The 90 Day Novel

Here’s a short clip from my upcoming book, The 90-Day Rewrite. It will be available in April.

SHOW, DON’T TELL

We’ve all read the writing books that insist we “show, and don’t tell.” This phrase can be misinterpreted as an imperative rather than a caution. Showing means that we’re bringing our reader directly into the scene, through description, dialogue and detail. There’s immediacy in showing that is absent in telling. Telling involves summarizing events and can feel distancing for the reader, as if the events are simply being reported.

However, there is a place for telling, and in fact, there are situations where it’s preferable and even necessary to tell the events rather than show them. Not every piece of information in our story demands the same level of importance, thus, at times it’s beneficial to summarize selected events in order to focus on the drama that is crucial to the story.

For instance, if Bob and Larry are driving from New York to San Francisco to rob a bank and we need our reader to understand the rising tension between them, then a scene might be necessary to illustrate this dynamic. However, if we were to write every blessed moment of their drive, our reader would be stultified with boredom. Our reader is likely most interested in the ‘turning points,’ those moments where the relationship subtly shifts through tension and conflict. By showing these moments, while sketching in or ‘telling’ the events that lead to them, our reader will have a sense of the entire journey without the narrative becoming dull.

Let’s look at an example:

Bob stopped at a gas station in Denver and filled his tank. He paid the attendant in cash and climbed back into the car.

“That was forty bucks,” he said to Larry. “You owe me twenty.”

“Don’t have any money.”

Bob glanced at his partner. “I hope you’re not expecting me to pay our way to California.”

Larry shrugged. “I’ll pay you back when the job’s done.”

Bob drove in silence for nearly an hour. When he finally spoke, he said, “I think I’ll pull over at the next stop. Feel free to watch me eat my dinner.”

“I might do that.” Larry reached into his pocket and riffled through a wad of cash. “I’m getting hungry myself.”

The short opening paragraph where Bob stops at the gas station is ‘telling,’ but it’s necessary to provide context for the scene that follows. We don’t really need to know if Bob filled up the car with regular or unleaded, or what the temperature was in Denver, or the gender of the attendant. Although these details could be included, it’s important to recognize the point of tension in the scene, and to direct our focus to that area. Towards the end of the passage, where Bob drives in silence for nearly an hour, there is another moment of telling that acts as a bridge between the next scene where the tension mounts as Larry reveals that he’s lied about not having any cash.