Telling, Not Showing

I begin this post with a bit of bragging: last night I finished revisions for my agent. I so rule. But because I do all my writing and revising longhand, I now have to type up all my changes, which will be several hellish hours of my life I'll never get back. There are worse fates, I'm sure. But I digress from the digression with which I began.

While I was revising, I noticed there are at least a couple of cases in which the old rule of Show, Don't Tell does not apply. I found myself actually deleting passages where I had dramatized the action (showing) and replacing them with summary (telling). So this is sort of a "rules? schmules?" post. Sort of.

The action of my novel comes in three strands, which unravel and intertwine as the book progresses. That's a fancy way of saying that I have a couple of major subplots as well as the main plot, and they more or less all tie together at the end. I also have a first-person narrator, who is involved in all three plots. What this means is that either:

a) my narrator has to be present for every scene in order to know what's going on (and relate it to the reader), or

b) someone has to tell my narrator whenever anything important happens off-screen.

The first option could result in some highly improbable situations, as my protagonist doesn't have access to everything everyone does. The second option could result in lots and lots of conversations like this:

"So, Feng says Amleth is dangerous."
"Really?"
"Yeah, he thinks he's going to attack Horvendil soon. They had a bitter argument last night, while you were talking to Corambis."
"What did they fight about?"
"Amleth claims Horvendil is a fraud. Feng told him he's wrong, but Amleth swears to find the truth."
"That's bad."
"Yep. Say, what did you and Corambis talk about?"
"Well, let me tell you..."

And stuff. As it happens, I found that I did have a lot of that sort of conversation in my book, where A and B have a scene and then A and C discuss that scene out of earshot of B. It made me dizzy in a couple of places, and was entirely unneccesary. What I did instead was, as I say, cut the repetitious dialogue and replaced it with summary:

I met with Fernando and told him of my conversation with Corambis. We agreed that something would have to be done about Horvendil soon.

This is much briefer, far less ridiculous to read, and also gives you a chance to interpret the earlier scenes for the reader if you're into that sort of editorializing from a narrator.

The point of all this, aside from demonstrating how unfocused I am when I've not had any coffee, is that where you find this sort of repetition in your narrative, especially if you find dialogue that repeats previous dialogue or discusses previous action, it might be a good time to tell rather than show. Yes, you have to make sure the right characters all know the requisite facts to move the plot along, but if your reader already knows those facts, don't repeat them all over again.

So my rule is: Show, don't tell, unless you have to.

When My Characters Talk to Each Other...

...they sometimes don't say what they're supposed to say. And that really annoys me. It goes like this:

I'm writing a scene. This scene has a specific purpose. I need to convey to the reader that there is conflict between the two characters in the scene, and I need to show that conflict and what's behind it. I also need to set up the next scene. This scene also has to be structured so that my protagonist is active in it, making a forward move with his life. So I put my protagonist in a hallway with the other character, and tell them to talk.

They do not, however, discuss the point of contention between them. No, they chat about all sorts of stuff that's really pointless. Shut up and get on with it, I say to them, striking out all of the things they've just said.

Let's try it again, shall we, boys? Off my pen goes, skipping across the page, quotation marks and attributions left and right, and when I stop to read what I have wrought, I see that once more my two characters are chattering away about pleasant things that have nothing to do with this scene.

One basic problem, of course, is that I'm trying to have my characters speak like real people, who rarely (if ever) get to the point. Real conversations are almost never direct, and real people almost never bring up actual conflict. Why? Because they're real people, and conflict is really unpleasant.

A more clever writer than I could show the conflict in the spaces between the pleasantries (there's some very nice dialog between Charles Darnay and his uncle in "A Tale of Two Cities" that speaks volumes through what remains unsaid), but I'm stuck with my own level of cleverness and so I'd like to twist my characters' arms and just have them say the words I have planned for them.

What they keep saying is stuff like:

"Oh, that Gary isn't such a bad guy, once you get to know him. You should give him a break. I've known him for years."

"Really, well, if you can vouch for him, that's saying something."

"He likes you okay, I think. Hey, are you hungry? Wanna grab a bite?"

when what I really need them to say is more like:

"What's with you and Gary?"

"I hate that guy. I don't trust him."

"Why? He's one of my best friends."

"I don't trust you, either."

That's more like it. Though an even better (and far less "real world" realistic) way to do it would be for my protagonist to grab the other guy's arm and say, "I don't trust you or Gary." It's quicker, it's got physical action (way better than dialogue for showing character) and it gets to the heart of the conflict. It seems so obvious, too.

I have a theory that I write this kind of dialogue-that-goes-nowhere whenever I'm uncomfortable with the conflict between characters. I don't want them talking about this stuff. Which, perversely enough, means that the conflict is something I should have more of in the book.

Which brings me to the real point of this post: Are there ideas you shy away from in your stories? Do you think your stories would be better or worse if you pursued those ideas instead of avoiding them?