Show Vs. Tell: 

A False Binary

Think Continuum!

We've heard the adage "show don't tell" so often it's practically become the golden rule of writing.  The question is ...should it be? Like so many binary comparisons --male/female --the use of time in fiction has been confined to a false contrast that should actually be described as a continuum.  As anyone can see from a quick read of most writing, there are places where telling is just fine.  The final line of Chopin's ironic "The Story of an Hour" is a great example:

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills. 

And when it comes to showing there is a big difference between what I've labeled "dramatic telling" and "dramatization."

Dramatic Telling is a handy way of conveying information in a condensed way that much more absorbing and active than telling, but doesn't require the full development of dramatization (or scene work).  Here's an example from the novel The Year of the Sawdust Man which opens

 "I knew every inch of Mama's room.  We spent our days there ever since we moved to that airy house on Main Street--cutting paper dolls from magazine advertisements or acting out plays from the books we'd read.  Mama loved the models in the Ladies Home Journal because we drew and colored them ourselves.  For our plays, we made clothes out of the laundry Mama cleaned for our neighbors.  Mama enjoyed playacting more than cleaning clothes. We spent so much time in that breezy room overlooking Minkie's Mercantile, I knew every ring of dust, every pierced earring, every piece of handmade clothing she owned." 

Here, we learned a lot about the relationship between mother and daughter, the character of both people, the setting, and there's a hint the central conflict in this story, but it's not a scene, so it's not fully showing these people in this room. We see them through a condensed summary of dramatic telling which often uses

1. Active Voice--strong verbs, focus on action, concrete details
2. Specific Language--it's not just clothing, but "every piece of handmade clothing"
3. Double Duty Details--details that show more than one element of writing at a time
4. Condensed Time

Here we see a mother who acts in plays, reads books, and creates paper dolls with her daughter rather than cleaning the house or washing the clothes she's paid to clean which reveals how close they are to each other, how artistic they both are, and how unfocused her mother is on practical matters.  This paragraph reveals a lot using a form of telling that mimics showing. 

Double Duty Details are one of the tools used to create this effect. It's a term I'm well-known for and I've written quite a few blog posts on the topic, so I'll be brief here and point out that by saying that she wore clothes she should be washing because she "enjoyed playacting more than cleaning clothes" which shoes both her creativity and her lack of inhibition and her lack of commitment to gainful employment which shows her identity, her actions, and hints at the central conflict of the story--Mama, AKA Heirah Rae Bergen, struggles to fit in the society in which she lives and eventually withdraws from it, leaving her daughter feeling abandoned. 

Condensed Time is a great propel the plot forward while covering a lot of ground in the process. To feel the bite of the loss of her mother, we need to know what Nissa's (the narrator's) relationship with her mother was like before she discovers she's left town alone. This quick summary of their time together in "that airy room overlooking Minkie's Mercantile" shows us the creativity and closeness of their relationship while hinting at tension below the surface. Why else would Nissa be so hyper-aware of everything in her mama's room? We also learn that they live in a small town in the past --living on a main street with a Mercantile gives that away--the airy-breezy room also suggests a warm climate that is likely also Southern according to the word choices here. 

Let's look at another quick example from Worth in which the narrator explains the war between the farmers and the ranchers in his 1870s Nebraskan community when he realizes their new family member, an NYC orphan would have no idea what they mean by "fence fighting" between the two rival families the Gantry's and the Danvers. Nate says, "Fence fighting didn't mean a thing to a boy from a city, but I knew Mr. Clemson spoke of cattle trampling crops, then turning up lame or missing, a Danver boy drowning on Gantry land, and now the killing of Danver sheep. 

Here, through the use of specific details, strong verbs, and summarized action, I used condensed time to convey the backstory of the feud that works as the backdrop to the family drama of the story.

Dramatization, on the other hand, puts in the moment when action is taking place. That can happen in a full scene that uses telling and dramatic telling to bring us into the central events of the story. When lightning strikes the ground and spooks the horses hitched to the wagon Nate stands in--he is crippled in the accident that follows.  

I use dramatic telling to lead it off saying, "Then lightning struck ground, sending those horses toward the house and my leg into pieces." 

Then I bring readers into the moment:

"My mind gobbled up the world in that instant, then spit it back at me in tiny little moving pictures--the look of the wheel turning all splintered and gray--the ground rolling by with rocks hopping up--my pitch tumbling to the ground and ricocheting. No sound. No feeling. Just a jumble of pictures all moving faster than the rain itself." Notice that telling is used here with "No sound" and "No feeling" which work because most folks have been in that moment when disaster strikes, time slows down, and you notice every detail.  

Dramatization also often incorporates full scenes with dialogue, character descriptions, and so on.  

When you think of show vs tell as a way of controlling of time in your writing and notice that it's more about a continuum than the binary, you gain greater control of your ability to propel the story forward and realize there is a time for everything --telling, dramatic telling, and dramatization--as long as you bring us into the moment when it's essential.