You've all heard this 'rule' in one form or another, but the most
common cliché is, 'Show, don't tell.' It's basically true because stories
that engage readers, appeal to the emotions, the senses, and have
characters acting and interacting. What happens with showing
dominating, is the creation of a fictional reality that readers can lose
themselves in, but there is a place for telling in every story and the
emphasis depends upon the effect you want to create for and/or in
your reader.
For example, if you want a dominantly intellectual reaction, then you
would go for a distant or close voice that explains, examines,
considers and analyzes. In other words, this voice talks about what's
happening. That's telling. A good example of a writer who using telling
in a close voice as a major technique is Russell Banks in Cloudsplitter.
Showing is dominantly action, and some writers are about 90 %
action. Among them is Robert Parker, whose novels are about 90%
dialog, which is pure showing. If you have information you want the
reader to have but you don't want it drawn out in a long narrative,
dialog is the dramatic way to get that across.
Showing involves the reader on a more visceral level, and you go with
either a first person close or third person close voice. This close voice
doesn't automatically mean that you are stressing action if all the
character does is talk about acting. For example, a character talking
about climbing K-2: "We made the final assault about two in the
afternoon and after several hours of struggling in the snow and ice,
we were exhausted and turned back." Yeah, right, and how exciting is
that? You understand what happened, but you don't see it, feel it,
experience it.
One basic rule of thumb with showing vs telling; if there is something
the reader absolutely needs to understand, and which can't be shown,
tell them. Another use of telling rather than showing is when there is
information the characters are exchanging but which the reader is
already aware of, you summarize by telling. For example, if your
character has had an unusual experience which the reader has already
seen, but a character in the story is not aware of, you summarize it:
'He told her about the nasty stewardess on his flight home.'
Clearly fiction demands more showing than telling but telling is a very
useful device in many instances. The thing that's tricky about showing
vs telling is that many beginning writers unconsciously accept the idea
of 'Tell me a story,' and immediately launch off into a totally telling
mode, which is boring at best. If you keep in mind the two voices of
the two points of view,[1st and 3rd] you won't fall into the telling
trap.
A point of confusion in showing vs telling is the idea of a distant voice
describing a scene. It looks like and sounds like telling, not action, but
if it's done correctly, it is still showing. For example, telling what a
scene looks like would be, 'The mountains rose in the distance and the
plains flowed out from them toward the cabin.' Okay, you see the
scene but with no impact, no color, no shapes, no sizes, textures,
etc. That's telling. Showing the scene goes back to the basic concept
of setting, which is a sense of place. In that telling line there is no
sense of place, no details that make it come alive. It's flat, accurate
and gives the reader information, and because there is nothing else to
it, clearly it is simply information the reader needs to know, but not
experience. Knowing = telling, experiencing = showing. It's up to you
to decide what the reader only needs to know [telling] and what they
should experience [showing].
Most often it is the distant voice that describes the scenes for the
reader. However, the close voice can also 'describe a scene by seeing
it for the reader. The usual point of view for strong setting is usually
third or first distant for a very logical reason. If the central character
is involved in something that takes all his/her attention, then it would
be unbelievable that they would notice the details of the scene in
which the action takes place, thus it's the distant voice in both
p.o.v.s that would describe the setting. Here too, the shifting back
and forth between telling and showing or distant and close voice,
creates stylistic pace, but in an action scene, you clearly want the
action to dominate, so you use the distant voice more sparingly.
For a little practice here, create an action scene in which the third
distant voice describes the setting of the action, then shift the focus
to the third close voice, the character involved in the action. Make it
around 300 words. What you'll discover here is that the distant voice
frames the action.
Do the same with the first distant and close voice. And remember, a
shift in p.o.v. from 3rd to 1st is not just changing pronoun references,
it's an entirely different way of seeing the same scene. Third distant is
omniscient, a voice outside the story that has created this fictional
world; first distant is a character seeing in recollection. Third distant
is objectively aware, first distant is as objective as possible but
because it's the voice of a fallible human being, it's subjective too.
FIRST PERSON POINT OF VIEW AND SETTING
The difficulty of this double first person voice is understanding just
who the speaker is. Keep it simple; the first person distant voice, is
the voice of the character recollecting this story, thus he/she knows
what happened, is recreating the events, the time and the places for
you. This voice is deliberate and conscious of relating the story to you
and consciously creates it for you.
The close voice is the voice of the character at the time of the story,
the same person telling it to you but instead of being the aware
person now, they are the unaware person they were at the time of
the story. They don't know what happens, they are just going through
it. This is the voice of action, of surprise, of shock.
Clearly you are going to be shifting back and forth between the two voices, and how much time you
spend in each voice will be determined by the kind of impact you want
the story to have on your reader. Simply put, if you want an
intellectual appreciation, you let the distant voice dominate. If you
want an emotional response, you go with the close voice. So, if you
know how you want your reader to react, you'll know which voice to
emphasize.