Slip, Show and Tell...
May. 3rd, 2005 03:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranI'm rewriting The Silver Bowl using a new system, which I call Slip, Show and Tell. It's something like Ansel Adams' zone system for photography, only for writing. It's a bit too early to confirm that it works yet, but the results are looking promising.
Basically, it says that there are three ways of passing information to the reader:
Telling - which is where you tell the reader directly what it is happening (ie. "William loves Mary")
Showing - which is where you show the reader something directly (ie. you should William pawning his watch to buy a haircomb for Mary)
Slipping - which is where you show or tell something indirectly. Showing indirectly is when you show William stuttering when he talks to Mary, which might imply that he loves her, but it requires a leap by the reader to work it out. Telling indirectly is when you slip extra info to the reader under the guise of telling them something else (ie. if you say "William loves Mary Chen", you are slipping that Mary might be Chinese. Slipping also covers incluing (as defined on rasfc, if I understand it properly) and passing information by word choice.
Now, the key about this system is that it's not about choosing which to do at any one time, it's about recognising that you're doing _all three all the time_ and the thing to watch is what information you put at what level.
I think that one of the big reasons that amateur writing sounds amateurish is that the writers haven't figured this out yet, either intuitively or consciously (I suspect that most of this is intuitive and that good writers with a feel for narrative voice will get this right without thinking about it). Quite often you'll see writing where the writer is telling one thing, but showing another (and not on purpose either - it's quite okay if you do it properly), or where they slip what they should have told (quite common in SF) and then seem baffled that the readers miss it.
All three methods have different strengths and weaknesses and which you use for what information will vary based on voice and genre. In some mystery stories, for example, it's a convention that you should slip the identity of the murderer. In some stories, it's acceptable to slip a huge amount of worldbuilding data as long as you do it consistently. In others, it's acceptable to tell a great deal in order to get to the heart of the story.
For the Silver Bowl rewrite, I have come up with a set of rules of thumb for which method to use for type of information.
SHOW for character - because character seems to respond best to showing. (Consider "'It's just meat', thought Sally, wrinkling her nose and shutting her eyes as she raised the worm to her mouth" and "'Oh, what a cute little grub!' thought Sally. Ulp! - which has the most effect in each snippet, the showing or the telling?)
TELL for clarity - because that's what telling is best for. If you have some really critical information that the reader needs in order to understand the next bit, then spell it out. (In some genres, this isn't needed, but it does fit the voice I want for The Silver Bowl.)
SLIP for authenticity - because one of the ways we judge authenticity is to see if the speaker can "talk the talk". Think of the role of military jargon in a technothriller or "space talk" in the film Apollo 13. It doesn't really matter that the audience doesn't understand everything, it just matters that it sounds convincing. Getting the terminology and the language right matters.
SLIP for atmosphere - see above
SLIP for foreshadowing - things that will be important later on should be slipped rather than told, to avoid making the outcome too obvious.
It's not a very exhaustive list, and I expect it will change quite a bit as I go along, but it seems to be working okay so far.
Basically, it says that there are three ways of passing information to the reader:
Telling - which is where you tell the reader directly what it is happening (ie. "William loves Mary")
Showing - which is where you show the reader something directly (ie. you should William pawning his watch to buy a haircomb for Mary)
Slipping - which is where you show or tell something indirectly. Showing indirectly is when you show William stuttering when he talks to Mary, which might imply that he loves her, but it requires a leap by the reader to work it out. Telling indirectly is when you slip extra info to the reader under the guise of telling them something else (ie. if you say "William loves Mary Chen", you are slipping that Mary might be Chinese. Slipping also covers incluing (as defined on rasfc, if I understand it properly) and passing information by word choice.
Now, the key about this system is that it's not about choosing which to do at any one time, it's about recognising that you're doing _all three all the time_ and the thing to watch is what information you put at what level.
I think that one of the big reasons that amateur writing sounds amateurish is that the writers haven't figured this out yet, either intuitively or consciously (I suspect that most of this is intuitive and that good writers with a feel for narrative voice will get this right without thinking about it). Quite often you'll see writing where the writer is telling one thing, but showing another (and not on purpose either - it's quite okay if you do it properly), or where they slip what they should have told (quite common in SF) and then seem baffled that the readers miss it.
All three methods have different strengths and weaknesses and which you use for what information will vary based on voice and genre. In some mystery stories, for example, it's a convention that you should slip the identity of the murderer. In some stories, it's acceptable to slip a huge amount of worldbuilding data as long as you do it consistently. In others, it's acceptable to tell a great deal in order to get to the heart of the story.
For the Silver Bowl rewrite, I have come up with a set of rules of thumb for which method to use for type of information.
SHOW for character - because character seems to respond best to showing. (Consider "'It's just meat', thought Sally, wrinkling her nose and shutting her eyes as she raised the worm to her mouth" and "'Oh, what a cute little grub!' thought Sally. Ulp! - which has the most effect in each snippet, the showing or the telling?)
TELL for clarity - because that's what telling is best for. If you have some really critical information that the reader needs in order to understand the next bit, then spell it out. (In some genres, this isn't needed, but it does fit the voice I want for The Silver Bowl.)
SLIP for authenticity - because one of the ways we judge authenticity is to see if the speaker can "talk the talk". Think of the role of military jargon in a technothriller or "space talk" in the film Apollo 13. It doesn't really matter that the audience doesn't understand everything, it just matters that it sounds convincing. Getting the terminology and the language right matters.
SLIP for atmosphere - see above
SLIP for foreshadowing - things that will be important later on should be slipped rather than told, to avoid making the outcome too obvious.
It's not a very exhaustive list, and I expect it will change quite a bit as I go along, but it seems to be working okay so far.
