Show, Don’t Tell

Do you show, not tell?

I just finished reading a murder mystery from the 1930s which told outcomes before showing them.  The result was that my enjoyment of the book diminished.  For example:

• A police detective is chasing a bad guy and seems to have him trapped. The author writes, “Then the end came, far more quickly than [the detective] had anticipated.”  The author follows up these words with details explaining how the detective and bad guy ended that scene.

Why is this bad story telling?  Ideally, an author wants the reader to share the emotions of the protagonist—in this case the detective.  Ideally, readers should experience the detective’s fear that the bad guy will shoot him, the detective’s fear that he will lose his footing on the mountainside and plunge to his death, the detective’s fear that the bad guy will cleverly escape.

In the real world, the detective wouldn’t know the end was near.  He hopes it is near, but many things could go awry.  Until he captures the bad guy, the detective—and we, the readers—should stay in suspense.  But by writing “then the end came,” the author lessens our suspense and our enjoyment of the novel.

• Another time, the author ends a chapter with two policemen talking about a suspect. One wonders aloud what a suspect will say during an upcoming interview.  The other policeman says the suspect probably won’t say much.  “But he was wrong,” the author adds.

By adding, “But he was wrong,” the author tells us before he shows us.  The author’s intent is to add suspense, and he does.  Readers need to keep reading to find out why “he was wrong.” But the author lets readers know what the policemen do not yet know, so our emotions are not heightened as the police doing the subsequent interview.

Good novels lure readers into make-believe worlds, eliciting in us emotions as if we are really there.  If we are really there, we shouldn’t know what will happen next any more than we know what will happen next in our real world.

In both of these examples, the author is interjecting himself into the story.  He acts like a puppet master who stops the puppets’ action, reveals himself as the one pulling their strings, and talks directly to the audience.  Then he goes on with the puppet show.  The magic is dispelled.

Another example of an author interjecting himself is when an author uses the word “suddenly” at the start of a sentence.  Suddenly lightning flashed.  Suddenly the child fell off the swing.  Suddenly the two cars crashed.  When lightning flashes, do we know it will happen before it happens?  When a child falls off a swing, do we know she will fall before she falls?  When two cars crash, do we know they will crash before they crash?  Not in real life.

By using the word “suddenly,” an author alerts readers that something unusual is about to happen.  Why not just let it happen, so that we are as surprised as the characters in the story?  Our emotional response will be stronger than if we are alerted ahead of time with the word “suddenly.”

Show, don’t tell.