Mastering Showing and Telling in Your Fiction by Marcy Kennedy

Author:Marcy Kennedy
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Education and Reference, Publishing Guide, Writing Skills, Fiction Writing, Showing and Telling, Editing
Publisher: Tongue Untied Communications
Published: 2014-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

You might want to argue that we should leave the history a mystery for the readers to discover as they go along. In many cases, you do want to hold information back because withholding information creates some of the tension in any story. A good story should have some secrets.

At the same time, you have to decide where you want the reader’s focus to be. Do you want them working to piece together backstory? Or do you want them working alongside your protagonist to figure out who the killer is, or why the town’s water supply has turned red like blood, or where the treasure is hidden, or how your main character can make it home alive?

This is an important distinction to make. We want the reader to be engaged but not confused. If they need the backstory or technical information to understand the story, just give it to them. Sometimes it’s better to give them the backstory or technical information they need rather than leaving them to puzzle it out for themselves, because that frees them up to be engaged with the important elements of the story happening in the present.

When you’re telling in a situation like this, make sure you do it in small bites and that you make it interesting. You also want to try to do it at a time when it would feel natural for the point-of-view character to be thinking about the information.

When you’re deciding whether or not to set up an entire scene or to use some other device (e.g., introducing a character who doesn’t know the fact, solely for the purpose of conveying it to the reader), the question you need to ask yourself is how important is this to the story?

The more important it is to the story, the more likely it is that you should take the time to create a scene around it. The less important it is to the story, the more likely it is you should slip the information in as quickly and unobtrusively as possible. If you have a lot of information that needs to be delivered quickly, it’s okay to tell it rather than showing it and risking bringing the story to a grinding halt.

If you’d like other examples of effective telling to convey information, take a look at “20 Great Infodumps from Science Fiction Novels” on io9.com.

When Showing Would Bore Your Reader

Sometimes a reader has already seen a scene play out (you’ve shown it), but the character who was involved needs to catch up other characters. Showing it again through a dialogue play-by-play would put the reader to sleep.

For example, let’s say Barry had a huge fight with his wife because she admitted she’s pregnant and doesn’t know who the father is. Could be Barry. Could be the man she’s been having an affair with for six months. You write an amazing scene, and then Barry storms off to his brother’s house.

Barry needs to tell his brother what just happened, but the reader doesn’t need to sit through it all again.

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