Prepared by: Rhéal Nadeau
Posted on: August 11, 2002
Reposted on: August 22, 2004
(Note: for those not familiar with what
the title of this exercise
means... Missouri is know as the "Show-me state; as a result, the
expression "I'm from Missouri" has evolved to mean "show me".)
This is an updated version of an exercise
first run in July 2001
(you can
find that exercise at
http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org/pwarchive/pw27.shtml).
(In
particular, you might want to check out the wrap-up for that exercise.)
In writing (or speech, for that matter),
we often use descriptive
adjectives: nice, mean, pretty, odd, evil, etc. Now, there's nothing
wrong with those words as such, but if we overuse them the effect
becomes
bland and generic. What does "nice" mean, for example? Do we mean
someone
who gives up a seat on the bus to a senior citizen, someone who spends
hours volunteering in the community, someone who says pleasant things
(without necessarily following up with any specific actions)? If we say
a
husband is nice, for example, do we mean he remembers anniversaries, or
that he does the dishes on a regular basis without being asked? As we
can
see, "nice" can mean making symbolic gestures, or performing specific
actions. The same concept applies to all such descriptive words: they
describe a wide range, and aren't specific.
There's a saying to the effect that
"actions speak louder than
words". Instead of simply describing a character as "nice" (or "mean",
or
whatever), it is often more effective to show the character in action,
in
such a way that the character traits emerge on their own.
Now, we like to give specific examples in
our exercises, but this
time I'll
turn things around - after all, one of the things we're trying to learn
is
to see how others have done something. So this exercise will be in two
parts.
First, find an example (in a novel, short
story, movie, TV show,
even in
non-fiction) where character is demonstrated through action - by
showing,
not telling. Either provide the relevant quote (if your example is from
a
printed work), or a description of the scene (if from film or
television.) Tell us what you learn about the character from the
actions
described or portrayed. Ideally, you can do this in 200 words or less.
Second, write your own example (in 300
words or less, preferably) of
a
scene involving two people (or more, if you can handle the additional
complexity under the word limit), where we learn about one or both
characters from the actions, without directly telling us anything about
either character.
When critiquing a submission, feel free to
comment on the example
provided,
telling what impression you got of the characters involved. For the
second
part of the submission, give your impression of the people involved, as
it
emerges from the action. Point out any occurrences of direct telling,
and
suggest (if you can) how that might have been shown instead.
Note that when we did the first version of
this exercise, we learned
that
when showing through action, it becomes hard to narrow things down to a
single character trait. For example, if I write an submission showing
someone being "nice", what will emerge will likely be a more complex
image
- perhaps even an ambiguous portrayal (which can be good in some cases,
or
a problem in others - it depends on the author's intent. Sometimes it's
good to leave some doubt as to whether a generous gesture, for example,
was
motivated by kindness or by self-interest; at other times we do want to
have the character emerge more clearly.)
This is a challenging exercise, but one
from which we can learn
quite a bit
about writing as we work at it!
Rhéal Nadeau's wrap-up
Posted on: August 21, 2002
A very interesting week.
First off, I enjoyed seeing the variety of
quotes people found to
show how
character can be revealed through action. Good work on that part of the
exercise! (I'll have to make this a part of exercises again in the
future.)
Certainly, it is important for writers to
learn to spot good (and
bad)
examples when we read.
The submissions were as varied as ever,
and on the whole
demonstrated well
how we can develop and show character through action and dialogue. I
was
struck in particular by the fact that when we use action and dialogue,
we
almost always wind up developing all the characters involved, not just
the
central character.
As a follow-up, I suggest we all pay
attention - in what we write,
read,
and even what we experience in life - to see examples of how character
emerges from action.
Rhéal Nadeau's wrap-up
Posted on: Tue, 7 Sep 2004
A good week, with a good variety of
submissions and critiques.
Still, the most interesting post, to me,
was a post to Writing about
the exercise, discussing showing versus telling (and also raising
indirect
questions about the goals of the exercises, which I will address lower
down.)
Here is one extract (by the way, I did
obtain permission from that
member
to use his message in my wrap-up):
Recently I read passages
in several old
novels--Alcott, Cervantes,
Dickens, Cather, and some others. The amount of
"telling" those
authors do is striking. [...] It would be hard for a
reader to mistake
anything. Nobody could doubt that Don Quixote is off
his nut--the
author keeps telling us he is.
Yes, Cervantes does tell us that. However,
when we remember that
book,
what do we remember? Do we remember Cervantes telling us Don Quixote is
a
nut - or do we remember scenes like the attack on the windmill, which
show
us just how much a nut he really is? (Frankly, when I read that novel,
as
great as it is, I do find myself skimming the blocks of exposition, but
reading the action scenes with great attention. That, to me, is where
Don
Quixote comes to live - through his actions, not through the
explanations
of the author.)
Here's another excerpt from that post:
I haven't written a lot
of fiction, and am still
rather puzzled about
this. I want my readers to know exactly what I want
them to know, if
you know what I mean. I don't want two readers to
interpret a story
in different ways--except sometimes, when I want to
leave them
puzzled, which I sometimes feel like doing, and which
Hemingway
obviously wanted to do in that story.
That's an interesting goal - but I'll
simply claim that it's an
impossible
one. At some point, we have to leave off and let the reader's
imagination
takes place - because that's where the story lives, isn't it? If we put
in
too much explanation, we lose the reader's interest, the reader's sense
of
involvement. And even with a lot of explanation, readers will still
draw
their own mental pictures. Trust me: put in two pages of text
describing
your character's physical appearance, and you'll still have some
readers
picturing that character with different hair colouring, or different
height
or weight - because the readers will not absorb all that information,
or
even will have already formed a mental picture of the character in the
very
first reference.
I also wonder if it's really possible to
really tell what a
character is
feeling. If I write "John was angry, so angry he wanted to hit someone"
-
well that's pretty clear, I guess, but again, different readers will
interpret that in different ways. Anger covers a broad spectrum of
emotions, arises from a variety of causes. And wanting to hit someone -
is
the character really about to do that, or just not? Which someone -
anyone, or some specific people?
A final excerpt from that post:
So, getting back to the
Practice exercise, I wish
I could ask each
author: Did the critters understand what you wrote?
Did they get it
all, including the more subtle indications? Do you
care if some saw
one thing, and some another? Or do you feel
misunderstood? Is
"show" that important? Or is "tell" equally
significant?
Here, we get down to the purpose of this
list. Yes, that exercise
was
about showing rather than telling. That doesn't mean writers can never
tell - sometimes we have to, sometimes it's the most efficient way. But
each exercise must, by definition, target one aspect of writing. (For
example, when we run a poetry exercise, this is no way invalidates
writing
prose!)
As for how the writer reacts to the
critiques - well again, remember
the
purpose of the exercise. What matters isn't whether the writer met the
exercise goal precisely, but whether we learn from the submissions. And
often, we'll learn a lot more when we read a critique and think "that's
not
what I meant to do!" - that's when we can think "how can I do this
better
next time?" (Of course, we also learn when our reaction to a critique
is
"yes, that's just what I intended!")
So yes, we must weigh showing versus
telling - keeping in mind that
the
reader is more likely to remember what is shown than what is told, just
as
we remember the windmills in Don Quixote, but not the author's long
explanations.
Rhéal
Web site created by
Rhéal Nadeau and
the administrators of the Internet Writing Workshop.
Modified by Gayle Surrette.