A tale of Psychopathic Chocolate Bunnies™

Up front, full disclosure: I got a rejection from an agent not so long ago for coming up short on this particular aspect of writing, but they do say those who can’t do, teach.

His name was Johnstone Trophy, “Paint” to his friends. His greatest triumph came when he defeated Baron Zanzibar Blithering-Smythe atop the demonic dirigible Drügenflöffer and prevented the Houses of Parliament from being bombed to buggery by the Baron’s baleful battle fleet.

From that, you might be forgiven for thinking our subject today is alliteration, but not by me, because I am quite merciless when it comes to those who jump to rash conclusions (if you did that, flog yourself fifteen times and then report back here when you’re done). Besides, everyone knows alliteration is awesome and should be used as often and unnecessarily as possible.

This is one of the golden rules of writing and, indeed, life.

No, the rule breached by the excerpt above is that of ‘show, don’t tell’. Granted, this rule isn’t quite as important as the one about alliteration, but it’s certainly up there with ‘no ball games’, ‘keep off the grass’ and ‘refrain from using personal stereos and mobile phones in the quiet coach’.

Baron Zanzibar Blithering-Smythe dashed forward, sabre lancing toward Trophy’s heart*. Trophy neatly sidestepped the thrust and tripped the Baron as he passed, causing the sword to cut down into the fabric of the dirigible.

“When I recount this tale to the Times of London,” said Trophy, “I shall make sure to have a pithier remark to hand when I describe this moment.”

He flicked his half-smoked cigar toward the hydrogen spilling from the rent airship and then leapt clear as roiling flames consumed both airship and moustachioed nemesis. The last thing of Baron Zanzibar Blithering-Smythe that Trophy saw as he fell serenely toward the Houses of Parliament and a waiting giant trampoline, was the Baron shaking his fist angrily.

“Damn you, Trophy! Damn you and your damnable hamster sidekick!”

Compare this scene to the paragraph of exposition I started with. While that earlier paragraph was a perfunctory summary of things that have already happened, here we’re in the moment. We’re involved in the action. There is drama, suspense and the hamster’s name is Felicity, in case you were wondering.

Show, don’t tell.

But of course, like most rules, ‘show, don’t tell’ tells us nothing except what to do. It doesn’t say why we should do it. Without knowing the why, you would be a fool to slavishly follow any rule**. What I’m going to attempt to do in the rambling that follows is discuss the logic that underpins (and in some cases undermines) that rule.

1. Dramatic Distance

Mary began walking faster. Her heels rapped loudly on the pavement of the empty street. She checked over her shoulder. He wasn’t there. Not yet.

She turned into an alleyway and removed her shoes. If she was going to get away, she couldn’t let him hear her every step. When she hurried on, she did so barefoot. It was now her heartbeat that was deafening and, along with her panicked breathing, threatened to give her away. She almost wanted to know where he was, just so she could be sure that he wasn’t around the next corner.

Except he was.

He grabbed her before she could turn and run. She screamed and struggled and shouted for help. He only smiled.

***

“Her name was Mary Travis,” said Detective Inspector Smart, pointing to the photograph of a happy, smiling brunette pinned to the incident room wall. “She was tortured, raped and then beaten to death in the early hours of yesterday morning.” He surveyed the policemen before him as he let this revelation sink in. “We are going to find the bastard that did it and we’re going to find him before he strikes again.”

The second of those two scenes is mostly exposition. It’s telling, not showing. It’s breaking the rule. Tsk, tsk, slap wrists, feel ashamed, etc, etc.

But did you really want to see Mary Travis tortured, raped and beaten to death? More importantly, did I as writer want to throw my reader into the sickening details of a scene like that or did I want to create dramatic distance?

The doyenne of the cosy crime sub-genre is Agatha Christie. In her stories, people die, but the nastiness happens off page, because the story is really about puzzling out characters and motives to determine whodunit. A significant feature of these tales involves the sleuth asking questions of suspects, who then explain what they were doing around the time of the murder. Lots of telling, very little showing.

Stories need drama, but how much drama they require is a matter of choice.

Homer Simpson is driving his family home from a day out at a ghost town. Grandpa Simpson is in the back, complaining that he desperately needs to go to the toilet. Homer tells him to hold it in. Grandpa is forced to watch as service stops, waterfalls, and even a giant toilet go by. He says his stomach is beginning to hurt. Homer says they’ll be home in a few hours and he won’t let anything bad happen to his dear old Dad.

Cut to the hospital and Doctor Hibbert explaining that Grandpa Simpson’s kidneys have exploded.

(Kidney Trouble, The Simpsons: Season 10, Episode 8)

Comedy often delivers the punchline through exposition, especially when the incident described was unpleasant. We could have stayed in the Simpsons’ car while Grandpa suffers a blow-out of his innards and begins coughing up blood over Bart and Lisa, but if we had, the audience wouldn’t be laughing. Okay, they might if the scene was played as black comedy, but this approach doesn’t fit with the family-friendly tone of The Simpsons.

But we should not make the mistake of thinking showing is dramatic and telling is not. History books and documentaries rely heavily on exposition to convey information, yet they can still be gripping. This is because drama is generated by a number of literary techniques, such as pacing, subtext and explosions, none of which fall within the exclusive domain of narrative.

2. Brevity and Clarity

Geoff was angry.

A lot of agents and editors hate this. Not Geoff being angry, they don’t know Geoff, so they don't much care if he’s angry, but they do care that his state of mind has been described in this way. They would much prefer:

Stark lines drew up the middle of Geoff’s forehead as his brow lowered over staring eyes. He clenched his teeth, the tension in his jaw muscles plain to see. His nostrils flared and his hands closed into tight fists.

It should be obvious why. Describing the outward signs of Geoff’s anger is more evocative than simply stating its existence as fact.

But by now you’ve probably guessed things aren’t quite as simple as that.

Okay, let’s get the obvious points out of the way first. ‘Geoff was angry’ gets the point across much more quickly than in the second example, albeit in a flat, objective manner. It’s also unambiguous. Read that second example again. Is Geoff angry… or is he constipated?

Describing the outward effects of a state of mind requires the reader to infer the underlying emotion. This is good. We’ve spent all that time slaving over a book, it’s only fair that the reader has to do some work when reading it. But a reader won’t fill in the gaps using your experience of the world, they’ll do it using their own.

They can actually do this more easily with ‘Geoff was angry’. It lets the reader decide for themselves what behavioural ticks constitute anger. If they want Geoff shaking his fist and stamping his foot, fine. If they want him to remain outwardly placid whilst seething inside, they can do that too. Using less description in this way can make Geoff more relatable, because it doesn’t distance him from the reader by describing behaviour they are not familiar with.

Remember: stories abide by the rules in the head of the reader, not the writer.

How would the second paragraph of description play to a guy who saw his father clench teeth and make fists just before exploding in hearty laughter? Or to a girl who saw clenched teeth and fists as a prelude to an uncle beating her senseless?

Where a plot point needs to be interpreted a certain way, a writer should take care to make their rules plain during the telling of the story. This may mean using both showing and telling:

Stark lines drew up the middle of Geoff’s forehead as his brow lowered over staring eyes. He clenched his teeth, the tension in his jaw muscles plain to see. His nostrils flared and his hands closed into tight fists. Geoff was angry.

Yes, it's potentially repetitive and states a fact that may very well be blindingly obvious, but at least it stops the reader concluding that Geoff is constipated.

Hollywood movies repeat and labour plot points for the same reason. That’s right, it’s not really due to sloppy writing or an enduring need to irritate you personally, it’s because they want everyone to understand clearly what’s going on. Oh, and they also do it because of that guy who sneezed when the head of security explained there was a bomb on the plane. And because of that girl who saw the terrorists plant the plastic explosive on the plane, but still asked her boyfriend if those guys in ski masks were actually marzipan deliverymen with low self-esteem. And because even though you’ve been trying to pay attention, those kids behind you have been playing on their mobile phones all through the film and if they don’t stop in the next twenty seconds, you’re going to give them all a Vodafone enema***.

Once again, this is a matter of choice. Your average high-brow literati won't appreciate being patronised in this way, while an occasional reader won't appreciate writing they find unclear. Who are you writing for?

Rambling Conclusion

All of this talk of dramatic distance, brevity and clarity is really just a roundabout way of getting onto the crux of the matter: semantics.

A reader will not remember the words you wrote. The instant after they’re read, the words become irrelevant. What becomes important then is the meaning the reader takes from those words.

If the meaning a reader takes from:

Stark lines drew up the middle of Geoff’s forehead as his brow lowered over staring eyes. He clenched his teeth, the tension in his jaw muscles plain to see. His nostrils flared and his hands closed into tight fists.

… is simply:

Geoff was angry.

Then all those extra words are pointless. The only value in writing them is to keep an agent or editor happy.

Showing only becomes worthwhile if it delivers meaning that is qualitatively different from simple telling.

For most readers, that longer description of Geoff’s anger will be different. It tells us more about Geoff’s character. He’s the type of person that expresses rage physically, though, for the moment described, he’s holding it in check. It makes the question of what Geoff is going to do next far more pressing than simply stating he was angry. Is he going to hit something? Is he going to an unleash a stream of invective? Or is he going to choke his emotion back by counting slowly to ten?

That's why showing is better.

Unless... we don't care. Exposition - and the info-dump in particular - isn't bad because it's relaying a lot of information quickly, it's bad only when it's used inappropriately. In Steven Moffatt's Doctor Who episode 'Blink', the Doctor delivers an infodump explaining the nature of the monster-of-the-week Weeping Angels. This comes roughly two-thirds of the way in, when we've seen what the Weeping Angels can do and we're dying to get a token explanation of why. It's akin to Agatha Christie's sleuth telling us whodunnit at the story's climax - telling works when it's telling us something we want to know. Giving your audience the life history of a character they've only just met... who cares?

Geoff's anger isn't of particular importance to his story. His anger is a footnote to the real drama concerning Tyrone and Penelope and how their burgeoning romance looks doomed to tragedy thanks to the unexpected invasion of Psychopathic Chocolate Bunnies™. In this context, ask yourself which is better: three words of telling or thirty-nine words of showing?

In summary then, showing and telling are simply tools, neither good or bad. Their effects differ depending on the context. I've given a flavour of that here (but there's plenty I haven't covered, like the impact of showing and telling on pacing). Understand the effects and you can decide which technique best serves any given moment in your story.

Good writing is very much like life in that respect. It’s not about following rules**, it’s about making informed choices.

* - And yes, I know, the sabre is more of a slashing blade than a jabbing blade, but to be fair to the Baron, he was rather caught up in the heat of the moment.

** - Except the one about alliteration, obviously.

*** - Okay, I’m not entirely sure how this would work, but frankly I’m happy to go with it without thinking too deeply about the specifics.