Writing Secrets: Action shows us what people are capable of
We all know the old writing truism: never tell when you can show. But I’ve recently come to realise that many people misunderstand what it means to “show”.
I’ve come across those who believe that it’s “telling” to depict a character’s actions. And still others who believe that “description” is telling.
A member of our community recently asked us how to balance “show-not-tell” with description. She understood that one should attempt to “show” characters on the page rather than describe their personalities, but she had also read advice on the value of clever description. “I am trying to describe a woman in love,” she said.
The point is: they’re not contradictory. Description doesn’t mean explanation. In other words, you never want to explain to your reader: my character is in love. You want to show her state through … clever description and action.
Personally, I prefer the word “detail” to description, which makes one think of long, flowery passages, heavy on the adjectives – the kind of passages, in the words of Elmore Leonard, “that readers skip”. Detail, on the other hand, implies a more sparing use of the life-blood of good writing: specifics.
Use the details which do the job you want them to do. Be sparing with adjectives. Be specific. Show a woman in love through what she does, how she looks and sounds,(if we’re seeing her from the outside) what she says, what she doesn’t say. If we’re seeing her from the inside, how does her body feel, what does she experience?
Details immerse us in a time and place. They make it real: they “show” us a person or place. Actions allow us to see for ourselves how someone is behaving. We interpret those actions and think: oh my goodness, I think she loves him.
All of this reminds me of a story Richard loves to tell from his soap-writing days. The writers had, over months and months, carefully shown two people gradually becoming attracted to each other.
Before it became completely obvious, a viewer wrote to the producers: “Please will you tell the writers that Polly and Herman are keen on each other. I don’t think they’ve noticed.”
That’s showing at its best. You want these revelations to dawn on your reader, sometimes even before they strike (not the writer, obviously) but the characters involved.
Read Richard’s latest blog: ‘Monday Motivation: The love affairs we have with books‘