Fortune telling, running with scissors, & writing vivid fiction
By Randy Koch
On the front of a white clapboard building about two miles from the international bridge that links Laredo to Nuevo Laredo hangs a yellow sign with a large red palm painted on it. The sign for “Hermana Maria” says, “Palms read. Tarot Card Readings . Advices in all problems in life.” I gladly excuse the misspelling because the possibility of someone reading my fortune is both appealing and strangely frightening. Palmistry and reading tarot cards are old arts, of course, but along the border people's belief in other things -- mal de ojo or the evil eye, La Llarona , la chupacabra, ghosts, witches in the form of owls, and even La Virgen de Guadalupe -- makes the sign seem right at home. I don't entirely disbelieve the possibility of Hermana Maria foretelling my future, but the most common source of skepticism about fortune telling -- whether by reading palms or tarot cards, astrological charts or tea leaves -- is that the predictions are often so vague and general that they could apply to anyone. Not surprisingly this, too, is one of the most common flaws in the stories of inexperienced writers.
Just as fiction writers are not fortune tellers, our readers are neither clairvoyants nor unsophisticated children, who need general rules that can be applied to different situations for their own protection: “Never talk to strangers,” or “Always look both ways before crossing the street,” or “Never run with scissors.” When we tell readers what to think, when we make judgments for them or summarize action, when we treat readers like children by talking down to them because we think they have no choice but to listen to us, we commit the most common mistake a fiction writer can make -- telling rather than showing. In conversation most people tell an anecdote or story. As a result, many inexperienced writers think that writing stories, whether fiction or nonfiction, simply means telling, and they forget that readers can make up their own minds, and that doing so is half the fun of reading good poetry, nonfiction, and especially fiction. However, too often they know little about the specific differences between the two ways of relating an event.
Consider five key differences between telling and showing: first, writers who tell don't let characters speak; instead, they use indirect discourse, in which the narrator claps a hand over the character's mouth and summarizes what he or she said: José told Juan to go home. However, writers who know how to show dramatize characters' speech by using dialogue. A writer gets a character to speak in his or her own words by using quotation marks and attributions -- clauses like he said or she exclaimed -- to identify the speaker: José cried, “Go home, Juan!”
Second, writers who tell frequently rely on weak, inactive helping and linking verbs instead of using more vibrant action verbs. Some of the most common helping and linking verbs include is, are, was, were, am, would, have, has, had, may, might, can, will, seems, looks, appears, sounds, felt, etc. In contrast, showing relies primarily on interesting, specific action verbs to make people and things act. Action verbs are words like leap, cry, snore, sprawl, explode, plunge, hang, sweat, read, gouge, fall, kiss, perch, plod, laugh, swagger, stumble, and thousands and thousands of others. Writers who restrict themselves to using primarily helping and linking verbs have reduced their choices from thousands of words to about 35.
Third, inexperienced writers who tell rather than show are less likely to write descriptions that appeal to the reader's senses and more likely to include vague, general labels for people, places, and things: the girl, a school, an intersection, a car, a dog, glasses, etc. Showing, however, consistently includes precise, specific names for people, places, and things and gives details that appeal to the reader's senses, such as Sarah, his blond, five-year-old sister; Nixon High School ; the corner of Saunders and Arkansas ; a red Corvette; a three-legged poodle; wire rims with bifocals, etc.
Next, how time passes is different depending on whether the writer tells or shows. Telling summarizes the action or results of one or several events, and, consequently, the reader doesn't experience the event but gets the gist of it. Showing, however, presents an event moment by moment. It often takes approximately the same amount of time to read about it as it did for the actual event to occur.
Last, the reader's role or responsibility differs depending on how the writer presents the event. Telling explains to the reader and provides the overt meaning behind the details: Jeff's voice sounded funny because he was going through puberty. Here the writer tells the reader how to interpret the sound of Jeff's voice, and as a result the reader is much less involved and probably less interested in the writing. Showing, however, allows the reader to interpret and make judgments about characters and events. For example, Jeff's voice cracked makes the sound of his voice concrete and in the appropriate circumstance is open to the reader's interpretation since it suggests something about Jeff's age.
This is precisely what author Janet Burroway (Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft) meant when she explained the importance of understanding the difference between showing and telling: “In order to move your reader, the standard advice runs, ‘Show, don't tell. . . .' What it means is that your job as a . . . writer is to focus attention not on the words, which are inert, nor on the thoughts these words produce, but through these to felt experience, where the vitality of understanding lies.”
Two passages follow -- the first one told and the second shown. Notice in the first that characters do not speak, verbs show little action, people and places aren't named, sensory details are absent, and readers are told what to think:
The woman sitting at the table enjoyed her husband's stunts as he prepared lunch on the grill in their backyard. Their daughter was happily playing nearby. It was a beautiful day, perfect to celebrate the holiday.
When the woman drank from her beverage, she cried out, clearly in pain. Her husband ran to see what was happening to her, and you could see that she was having difficulty breathing. The girl stopped playing and asked what was wrong with her mother. The father tried to reassure the mother but saw that his efforts were fruitless. She couldn't breathe and was quickly getting worse because an insect inside her drink had stung her inside her mouth, which made her throat swell up; consequently, she was choking.
The father told the girl to get something from inside that he could use to save her mother and that there wasn't much time.
The girl hurried inside, got what her father had asked for, and slowly and carefully brought it to him even though you could see that he was impatient.
The second version, however, which shows rather than tells, is much different. Here characters speak, verbs are precise and active, people and places are named, details appeal to the reader's senses, and readers are allowed to interpret characters' actions and words:
A hamburger, brown and steaming, turned in the air above Manuel's head, fell, and landed squarely on the spatula in his hand. He turned from the smoking grill on the grass near the porch and smiled broadly at Hilda, who sat at the redwood picnic table covered with paper plates, tortilla chips, small bowls of sliced onions and jalapeños, bottles of ketchup and mustard, blue cans of Pepsi glistening with moisture, and a bouquet of small American flags in the center. He bowed deeply.
“Bravo!” she said and laughed. “Bravo!” Her long, braided hair -- black and iridescent as a crow -- swung like a rope across her back as she looked toward the swings.
Brandy, gliding back with her feet under her and sweeping forward with them straight out in front, giggled, the afternoon sun full on her small, brown face. “Do it again, Dad!” she cried.
He put the burger back on the grate, pressed it down, and leaned away from the cloud of steam rising from the coals. “I would, mija,” he said, “but it makes your mother nervous.” He turned and winked at Hilda. “Besides, too much excitement now and you'll be disappointed by the fireworks tonight.”
Hilda rolled her eyes at him, picked up her soda, and drank. Suddenly, she coughed and then cried out. She leaned forward, cupped her left hand under her mouth and coughed again. Brown drops of soda splattered her palm, and when she spit, a small clump, no larger than an allergy capsule, fell in her hand.
Manuel asked over his shoulder, “You okay, honey?”
She set down the soda can and stared at the object in her palm. “Manuel,” she tried to say, her voice suddenly thin as if she had laryngitis. “Manuel.”
He turned, saw her put one hand to her throat and stare into the other on the edge of the table. “Hilda?” he said, dropped the spatula, and ran to her side. He leaned over and put a hand on her shoulder. He looked in her palm; the small bee, brown with soda, lay curled up like a thick piece of macaroni. “Did it sting you?” he asked and looked in her watery eyes.
She nodded, opened her mouth, and gasped. “I can't. . . .” she tried to say, her face growing pale.
He put an arm around her and kneeled beside her. “Hilda, it'll be all right.”
Brandy dragged her toes in the dirt and scuffed to a stop. “What's wrong with Mom?” she asked. She stood but held on to the chains of the swing.
“She got stung by a bee,” he said.
Hilda gasped again. Then her eyes rolled back, and she wobbled on the bench. Her arms went limp, and her weight fell against Manuel.
“Mami!” Brandy cried and ran to the table.
“Hilda!” Manuel held her against his shoulder, eased her off the bench and onto the grass beside the table. “Hilda!” he shouted and stroked her face with one hand.
Brandy stared at her mother on the ground and started to cry. “Mami?” she sobbed.
Manuel tipped Hilda's head back and pulled her mouth open. He looked inside. “Oh, God,” he gasped. He looked up at his daughter. “Listen, Brandy. Run to the kitchen and bring me the scissors. The ones in the drawer next to the refrigerator.”
She stared at her mother, motionless on the grass. She bit on the end of her thumb.
“Brandy!” he shouted.
She looked at him, her bottom lip quivering.
“¡Andale!” he yelled, and she turned and ran to the house. He tipped Hilda's head back again and blew into her mouth once, twice, but her chest remained still. Somewhere down the street Tejano music thumped and a bottle rocket whistled and popped. “Brandy, hurry!” he cried at the backdoor.
Then Brandy stepped out, her dark hair tucked behind her ears and the scissors in her right hand. She held them point down beside her right leg and walked carefully across the tile of the patio and onto the grass. She kept her eyes on the ground, as if picking the spot for each step.
Manuel pressed the collar of Hilda's white blouse apart and put his fingers to the small notch at the base of her brown throat. He saw his fingers shake and knew what he had to do. He looked up at Brandy, who walked slowly past the swings, the scissors firmly in her hand and the point shimmering in the sunlight. “Hurry, Brandy! There's not much time!”
* * *
Obviously, showing takes much more space on the page than telling, and as a result the reader has a clearer image of the scene. If it's done well, we care about the characters and feel the same anxiety and fear that Manuel and Brandy feel.
But even writers who understand and apply the general techniques of showing often slip back into old habits that result in telling, habits not always easily identified but which frequently reduce the vividness of the writing. While diagnosis can be tricky, you can watch for some specific symptoms of telling.
One of the most common things inexperienced writers do that results in telling rather than showing is generalizing about time. The focus needs to be on one specific event, such as the conversation I had with my brother last Thursday about my godmother's death or how this morning the phone rang, but when I answered it, I heard only a recorded voice of a man offering to help me consolidate my debt. However, inexperienced writers summarize several events. This is most evident when they preface what they're going to say with expressions like “every time,” “whenever,” “always,” “usually,” “from time to time,” “constantly,” etc. As a result, they never get down to one specific event but generalize about a number of similar occurrences or events that have something in common.
Another common error made by writers who try but fail to show occurs when they focus on intent rather than on action. Typically this happens when the writer begins with one specific action, but rather than showing the resulting action, the writer describes the intent or purpose of the first by using, among other things, infinitives (“to” plus a verb) and expressions such as “as if he was trying” or “so that.” Instead of showing cause and effect like this -- “He pulled on his Stetson, its deep curved shadow bending across his face” -- the writer interprets or explains the purpose of the first action and thinks that the result has been presented even though it hasn't -- “He pulled on his Stetson to keep the sun out of his face” or “so that he could see his father's face” or “in order to prevent Cathy from recognizing him.” In all three cases, the author is using third person limited point of view to get inside the character and explain his intent instead of dramatizing the result.
Very similar to explaining intent is indicating cause and effect, especially when the events are presented out of order. Inexperienced writers often do this by overusing subordinating conjunctions like “because,” “after,” “since,” and “when,” especially at the end of sentences. “Fiction,” as John Gardner (The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers) says, “does its work by creating a dream in the reader's mind,” a dream that “must probably be vivid and continuous,” but when the events are presented out of order, the reader has to work harder and, in fact, has to do some of the work that the writer should have done -- specifically, putting events in chronological order. For example, the following sentence presents events out of order: “The spaniel yipped and cried after Bobby slammed the door and ran for the bus.” Instead of seeing and hearing things as they happened -- first, Bobby slamming the door and running for the bus and then the spaniel yipping and crying -- we hear the dog first and then are told why the dog behaved as he did. The same thing happens if we write, “Glenda collapsed in bed right after dinner because she was exhausted from work.” This would be more memorable if the writer showed her exhaustion first and then described her collapsing in bed, maybe like this: “With one elbow on the table next to her dinner plate and her left hand bracing up her head, Glenda slowly lifted the peas on her fork to her mouth. She chewed methodically, swallowed, and yawned, her eyelids sagging. ‘I'm beat,' she said, pushed her chair away from the table, stood, and plodded to the bedroom. Without undressing, she tossed the blanket back, flopped down on the bed, and sighed.” We see what happened rather than just being told the connections between summarized versions of both her exhaustion and her collapsing in bed.
A similar flaw in the efforts of writers trying but failing to show is explaining rather than dramatizing action. When a writer says in narration, “Emilio couldn't help but notice that Glenda looked old,” he or she is summarizing Emilio's observation of Glenda but not relating any action on his part nor providing any details of Glenda's appearance of which he became aware. Showing, however, could present this information something like this: “Emilio stood in the doorway to the gymnasium. On the far side of the room above several long tables covered with black and gold tablecloths hung a large banner that read, ‘Welcome back, Blackhawks, to your 40-year reunion!' People milled around the old gym, but standing alone behind the punch bowl and holding a clear plastic punch ladle was Glenda. Her half-moon reading glasses clung to the end of her thin nose, her gray-streaked hair was pulled up in a bun, and crow's feet around her eyes looked like alluvial fans. Emilio fixed his name tag to his jacket, sighed, and walked toward Glenda.” Other expressions that explain rather than dramatize action include “he could tell,” “he finished,” “he started,” etc., each of which summarizes and explains but doesn't let the reader participate by interpreting details of characters' action or appearance.
The passive voice, primarily because of its tendency to leave out the doer of the action, is another common symptom of telling rather than showing. While in active-voice sentences the subject appears before the verb (as in “Clyde stashed the money under a loose board in the floor”), passive voice sentences either leave out the doer (as in “The money was stashed under a loose board in the floor”) or identify the doer of the action after the verb, typically in a “by” phrase (as in “The money was stashed under a loose board in the floor by Clyde”). Passive voice sentences usually tell rather than show for one of two reasons: (1) no one is present to perform the action, so the sentence only relates information about the thing or person that received the action or (2) if the doer of the action is included, he/she/it appears at the end of the sentence, almost as an afterthought and certainly too late for the reader to form a vivid, active image around the doer.
Another obvious symptom of telling is focusing on what didn't happen rather than on what did. In this case the writer regularly uses the negative, often because he or she doesn't know what else to say when a character stops talking, stops moving, stops breathing, etc. Maybe the writer is trying to relate a tense conversation between two people -- an employee who fears being fired and a supervisor who doesn't want to fire the employee but knows she must -- and has now reached the point at which the employee expects to hear the words, “Bob, I'm sorry but . . .”; however, the supervisor is unable to get the words out. An awkward silence ensues, and the writer, rather than just telling the reader that no one spoke, can show the silence by describing other sounds around them of which they and we were not aware while they were speaking -- the ticking of a clock, water gurgling through the pipes in the wall, the anxious growling of the employee's stomach, etc. The point is this: Focus on what happens, not on what doesn't happen.
When the writer makes judgments, especially by overusing adverbs, the reader is less involved in the writing and much more passive. Details no longer argue the reader into belief; the reader, instead, is expected to take the writer at his or her word when told that the team stood fearfully in a circle around the coach; that Sarah looked up with a shy smile at Mrs. Benavides, her new second-grade teacher; that Robert's hands eagerly reached for an ear of sweet corn. Rather than relying on abstract adjectives and adverbs that modify nouns and verbs, the writer should give details that dramatize the fear (wide eyes, mouths agape, cool sweat on the palms of their hands), the shyness (red cheeks, eyes on the floor rather than on Mrs. Benavides's face), and the eagerness (grabbing a steaming ear of corn, dropping it on his plate, and puffing quick breaths at his fingertips).
Sometimes, rather than using simple past or present tense verbs, writers use unnecessary or inappropriate verb tenses, which results in telling rather than showing. Occasionally students writing about something that happened in their past relate it by habitually using “would” to create the past tense. For example, it's not unusual for students to write something like this: “For Christmas Grandma would make tamales.” Because “would” is conditional, the action is not taking place at this moment but will take place, it's implied, under certain conditions: “For Christmas Grandma would make tamales if we were good.” The verb “has” also creates a similar effect since using it as a helping verb with an action verb suggests that the action has already been completed. For example, “Mark has said that he plans to attend UT” means that prior to the moment that this statement is related, Mark already stated his intentions of going to school in Austin. Relative to the event being related, “had” describes things that are already over. Showing, however, is effective because it presents things -- either in the past or the present -- to the reader as if they were unfolding at that moment: Mark said, “I'm going to UT next fall.”
Last, using the second person point of view often results in inadvertent telling rather than showing. Inexperienced writers sometimes take shortcuts with description by putting the responsibility for visualizing what the writer has in mind by saying something like this in narrative: “You could see the anger in Michelle's face.” However, unless the writer uses sensory details to describe the expression on her face, the reader cannot see the anger there, and the writer is cheating by making the reader responsible for something the writer should have done.
Showing is such a fundamental skill that too often composition and creative writing teachers assume that students can do it with a minimum of instruction. However, the pitfalls are many and often subtle, and helping students recognize specific symptoms can help them improve the quality of their own scenes and make them more attentive readers and better diagnosticians in workshops and even on the highway. Then, when they see a sign that says, “Fortunes told,” they'll realize that the ad is more accurate than its author may know and that we can't claim it's false advertising because telling is exactly what they do.
(Randy Koch teaches English and directs the Writing Center at Texas A&M International University.)
