Show and Tell Short Hand

Totally off topic, I'm going to brag for a minute. This handsome man with the nearly opposable thumbs is Hemingway, the neighborhood feral. He found me shortly after I moved in. I established a feeding station for him and all was well until  he showed up limping. After a lot of blood (mine), tears, and hoping, and wishing, I got him healed up. I also managed to convince him that he might be a great big marshmallow underneath that tough feral exterior. Last weekend, I delivered him to his HEA - his forever family. Hell of a delivery trip. They're in Erie, PA. You'll note I am not. As I was completing the trip home, his new family texted to say they were sitting with him and petting his belly. I think he's turned in his feral card. 

I'm grateful for the gift of his trust and for his new family. I'm also going to miss him.
 

 

 Show versus Tell. 

It confused me for years. Which one should I use when? Sure, I heard the advice about showing deepening character POV. It didn't click for me until someone suggested I draft everything in first person. That did the trick. It became obvious that immersing myself into the story and the character with a simple "I" brought the world, the other people in that world, and the reactions into much better focus. It became easier to understand that my characters needed to describe what they saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt. It helped, but didn't entirely eliminate, major POV violations where my characters assign meaning or motive to someone that they couldn't possibly know without being psychic.

Tell Example: He saw a tree.

Show Example: Cool shadow punctuated by glints of sunlight painted the ground beneath the limbs of the oak into a patchwork quilt of fallen leaves, acorns, and sticks. This passage tells you a little about the character who's taking in all of that detail. Could be someone looking for a shady spot to rest. Could be a squirrel hunting nuts for a winter food stash. Regardless, you probably see that scene. You may feel something from it. 

Lovely, Marcella, but this doesn't address when to use one and when to use the other. Not to worry. I got you. I think.

Showing is for deepening reader connection with your characters and your story. It's for pointing up what's important to the character and to the plot. The detail inherent in showing offers your readers hints about what they should pay attention to - this is where red herrings go if you're writing mystery. It's also where the actual clues go. Showing conveys emotion and sinks deep hooks into readers. Showing lends weight to whatever it is you are showing through your character's senses and experiences. Showing takes a reader by the shoulders and shouts PAY ATTENTION.

Telling is for passing action and transitions. The more detail you offer me in a tell, the more I, as a reader, think the detail matters to the plot. Unless you've poisoned it, I do not need you to show me someone reaching for the dull, aged bronze doorknob that's oddly warm in their grasp as if someone else's hand had just left it. Telling passages are for conveying the most necessary stage directions. He opened the door is perfectly adequate if he truly just opened a door without running into fire, zombies, or a hell mouth on the other side. If the important bit is to get the character through the door to the actual scene on the other side, tell me and move on.

Show what matters. Tell stage directions that do not impact plot or character. How do you keep them straight??

What's Your Favorite - First, Second, or Third Person?

Minerva Spencer's kitchen in Taos - isn't it gorgeous? I'm up here visiting for the weekend and she wants me to tell you it's normally much tidier than this but we've been having an eating, drinking, talking writer's bacchanalia. 

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven, to continue the contentious cycle of last week's one vs. two spaces throw-down, is: First Person POV vs. Third – or Second – Which Do You Like to Read?

I've blogged about this topic a fair amount and discussed it on my podcast. And I've been asked there to explain the difference between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person, so I think I'll kick this topic off in part by defining some terms.

POV = Point of View

Point of view, commonly referred to as POV (Pee-Oh-Vee), is how the story is told, from what perspective. You can think of it like a camera recording the scene - it can be close up on faces or panning over the landscape. We refer to close up as "deep POV" and the most distant focus as omniscient, where the story is told by someone who knows everything that's happening and that everyone is thinking. Who is telling the story gives you the POV.

One way to look at the type of POV is like you may have learned in grammar or if you learned a foreign language. You learn to conjugate verbs according to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person, singular and plural. For example:

	Singular	Plural
1st	I am	We are
2nd	You are	You are
3rd	He/She* is	They are

*"They" is also appropriate for a gender-neutral 3rd person singular, though the verb conjugates as the plural.

Most writing is going to have instances of both singular and plural POVs, but whether the author chooses 1st, 2nd or 3rd person to tell the story - or a combination of those - affects a great deal about it.

First Person

First person POV, the "I" perspective has the camera very close, essentially inside the character's head, viewing the world through their eyes, knowing only what that person knows. It's the deepest POV.

Example: I was at the store the other day and saw the strangest thing.

Second Person

Second person POV is kind of funky but also hip, especially in more literary efforts. It speaks to "you," drawing into into the story as the character and telling you how you're behaving and feeling. This is also a deep POV, though I find it also has a distancing quality, like a game or a dream. It's almost always done in present tense (that I've seen). 

Example: You're at the store and you see the strangest thing.

Third Person

Third person is the most traditional storytelling style. It can range from deep - though never quite as deep as first person - to omniscient. This is telling a story that happens to someone else. 

Example: She went to the store last week and saw the strangest thing. 

With all that established, what do I prefer, as a reader? I actually don't really care what POV a story is written in. I read for character and story and don't pay much attention to POV. That said, I don't love second person and it often reads as pretentious to me. And it's a flag that the story is meant to be more literary and I rarely enjoy something deliberately designed to feel erudite. Just me.