of Fleabag are the parts where she's telling us things, not showing? It's true.
The story stops, nothing in terms of plot is happening. Instead, she looks directly at the camera, and tells us what's just happened or what's going to happen. She's not showing it to us, she's telling. It should be the worst writing ever, but, through Fleabag, it's some of the best.
This is because what Fleabag is telling us contradicts the few things she's showing us, and this contradiction creates conflict. Remember, conflict is the engine of story. It's creates that tension that hooks the audience and reveals what's at stake for the character.
To see how Fleabag does this so effectively, let's look at the first page of the first episode.
What are we being shown here? There's a front door and a woman watching it. You wouldn't think this would be the beginning of one of the most highly praised stories in recent history, but it is, and this is all we see: a door, a woman, and then, a handsome man.
This is what we're told: that the woman, while waiting for the man, has showered, shaved, drunk half a bottle of wine, and gussied herself up. . .
Why is telling us this stuff more effective than showing? If we followed the common writing advice, wouldn't it be better to see her getting the text, jumping in the shower, guzzling the wine?
No. It wouldn't.
Fleabag's telling works so well because it creates contrast. We're being shown that she's just casually waiting, like it's no big deal, but everything she's telling us reveals that it is indeed a very big deal. This creates tension and conflict, and the contradiction keeps us invested. We're invested in this character, we know how she feels, and we want to figure out what happens to her. And we wouldn't have known about that had Fleabag shown us all the steps. In an interesting turn of events, the showing would have bored the reader more than the telling because we wouldn't have had any context for what we were being shown.
Fleabag even tells us about the sex, rather than show it, and makes the telling more interesting because Fleabag's telling is so good at maintaining conflict and revealing character in her telling.
Other things that work well in Fleabag's telling:
She addresses the audience directly: "You know that feeling when. . ." This helps us relate to her, she's making a connection here that most stories don't, even when they break the fourth wall, and it hooks us in.
She reveals a lot about her character. The information is being delivered to us, and it's filtered through the character. Their perspectives, wants, needs, fears, everything should color what they say and how they say it, and if the character is compelling, the information they tell us will be too.
She's clever, always knowing what's going to happen right before it happens. Whether it's the buzzer going, or her and the man "get to it immediately." This is funny, and humor usually helps. Also, it adds to the layer of tension I mentioned above. She knows so much, gets so much right—yes, they do get to it immediately—but she's still in denial about what she really wants and feels. This contradiction is really important.
Of course, you should still show more often than you should tell, but that doesn't mean show at any costs. If telling servers your story better, then you should tell. But be sure to follow Fleabag's lead and make sure you do it well.
For More Information about Show Don't Tell, check out these resources:
UCLA Extension Writers' Program: "Show, Don't Tell: Visual Screenwriting" with Philip Eisner
Skip Intro: Show, Don't Tell: MINDHUNTER
Writing Excuses Podcast: Tell, Don't Show
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