As a reminder, here are the three areas Sol Stein lists as vulnerable to telling rather than showing:

1. Telling what happened before the story began
2. Telling what a character looks like
3. Telling what a character senses (the 5 senses) and feels (emotions)

I’ve saved the five senses until almost last (we still have to discuss character movement and active verbs, after all!) because this has to do not just with how we write our narrative, but how deeply we delve into our chosen Point of View.

I’ve been repeating two signposts of telling in previous posts (WAS and FELT), but would like to add a few more when it comes to sensing:

• Character SAW/WATCHED (She saw him running down the street.)
• Character HEARD (He heard a knock at the door.)
• Character KNEW (She knew he was unlikely to ever change his mind.)
• Character THOUGHT (He thought she might consent to stay a while longer.)
• Character WONDERED (She wondered if he would ever stop tapping his fingers.)

Here’s how this ties in with POV. When we “tell” that a character saw something (She watched him running down the street), we are holding the reader back from truly being inside the head of the character. When I see something, I am not (usually) cognizant of the fact that I am in the process of “seeing.” I just experience the action going on outside of me. So how does this work in prose? Let’s look at an example from Candy’s point of view:

• Candy watched Mike throw open the door and storm out of the house. OR
• Mike threw open the door and stormed out of the house.

The second example shows the action through Candy’s eyes as she experiences it. We’re right there with her, not held back from her like an objective observer. Harken back for a moment, if you will, to the analogy of comparing Showing to actually seeing a movie and Telling to just hearing someone else talk about it. Even if the person who is telling you about the movie were to tell you exactly everything that happened and what each character did, you still would not have experienced what it had been like to actually SEE the movie. This is what happens when we tell our readers that the character is seeing, hearing, thinking, knowing, etc. Yes, occasionally we need these telling phrases to make a complete sentence/thought. But before writing them, we should ask ourselves if there is any other way to phrase the sentence so that the action is more immediate and seen only through the lens of our character’s eyes.

Most of the sensory information we include in our writing is seeing and hearing. With hearing, it’s a little harder than seeing, because what someone hears is not immediately recognizable at times. Take the example I used above, He heard a knock at the door. Most likely, he is not going to know who is on the other side of the door, and since we are talking about writing in deep POV, I as the author cannot step outside of my character to say who is knocking at the door if the POV character does not know. So I must see if there is another way I can rewrite it:

• Mark glanced up from his book when a rhythmic tapping interrupted his concentration. “Will someone please get the door?”
• The door rattled in its frame with the force of the pounding on the other side.
• A knock on the door—like the sharp report of a rifle—shattered the stillness of the room.

One way some writers try to get around this is just to replace the words “he heard” with a pet-peeve phrase: “there was” (There was a knock on the door). The main reason not to use this phrasing at all (or with as limited use as you can) in your writing is that it is passive-nonspecific. In this example, we have replaced a somewhat active verb (heard) with a passive verb (was) and a specific subject (he) with a nonspecific subject (there).

Kathy Harris raised an interesting question—does this ever become second nature or is it something to worry about in revisions? My answer is Yes . . . and No. Yes, the more you train yourself to use showing rather than telling language, the easier it is to just write that way (just like when we learned to write in just one POV instead of head-hopping). Yes, when it comes time for edits, this is definitely where you want to spend time revising and rewriting. Yes, you want to make sure your draft is as well written as it can be . . . for a first draft. No, you should not beat yourself up nor give yourself writer’s block because you’re so intently focused on trying to “get it right” the first time. Your story and characterization will be stronger with showing rather than telling language, but the most important thing is to get that first draft finished!

Tomorrow, we’re going to continue this discussion with SMELLING, TASTING, and TOUCHING, and then on Wednesday we’ll KNOW, THINK, and WONDER.

But now it’s your turn. Rewrite one of these so it’s showing instead of telling (and be creative–don’t just go for the easy answer!):

1. I saw Raymond slip the cash into his pocket.
2. Desdemona heard a carriage rattle to a stop outside her window.
3. Michael watched in horror as the car crashed through the guardrail and over the cliff.

As a reminder, here are the three areas Sol Stein lists as vulnerable to telling rather than showing:

1. Telling what happened before the story began
2. Telling what a character looks like
3. Telling what a character senses (the 5 senses) and feels (emotions)

We’re going to tackle the last part of #3—Character Emotions. This is a hard one, but can be so rewarding when, for a brief moment, we grasp it and find ourselves showing what our characters are feeling without having to think about it.

As I mentioned, I feel there are two standard signposts of telling when it comes to descriptions, senses, and emotions:

Character WAS adjective. (Ned was handsome.)
Character FELT adjective. (Charlotte felt tired.)

This is the type of writing that comes natural to most of us. Starting today, however, train your brain to associate the word FELT with that heavy, scratchy, stiff fabric used for arts and crafts and not character emotions. Felt does not make comfortable clothing, so why “dress” your characters with it? (Ha! And I wasn’t even trying to come up with an analogy!)

One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever received was in a seminar in grad school: make the emotions DO something to the character. Make the emotion the subject of an active verb instead of just an adjective. (Get out your grammar book if you must.)

Which of the following sentences gives you the best visual of the emotion being experienced?:

• Molly felt scared.
• Fear made Molly’s skin tingle.
• Fear tingled on Molly’s skin.
• Fear ran down Molly’s spine like a hundred tiny mice with cold feet.

Yes, showing uses more words. But it also draws the reader into the story and is an opportunity for characterization. In which sentence do you feel like you know something about Molly? Also, don’t be afraid of similes, metaphors, or other symbolic language—just be sure to avoid clichés or dogeared language.

The most important question that must be answered when deciding how best to show your characters’ emotions is: What is your character’s internal vocabulary? In other words, in what unique way does your character view and label the world? Is she an introvert or extrovert? Optimist or pessimist? Cheerful or depressed? Realistic/logical or given to flights of fancy? What is his social background? What are the cultural/generational influences he grew up with?

Why?

Because a World War II veteran who helped liberate the concentration camp at Auschwitz is going to view things differently than a Gen-Xer who grew up in 1980s California. And by giving your POV characters unique internal vocabularies, you deepen the characterization and draw the reader further into your story.

In Brandilyn Collins’ excellent book on characterization, Getting into Character, she covers this at length in the chapter “Coloring Passions.” She writes, “If you want to portray a passion to its utmost, you must focus not on the passion itself, but on its varied components.” One of the best ways to do this is to contrast it against its opposite: “If your character is harsh, find what is gentle in him. If she’s selfish, find her generous side. If she’s self-confident, find her point of self-doubt. If he’s emotionally strong, find his weakness.” In other words, show all sides of the emotions—dig deep to find your characters’ full internal vocabularies.

Characters’ emotions should add energy and keep up the pace of the action in the scene instead of being like a FULL STOP of a telegram. Just as one of the best ways to give character descriptions is in the process of action, use the adjectives and descriptions of emotions to “paint” the landscape of the ongoing scene. If your scene takes place at night, use your character’s emotional vocabulary to set the mood:

• The hostile moon glared over the jagged wolf’s teeth of the mountains.
• The incandescent moon dangled like a diamond ring in the rosy remains of the breathtaking sunset.

Even though I haven’t mentioned a character, do you get a feeling for what someone in each circumstance might be feeling?

If you don’t yet have it bookmarked in your favorites or on your favorites toolbar, as soon as you finish reading this blog, go to www.thesaurus.com and bookmark it. Whenever you feel a “felt” coming on, go to the thesaurus and figure out how to come up with an active emotion.

Lady Caroline Lam wrote in her diary of George Gordon, Lord Byron, that he was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” For two hundred years since then, romance novelists have been “showing” what this means through their Fabio-esque bad-boy-who-must-be-conquered heroes. These three descriptors are a good starting point for brainstorming. If you are having trouble showing your characters’ emotions, I suggest reading poetry—yes, that’s right, I, the poetry hater, am recommending it! Poetry is an outflowing of emotion using descriptive, showing language. The poet does not write: Today I saw a bird. It made me happy. The poet shows the happiness through the use of descriptive and oftentimes metaphoric or symbolic language. For example:

George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron. 1788–1824598. For Music

THERE be none of Beauty’s daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmèd ocean’s pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull’d winds seem dreaming:

And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o’er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
As an infant’s asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer’s ocean.

How do you use something like this? Here’s an example:
She sang as she worked, the sweetness of her tone enough to still the ocean and lull the winds to sleep. How would he ever work up the courage to speak to her?

Get the picture? Here’s your assignment. Take an image from this poem (perhaps one of the colored portions) and apply it to the statement: George was in love, or share an example from your own writing of how you have used your characters’ emotional vocabulary to show how they are feeling.

When you see someone you find physically attractive, what is the first feature you notice? I personally am an eyes, smile, and height girl. (Hey, when you’re still single at 35, you’ve had plenty of time to learn these things over the years.) For me, the eyes are most important—a mouth can lie, but eyes always tell the truth—which is one of the reasons why many of my physical descriptions of characters in my writing center on the eyes and the expression conveyed by them.

Today we’re going to look at how we can describe other characters through our POV character’s eyes without reverting to telling.

Here’s an example of a “telling” description from Georgette Heyer’s Venetia:

He was a thin boy, rather undersized, by no means ill-looking, but with a countenance sharpened and lined beyond his years. A stranger would have found these hard to compute, his body’s immaturity being oddly belied by his face and his manners. In point of fact, he had not long entered on his seventeenth year, but physical suffering had dug lines in his face . . . A disease of the hip-joint had kept him away from Eaton . . . and this (or as his sister sometimes thought the various treatments to which he had been subjected) had resulted in a shortening of one leg. When he walked, it was with a pronounced and ugly limp . . . [skipping four LONG paragraphs of backstory] . . . Aubrey . . . let his coffee grow cold while he sat propping his broad, delicate brow on his hand . . . [and then it goes on for three more pages of backstory].

Yawn!

I bought this book because everyone keeps telling me how wonderful Georgette Heyer’s Regencies are—and since my historical is set in Regency England, I really should read them. I’m sorry to say I’m having a really hard time trudging through all of the telling narrative—especially in the first chapter which tells the heroine’s entire life history—and that of her two brothers—in addition to the longwinded description above. And the irony is: I still have no clear picture of what this “Aubrey” looks like—there is no hair color, no eye color mentioned. In this example, the author could have shown Aubrey’s looks through the initial interaction/dialogue he has with his sister—the bit about not getting to go to Eaton could have been remarked upon as they discussed the fact that even though he’s on summer holiday, he’s reading a Greek text. After the long paragraphs of backstory, he rises from his seat and crosses to a window—at which point the author once again describes the limp. That was where the idea that he has a limp should have been introduced. And, I believe, the hero is a stranger to the family who would know nothing about the hip disease. This is something that could come out in conversation between the heroine and hero (and perhaps does, but I haven’t gotten that far yet).

In Happily Ever After, here is how Susan May Warren shows the heroine Mona meeting the hero Joe for the first time:

She . . . squinted at the man. He had given his boots the once-over and obviously decided they were presentable because he stood there, all six feet of him, and grinned at her like a long-lost brother.

“Excuse me, but who are you?” Mona asked.

A reddish grizzle layered his chin, an interesting contrast to his short, tawny brown hair. He wore a jean jacket over a blue sweatshirt, the type her father used to wear in fall, and his faded Levi’s gapped with the comfort of wear. “I’m your new handyman.”

In this example, both the hero and heroine are given actions and expressions. She squints, he grins, they interact with each other. And, as is natural when meeting someone for the first time, she gives him the once-over as far as his appearance—six feet tall, red stubble, tawny hair, casually dressed. She also likens his appearance to her father—something that is important for the heroine who must, in the course of the story, come to terms with her father’s death.

Linda Windsor’s opening chapter of Along Came Jones deals with the aftermath of a car accident—the heroine has run her car off the road to avoid hitting a horse and she is disoriented:

Straight from one of those backwoods horror films was a character as unsettling in appearance as her circumstances—scruffy beard, dusty leather and denim, even his horse was patched. Whatever happened to those clean-cut, pistol-wielding heroes in the Westerns she’d watched with her dad as a child in Brooklyn? That’s what she needed now, not some backwoods nature freak in a beat-up Stetson—or someone even worse. She noted the lethal-looking knife sheathed on his thigh. Serial killer came to mind . . .

“Ma’am?” Although he seemed to be a polite serial killer. The concern etched on his shaded forehead by two arched brows seemed genuine. But were those rusty-looking stains on his worn jeans and shirt blood? . . .

At least he had all his teeth. And on closer look, his eyes twinkled beneath the dusty brown bush of his brow . . . Serial killers didn’t have twinkling eyes, did they? Criminals leaned toward those wild, elevator-doesn’t-go-all-the-way-to-the-top eyes. And their hair didn’t lie in rakish curls around their collars . . .

With a patronizing smirk surrounded by a week’s worth of stubble, he laid [the pistol] on the hood of her car. White teeth flashing as he untied the leather thong of his hunting knife, he put her in mind of a young Clint Eastwood—before a bath, shave, and much needed curbing of his swagger.

Not only does Linda show us what Shep looks like, but she also shows us Deanna’s disorientation and hysteria through her reaction to Joe’s looks, so the narrative here serves a dual purpose for showing. Not only are we seeing another character, but we’re learning about the POV character through the adjectives she uses, through the mental comparisons she makes, through the thoughts his looks generate in her head. Because this novel is a romantic comedy, even though she’s comparing him to a serial killer, the tone is light, funny. The adjectives (twinkling, rakish, patronizing, scruffy, nature freak) are lighthearted and show the reader that Deanna really doesn’t think Shep is a serial killer. If this were a romantic suspense or thriller, and Shep really were a potential serial killer but the heroine didn’t know it, using darker, more macabre adjectives would set a different mood: glinted or glittered instead of twinkled, twisted coils of hair instead of rakish curls, a menacing smirk.

All of the genres vary in the amount of physical description the writer should use. In romance, describing what the characters look like is a vital part of the genre expectations. In other genres, the descriptions can be more vague and given out in tiny increments throughout the first few chapters instead of close to the beginning, as it does in romance when the hero and heroine meet. Because I am not as familiar with the expectations of character descriptions in other genres, I recommend doing what I’ve done here . . . analyze recently published books by authors in your genre you think best represent the genre and see how much they describe the characters.

Okay, moment of truth for me again. Let’s see how I’ve done . . . here is when Charlotte sees Ned Cochrane in Ransome’s Honor, where I’ve tried to incorporate seeing the other character through action and interaction:

“Look out!”

Something hard and heavy hit Charlotte’s midsection. She flailed her arms against it as she crashed to the cobblestones. Not two feet away, an explosion sent shards of wood and glass flying.

She could not breathe. Suffocation darkened her vision. The heavy object still lay atop her making movement—and breath—impossible.

“Are you hurt, miss?”

The heaviness eased marginally and the blackness receded. The object atop her resolved into a chiseled face, blond hair, and the most mesmerizing gray eyes she had ever seen.

“Miss? Can you hear me? Are you well?” Concern creased the broad brow.

“I . . . I cannot breathe.”

“Do you think something is broken—a rib? Shall I send for a surgeon?” His panic would have made her laugh if she had access to air.

“Sir, you . . . are why . . . I cannot . . . breathe!”

“I—oh!” He pushed himself up and extended his hands. “I do apologize, miss. I meant no—but are you certain—?”

Charlotte drew in two gulps of air before taking the officer’s hands and being hauled to her feet. Sunlight glinted off the plain gold epaulette on his right shoulder just at her eye-level.

“The cargo net was not adequately secured—” He waved his arm toward the wreckage of what looked like had been a fine piece of furniture—exactly where Charlotte had been standing. A crane and ropes swung wildly overhead.

“I thank you, then, for saving my life, Lieutenant . . .?”

He doffed his pointed-brimmed, tall-domed hat. “Cochrane, miss. Ned Cochrane.”

Charlotte wobbled; the lieutenant dropped his hat and grasped her arms to keep her from pitching over into the water. “Not the Lieutenant Ned Cochrane who served as first officer of the Alexandra?”

He grew two inches and his chest swelled. “I still serve as first officer of Alexandra—or at least as soon as she comes out of dry dock.” He picked up his hat, dusted it, and replaced it on his head. “But you have me at a disadvantage.”

Charlotte flourished a curtsey. “I am Charlotte Ransome. It is very nice to make your acquaintance.”

The ruddiness vanished from Lieutenant Cochrane’s face. “R—Ransome? You are the captain’s—little . . . sister.” He groaned and covered his face with his hands. “I’m done for.”

Do you have an inactive character description that you can incorporate into an active scene? I’d love to see your excerpts!

show–verb
1. to cause or allow to be seen . . .
5. to explain or make clear; make known . . .
12. to express or make evident by appearance, behavior, speech, etc.

tell –verb
1. to give an account or narrative of; narrate; relate (a story, tale, etc.) . . .
6. to reveal or divulge . . .
10. to inform (a person) of something . . .
14. to give an account or report.

As writers, we are instructed to “show” not “tell” in our fiction (I’ve heard this is now true with non-fiction, but that’s not my area of expertise). For some reason, this is a hard concept for most of us to grasp. (Ready for the analogy?) Showing versus telling is like the difference between watching a movie and having the plot of a movie recounted to you by someone who’s seen it. Or, between reading a book and reading the synopsis or outline. The first is active, experienced first-hand, immediate. The second is passive, second- or third-hand, distant.

Telling keeps the reader at arms’ length, while showing throws the reader directly in the middle of what’s happening and lets her experience the action through the eyes and ears of the character.

Here’s a classic example of telling narrative:

Her spirits were very differently affected, when, to her utter amazement, she saw Mr. Darcy walk into the room. In an hurried manner he immediately began an enquiry after her health, imputing his visit to a wish of hearing that she were better. She answered him with cold civility. . . .

 

He spoke well, but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority—of its being a degradation—of the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit.

In spite of her deeply rooted dislike, she could not be insensible to the compliment of such a man’s affection, and though her intentions did not vary for an instant, she was at first sorry for the pain he was to receive; till, roused to resentment by his subsequent language, she lost all compassion in anger. She tried, however, to compose herself to answer him with patience, when he should have done. He concluded with representing to her the strength of that attachment which, in spite of all his endeavours, he had found impossible to conquer; and with expressing his hope that it would now be rewarded by her acceptance of his hand. As he said this, she could easily see that he had no doubt of a favourable answer. He spoke of apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real security. (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen)

One of the most frequent complaints I heard about the 2005 version of the Pride and Prejudice movie was how they had cut/rewritten the “dialogue” from the book in the first proposal scene. But in actuality, there is very little dialogue in the scene—rather we are told what was said rather than just seeing the repartee back and forth between them as we did in the 1995 miniseries. (Am I the only one who really hopes Matthew MacFayden will go ahead and kiss Kiera Knightley at the end of that scene in the new movie?)

Now, here is an example of showing:

Elinor, resolving to exert herself, though fearing the sound of her own voice, now said, “Is Mrs. Ferrars at Longstaple?”

 

“At Longstaple!” he replied with an air of surprise. “No, my mother is in town.”

“I meant,” said Elinor, taking up some work from the table, “to inquire after Mrs. Edward Ferrars.”

She dared not look up—but her mother and Marianne both turned their eyes upon him. He coloured, seemed perplexed, looked doubtingly, and after some hesitation, said, “Perhaps you mean—my brother—you mean Mrs.—Mrs. Robert Ferrars.”

“Mrs. Robert Ferrars!” was repeated by Marianne and her mother, in an accent of the utmost amazement—and though Elinor could not speak, even her eyes were fixed on him with the same impatient wonder. He rose from his seat and walked to the window, apparently from not knowing what to do; took up a pair of scissors that lay there, and while spoiling both them and their sheath by cutting the latter to pieces as he spoke, said, in an hurried voice,

“Perhaps you do not know—you may not have heard that my brother is lately married to—to the youngest—to Miss Lucy Steele.”

Elinor could sit no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease. (Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen)

Same author, totally different style. In the first, we are told Darcy speaks in a “hurried manner.” In the second, we see Edward’s agitated state by his action of picking up the scissors and cutting the sheath to pieces with it. In the first, we are told what Darcy said. In the second, we hear the dialogue. Granted, neither are good examples of “active” writing (just look at all the occurrences of the verb “was”), but hopefully a comparison of the two will start shedding some light on this “high concept” of writing.

More soon!