Writing Better Part 7

WRITING ALL THE SENSES

As with all description, the use of senses other than sight should be woven into the story, should evoke a character’s personality, and/or should further the plot.

SHOW VERSUS TELL

Both showing and telling are forms of description. For this reason, there’s an overlap of interpretation between the two. It helps to think of showing vs. telling not as a dichotomy, but as a continuum. Some sentences and paragraphs both show a scene and relate facts, and thus are near the middle of the continuum. Where telling is distinct from showing is at the ends of the continuum. At one end, pure telling - exposition; at the other, dramatization. Here are seven quick tips:

01) Your writing doesn’t have to be strictly either/or. Description is a matter of degrees;

02) Don’t lead with exposition - you’ll have no dramatic hook;

03) Rely on exposition, or the lack of it, to control pace;

04) Exposition (telling) is the best way to convey background information and can set the stage for a vivid "showing" scene. It is also the only practical way to convey abstract or unfamiliar info;

05) Dramatizing the climax will lend it excitement. (PERSONAL NOTE: By the time your story reaches the climax, the stage should be set and the background in place, and all the abstract and unfamiliar information should already have been explained. This will leave you free to dramatize the climax, leaving exposition for the close.);

06) The best stories combine showing and telling;

07) If you story doesn’t achieve the intended affect, break your story down into sections and label where each lies on the show/tell continuum, then adjust accordingly.

TIPS ON NARRATION

Usually, the narrator of a first-person story must be reliable. Yet fascinating effects can be achieved with an unreliable narrator. There are three types of unreliable narrator:

01) Accurate-but-mistaken - accurately relates the facts, but misinterprets them;

02) Inaccurate, yet not a lie - since the narrator is the readers only link to the story, the narrator cannot lie to the reader. However, he can (and does) lie to himself;

03) Insane - reports the facts as the sees them, but his perception of reality is so skewed he gets the facts wrong.

Each narrator should be approached differently:

01) a) Discourage reader identification with your unreliable narrator;

b) Let the character express a strong, consistent attitude toward the story events;

c) Let the narrator relate events which the reader will interpret directly opposite to the narrator’s attitude.

02) a) Have your narrator lying to himself because the truth is too hard to face;

b) Show us exactly what he tells himself;

c) Demonstrate without doubt that the real motivations and events are different from his lies about them.

03) a) Let readers know immediately, by the voice, that your narrator is nuts;

b) Tell a story in which we can follow the basic plot anyway;

c) Have some point to make about madness, identity, reality, or perception.

These techniques can also be used to show readers a side of a character of which the character is unaware.