It’s a phrase one often hears as a part of standard fiction writing advice: Show Don’t Tell.
Usually, the phrase revolves around how one is handling exposition in their story. Exposition in and of itself is not bad. It’s a neutral term. For fiction writing, it just refers to what the reader is learning that she needs to know. There is subtly handled exposition (usually the most satisfying or least clunky) and then there is heavy-handed exposition… or expository sentences.
Typically, a heavy-handed expository sentence in fiction is telling us something that we could likely learn in a more organic way.
For instance, here is a heavy-handed expository sentence:
Dan was a police officer.
That sentence exists only to tell us information that we could learn in some more organic way. Expository sentences, by their very nature, usually slow the story down. They don’t exist to move the story forward and, thereby, they serve to take the reader out of the suspended disbelief that is required while reading fiction.
They serve to make the reader aware of a writer… and that shatters the veneer that the words on the page are really just words masquerading as a world.
Imagine watching a movie. We see a man getting up from bed. Then, the director steps into the shot, breaks the Fourth Wall, and says, “This is Dan. He is a police officer.”
Or, if not that obtrusive, imagine a voiceover telling us that this is Dan and he’s a cop.
You’d probably think, “Shut up and just let the movie play! I’m sure we’ll figure out he’s a cop.”
Same goes for fiction writing.
Check this scene.
Dan opened the doors and started toward the hallway on his left.
“Clarkson,” the desk sergeant said without looking up from the form he was filling out. “Captain wants to see you. ‘The moment his scuffed up shoes come through that door’ I believe were his words.”
Dan looked down over his uniform and straightened whatever could be straightened. His shoes looked like the driver’s door of the keyed car he’d filed a report on the day before. He took a deep breath and sighed it out.
None of the sentences in that scene are overly expository. You might ask, “What about: ‘He took a deep breath and sighed it out.’?”
Isn’t that expository? Yes, it is. Remember, exposition in and of itself isn’t bad. You have information that the reader needs to know. It all comes down to how they learn it.
In the case of the deep breath/sigh sentence. True, we are being told what he’s doing. We are being told information, but there’s probably no more organic way to say it. What would you write otherwise?
Dan’s ribcage expanded. Then it contracted again and air passed through his trachea and out his mouth breathily.
Kinda gets downright clunky trying to find a more subtle way to say it.
It’s okay to have your sentences act like a camera/microphone to tell us what we would be seeing/hearing in a scene.
But, Dan was a police officer… that’s not a camera/microphone sentence. That’s a heavy-handed sentence, and we could learn the info in a more organic way. Even from the scene above, the reader intuits that Dan is a cop, just by the setting and the exchange with the desk sergeant. We learn his last name in a natural way. We also learn (organically) that he’s a beat cop or uniformed officer because he’s wearing a uniform and not the shirt and tie of a detective. Plus, the fact that he was responding to someone who had their car keyed also lets the reader intuit that he is not high-ranking.
Let me give another example that might not be as heavy-handed (or obvious) as: Dan was a police officer.
Example:
Sheila went to lunch with Theresa. Theresa had been her best friend in college. They’d stayed best friends over the years. Theresa could always make Sheila laugh, no matter what mood she’d been in previously. The only thing that bothered Shelia about Theresa is that she was always trying to set her up with guys. Then, she would complain that Sheila was too picky. Sheila was too picky and just wanted to find the right guy. Sheila punched back in after her lunch break.
Really, the only sentence of that entire paragraph that isn’t heavy-handed exposition is the last one. The rest of that information we could learn or intuit organically.
The big question I have for this writer? Why didn’t you just write about them at lunch? We could learn almost all of this stuff just by eavesdropping on them.
For instance:
The hostess walked Sheila to a table near the back of the restaurant. Theresa was sitting with a margarita in front of her.
Sheila pulled out her chair. “It’s eleven o’clock in the morning.”
Theresa lifted her glass. “And I’ll drink to that too.”
Sheila shook her head, laughing. “We aren’t in college anymore, T.”
Theresa scratched above her ear. “No wonder I haven’t been sleeping with any professors lately.” She pointed a finger. “Speaking of which… how’d Saturday night go with Dexter? I hope well. I’m running out of victims.”
“Good,” Sheila said, “I mean, good that you’re running out. That Dexter guy said he sometimes voted third party… ‘just to make a point,’ he says. What point? That you like to waste your vote?”
“I sometimes vote third party.”
Sheila said that was fine. “I’m not looking at you for long-term dating prospects.”
Theresa picked up her glass and toasted her. “Then you can consider this lunch Dutch treat, you tease.”
Sheila laughed again.
Notice that we still learned everything we needed to learn that was originally in the heavily expository paragraph… but we learned it organically or we intuited it from the exchange. This scene felt more like a scene from a movie.
Watch your own fiction for heavily expository sentences/sections. Is there a different way you could be “showing” the reader what you are currently “telling” them?
If so, make the change, and you’ll give your reader a better fiction experience.
Am I showing or telling here?
ReplyDeleteIn the winter of the dry ground, when the winds blew bitterly but the snow stayed thin, my brother came to birth, and my mother died. Ludd, the one who looks at the stars and knows the hearts and bodies of men, saw that my brother still moved and cut him from his mother as the hunters open a carcass.
This seems to be showing... but showing us some aspect of the past? I think when dealing with a story's history, you might get more exposition, but I can still largely see this. This strikes me as a memory. In first person, the narrator can get a little more expository, but this is told in a pleasing and engaging way... so works as exposition.
ReplyDeleteNow, if you had, "My brother was always sarcastic"... well, in that instance, I think you'd be better served just to let the brother be sarcastic and let the reader intuit his sarcastic nature.
The brother does a lot of autistic behaviour and messing around with bits of string and wood and a cooking spit instead of being a useful hunter-gatherer. In the end he invents the wheel.
ReplyDelete