Do you talk a lot about yourself, or are you the bottled-up type? Which is better? Which type of person do you suppose is easier for others to know?
Talking a lot about yourself doesn’t necessarily mean that we know the real you. By the same token, being tight-lipped could well make you easy to read. Neither personality type is better, ask me, it is only a matter of how easily, and how well, we sense who you are. What you’re feeling. How you see things.
Thing is, we want to know you. Share your experience. Connect. Find out what we have in common. Know that we are not alone. Are you willing to let us in? Do you feel safe doing so? If you’re an open book, that’s great. If you need time to reveal yourself, that’s fine too. The point today is to understand yourself because how comfortable, and how quickly, you open up is connected to how you handle your characters on the page.
When reading a story, what we want above all things is to connect. Exciting plots and lofty prose are nice in a novel, but the deepest involvement we feel comes from those moments when our hearts fuse with your protagonist’s, and when something happening in the story feels like it is happening to us.
What happens in a story is not happening to us, of course. What characters are going through can seem like it is magically transferred to us but, actually, it’s not. What we read stimulates in us recognition. We associate story experiences with our own real lives and the wealth of feelings that we’ve banked. When an association is strong, we naturally—although incorrectly—ascribe what we feel to the story. Readers make comments such as, “It’s like the author was writing about me!”
Obviously not, but let’s focus on what produces that “as-if” feeling in readers. Back in November here on WU, Dave King gave us a terrific post on immersive POV, in which he edited a scene in which a wedding photographer is coaxing spicier shots from her bride-and-groom subjects. Dave shaped the passage to emphasize the photographer’s thought process, thereby immersing us more completely in her POV.
Today, my question is: How much immersion is effective? What’s the right balance of interior thoughts and feelings versus outward action? This question is often posed as show versus tell. That’s an accurate way to pose it, to a point, but framing the issue as show versus tell leads us to a false value judgment. Either showing or telling must be inherently better, right? (Mostly show gets the nod.)
The truth is that neither is superior, what matters is the effect you are having on your reader; whether your reader is experiencing recognition. Spelling out interior thoughts and feelings can do that, but so can implying those through outward action. However, not just any thoughts and feelings or action will work. There is a trick. Let’s turn to a couple of examples to examine both the benefits and pitfalls of either approach.
The Case for Telling
Charlie Jane Anders’s upcoming The City in the Middle of the Night is a science fiction novel in which humankind has fled Earth and now struggles to survive on a planet called January, the rotation of which means that it always (like our Moon) faces its star. The only habitable area for humans is the penumbra between dark and light, where two crumbling cities vie. The story’s protagonist is timid girl named Sophie who, as we meet her, has run away from an expected marriage and is enrolled at the Gymnasium, an elite college. Sophie is crushing on her glamorous friend Bianca, who has a privileged background but is a student revolutionary. Sophie’s infatuation is conveyed in intimate terms:
How long have Bianca and I been roommates? Sometimes it feels like forever, sometimes just an interlude. Long enough that I know her habits, what each look or gesture probably signifies, but recent enough that she still surprises me all the time. According to the calendar, it’s Marian after Red, which means the first term is half over. When I’m not talking to Bianca in person, I’m thinking of what I’ll say to her the next time we’re together and imagining what she’ll say back.
Lately, when Bianca talks to me illegally after curfew, I crawl onto her shelf so I can hear her whisper. Her breath warms my cheek as she murmurs about school and art and what would it even means to be free. Our skins, hers cloud-pale and mine the same shade as wild strawflowers, almost touch. I almost forget not to tremble.
Charlie Jane Anders clearly values the inner experience of her protagonist. Sophie’s feelings are as important—maybe more important—than anything happening on the planet called January. Did the passage above draw you in? Did you feel Sophie’s adolescent aching for so-close-yet-out-of-reach Bianca? If so, then Anders’s use of immersive POV is working for you. Writing found on this end of the inner/outer spectrum is, for you, effective.
On the other hand, did you find the intimacy of this passage cloying? What did you think of the line, I almost forget not to tremble? Did that, for you, artfully capture a girl’s struggle with her own longing, or did it strike you as pretentious and self-consciously arty? If you found that flourish off-putting, then immersive POV in this case has gone a step too far, or at least the author’s prose is, for you, straining too hard for effect.
Anders’s immersive POV passage is neither right nor wrong, good nor bad. It is either effective for you or not. You are the audience for this writing or you are walking out of the theatre. Which way you feel isn’t the point. What matters, first of all, is that you know whether interiority beckons you in or pushes you out. Second, it matters that we all understand why interiority works when it does. It works when there is not only intimacy but inner conflict.
Have another look at Anders’s passage. Sophie’s longing for Bianca is tremulous, palpable—and unrequited. Bianca is so very close yet so out of reach. That is how our recognition is achieved. We’ve all been there, wanting something—or someone—that we cannot have. In this passage, Anders doesn’t ask us to go along with any arbitrary, adolescent musing on Sophie’s part. Anders focuses on Sophie’s ache. Call it strong feeling, even pain, but ask me emotional pain—when we feel it—is the result of inner conflict.
The Case for Showing
On the other end of the spectrum we find the school of tight-lipped, hands-off, just-show-me-the-evidence writing that most values showing. Associated closely with both pulp storytelling and high literary style, this approach eschews inner gushing in favor of outward, demonstrative action—or its absence. Purists in this approach are not plentiful, but one such author was the great short story writer Raymond Carver.
Carver’s credits are swoon-worthy for literary aficionados: The New Yorker, Antaeus, The Antioch Review, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Iowa Review, The Paris Review, Ploughshares and on down the alphabet of prestige publication. Open up a Carver collection, flip to any random page and you’ll find yourself in a place of plain prose and gritty, blue-collar stories reported with almost wholly objective detachment—or so it might seem.
Carver’s story “So Much Water So Close to Home” is narrated by Claire, the wife of a man, Stuart, who on a wilderness fishing trip with three buddies discovered the nude body of a murdered teenaged girl floating face down in a stream. Because it was late and they were far from their car, and drunk, the men waited overnight before reporting their discovery. Although Stuart emphatically maintains that he did nothing wrong, the lurid nature of the crime and Stuart’s callous delay of duty have an unsettling effect on their town. People will not leave it alone. Stuart grows ever more agitated and ever more insistent on his blamelessness.
Claire tries to maintain a sense of normalcy. She and Stuart buy some beer (a Carver nutritional staple) and go for a drive, but the day goes wrong.
So much water so close to home, why did he have to go miles away to fish?
“Why did you have to go there of all places?” I say.
“The Naches? We always go there. Every year, at least once.” We sit on a bench in the sun and he opens two cans of beer and gives one to me. “How the hell was I to know anything like that would happen?” He shakes his head and shrugs, as if it had all happened years ago, or to someone else. “Enjoy the afternoon, Claire. Look at this weather.”
“They said they were innocent.”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
“The Maddox brothers. They killed a girl named Arlene Hubly near the town where I grew up, and then cut off her head and threw her into the Cle Elum River. She and I went to the same high school. It happened when I was a girl.”
“What a hell of a thing to be thinking about,” he says. “Come on, get off it. You’re going to get me riled in a minute. How about it now? Claire?”
I look at the creek. I float toward the pond, eyes open, face down, staring at the rocks and moss on the creek bottom until I am carried into the lake where I am pushed by the breeze. Nothing will be any different. We will go on and on and on and on. We will go on even now, as if nothing had happened. I look at him across the picnic table with such intensity that his face drains.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” he said. “I don’t—”
I slap him before I realize. I raise my hand, wait a fraction of a second, then slap his cheek hard. This is crazy, I think as I slap him. We need to lock our fingers together. We need to help one another. This is crazy.
The first thing you may notice is that this passage is not entirely devoid of interiority. We will go on and on and on and on. Even so, it is lean. Much is left unstated. Like the river, there is a strong undercurrent, what we call subtext. What could be spelled out is instead implied. What could be said aloud is suppressed.
Claire is haunted by a teenage trauma; Stuart is burdened by guilt. Do you get the feeling that they could have avoided the slap by talking openly with one another? Instead, they drink beer in the classic way of Carver characters whose tragedy comes not from change but from their inability to change.
My point here is that subtext works when under the surface there is something, and that something is an unresolved inner, or interpersonal, conflict.
Incidentally, what did you think of the cutaway action, We sit on a bench in the sun and he opens two cans of beer and gives one to me. Did that line, for you, simmer with tension or did it seem a pointless delay, merely marking a beat, a reflexive emphasis of the story’s realism? If that line heightened the effect of the story moment for you, then Carver’s showing is working. If it felt like empty words, then “seeing” the scene doesn’t matter to you so much.
Whether or not you are the audience for Carver’s writing doesn’t concern me; what matters is that you are aware of the relative effect of showing as opposed to telling, and how that effect is achieved. I say it that way that because in your awareness lies the answer to the issue of inner/outer balance.
The Case for You
Blabbing a lot sometimes says little; saying little can sometimes tell us a lot. It all depends. Laying out a character’s interior life can be richly involving. Implying it can be equally powerful. What makes either approach effective is, as we’ve seen, not inherent in the inner or outer method itself but in the conflicts that each approach captures.
In manuscripts, the choice of inner or outer mostly is not a conscious choice but an easy default to what the author finds comfortable. The default depends on the author’s personality, on genre expectations, on audience and on how the author would like to be perceived.
While generally speaking it’s good to write in a way that feels natural, the default mode isn’t always going to work. I almost forget not to tremble is going to feel, to some readers, like cheap showing off. Opening a beer will, for other readers, come across as easy, empty words inserted because the author couldn’t think of anything better.
No matter how you write, sooner or later you will fall prey to mannerisms. You can’t entirely avoid that, but you can be aware of your predilection, evaluate what you write and adjust. If you heighten conflict or tension, then whether you spell out your characters’ thoughts and feelings or plant them in subtext your pages will be effective.
So, what is the right balance between inner and outer? “Right” is the wrong way to look at it. A better way is understanding what works no matter who you are as an author.
Which mode comes more naturally to you, inner or outer? Do you mix? What are your favorite examples of each mode from your own work or that of others?
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About Donald Maass
Donald Maass is president of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. He has written several highly acclaimed craft books for novelists including The Breakout Novelist, The Fire in Fiction, Writing the Breakout Novel and The Career Novelist.
Great to wake up to this post! It’s especially relevant for me because I’ve sent out queries that got 3 of 4 requesting the complete manuscript. None of them took it, but it was both encouraging and discouraging. Your post brought up some of the questions that came up for me with the ultimate rejections by the three who read the manuscript.
When I first started seriously writing, I would say I wrote at arm’s length. What I wrote was exterior all the way – at the time I had little clue to my own emotions much less my characters’ emotions. And no concept of tension, other than on-the-nose, hit you over the head conflict.
That’s the point at which I stopped fiction writing, headed to the monastery, and did writing practice for most of 10 years. When I came out of the monastery, my writing was perhaps a bit too interior, and the past few years have helped me to find a balance that seems to work for me.
However, the balance has to be balanced with the tension, and that’s something I’ll look at in this new year. I love learning, and that’s a good thing, since there is always something new to learn.
I’ll end this with the end of a scene in the work I have out there. It’s likely too much for some folks, maybe too little for others.
…I longed to touch her face, as I’d been longing to touch her throughout the entire picnic, and I finally gave in. My fingertips brushed her soft cheek. Even that brief contact made it hard to breathe.
“Thank you, Katie. It was a lovely afternoon.”
Her eyes held mine. I felt the heat rise from my neck. Damn it, I was blushing as I had not blushed in years. I forced myself to pull away and say goodbye. I had kept my promise to Terry, so why did I feel like crying?
—-
Thanks, Don, and a great new year to you and your family.
In your excerpt you’re working strongly in immersive POV. It’s heartfelt.
Now, if you wanted to go for a more literary effect, you would go a little sideways from direct sentiments like “I’d been longing to touch her” and “so why did I feel like crying” to something still true but less obvious.
On the other hand, it may be that your story type, intended audience and your own preference is for a more direct treatment of feelings at this moment. It’s up to you, which is a secondary point of my post today. Know how to fine-tune your effect.
Regardless, thanks for your lovely comment and Happy New Year.
Quite an interesting article, Donald, delving deeper into the differences between showing and telling. But before getting to the meat of your article, I highlighted this: “Exciting plots and lofty prose are nice in a novel, but the deepest involvement we feel comes from those moments when our hearts fuse with your protagonist’s, and when something happening in the story feels like it is happening to us.”
There were elements of both of your examples that appealed to me, so I guess I’m a happy reader as long as the author writes in a way that I connect to. I loved the line “I forget to tremble.” It is one I would stop and let settle into my heart before going on. I also really enjoy Carver’s work and read that short story you cited. When I came to that line about opening the beer, I found it a pause for the characters and for me to anticipate what was coming next. Both methods work for me as a reader.
In my own writing, I tend to use both inner and outer to get the story across and engage the reader.
Writing a first-person POV, hard-boiled hero, I can’t have him reaching for Kleenex as he tells his analyst about his inner struggles. For this reason, I use a reflection character to challenge him. Thus, much of “interiority” comes out in argumentative dialogue, and in how he ACTS in response to the dialogue. That’s what Carver is so great at.
Travis McGee had a similar character in Meyer. But he also, in straight narrative, sometimes riffs on what he observes going on in society, or between people generally, etc. We get is his philosophy of life that way (or, rather, MacDonald’s via McGee!) I think this only works if your narrator has a confident and unique voice AND we care enough about him to hear what he has to say.
Good thought food this morning, Don.
Hey Jim! Happy New Year.
Good points about the “reflection character” (great term), and that writing so-called “hard” boiled does not preclude telling…it’s just that what’s “told” may be a bit different. MacDonald is a terrific example. It would be an interesting exercise to break down how he makes us care about crusty ole McGee!
Hope your holidays were good. Looking forward to seeing you sometime in 2019.
“If you heighten conflict or tension, then whether you spell out your characters’ thoughts and feelings or plant them in subtext your pages will be effective.”
That, for me, was the takeaway . . . and to be deliberate and not simply fall into a default style of writing.
Thanks for this, Don! I have a few days of writing before it’s time to jump back into teaching. Can’t wait to whip this current manuscript into shape.
As a parent, I can’t wait to hustle my kids back to school…but for your sake I’m glad for the extended break! Happy Writing and thanks for commenting.
Don,
Excellent, excellent! You’ve nudged me to take another look at my WIP and see which way my writing leans. And to notice it in others.
Hey D, yes, it’s amazing how much we can glean when we know what to look for. Happy New Year to you!
I just finished reading ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ by Liane Moriarty – nine POV’s and lots of opportunities to see this balance (or imbalance) at work. I found myself immersed in the inner musings of some characters but not others, and it was instructive to go back and look at why. Also, I’m working on a revision in which my editor encouraged immersive POV for my main character, some of which I’m now seeing is too much, and where an action or gesture speaks louder. Finding the balance has become my daily practice, so your post today was timely. But then, your posts always are. Thank you!!
Hey Susan, what I hope will be helpful to you is knowing not only how to find your balance, but how to make it work which ever way you are tipping the scale. HNY!
A lot to think about here! I appreciate that you acknowledge personal taste and style (both reading and writing) for which works for the individual. I have two friends who read for me that are not as interior as I am, and so they help make me check whether my character’s internal thoughts are really necessary or just extra. Sometimes I delete, sometimes I edit for conciseness and clarity and sometimes I leave the thoughts alone, but it’s always helpful to have someone pointing out the need to review an area. Your post, though, gives me some insight that their more showing style isn’t better than my interiority, it’s just another tool to use to write an effective story. Thanks!
Both modes work, if you know how, and once you do inner and outer become tools that you can use as you please, to achieve whatever kind of reading experience you want to create.
Thanks for pointing out the choice. It’s easy to get into a flow and forget there are many ways to convey emotion.
In the first passage, I was more intrigued by her position on a shelf and the weird reference to the calendar. I found the character more relatable and easier to understand than the second story.
I didn’t see the slap coming. She seemed way too cool to be that physically violent. Maybe she’s the killer! There’s also the underlying metaphor of “still waters run deep,” so what do rivers hide?
Thanks for the insight.
Happy New Year!
I like the Carver passage for its surprise and understated handling of Claire’s feelings. However, he was writing for literary publications. Were he writing women’s fiction I might counsel a different approach.
Hey Don – Thanks for drilling down on this issue. I know it’s something to which you’ve devoted a lot of study. I will never forget one of the very first bits from one of the first times you critiqued me. You said that my close third was indeed very close, but for you, maybe too close. And that I ought to consider backing off a step. It was a comment that left me thinking… For years. And I think it took me years to truly appreciate your meaning and intent. Still chewing on it, so thanks for that (critique that keeps on critiquing…?).
I noticed both your examples are first person, which is good (apples to apples), but it makes me wonder about this issue as it relates to third. For example, I’m almost done with book three of British fantasist Joe Abercrombie’s most recent trilogy, The Shattered Sea. And I think he’s done an admirable job – perhaps his best yet – at achieving this balance, but in third. We are clearly in the skin of each of his POV characters throughout the series, but he’s taken a clear step back from them. And (as always with him) he relies heavily on wry (almost dark) humor and character self-depreciation to aid him in keeping his distance. For example, when a character is making a morally questionable decision, Abercrombie keeps their interior musing brief and blunt with: “Everyone finds a way to make their side the right one, after all.” Or, when a character is unsure about the motives and intentions of another, we get: “A look of fury, a look of pain, a look of hatred you can trust. A smile can hide anything.” And, throughout the series, each time one of the males gets too content, we get: “The gods love laughing at a happy man, however.”
The reuse of the last one, even with different characters, has a comic effect, as well as keeping us waiting for the other shoe to drop. But it also toys with taking what had been pretty close third and pushes it toward Omniscient (which relates to what Jim is saying in his comment above). I’m still getting that each of these characters actually has profound and identifiable feelings. But wrapping those feelings in a wry, punchy (and, for me, very witty and enjoyable) tagline keeps the pace brisk. And though it’s clearly Abercrombie-esque humor throughout, I’m never feeling knocked out of the story. In other words, I still care.
But reading Shattered Sea and then your essay has me wondering – do you think that third lends itself to distance and telling, and first to closeness? Or can one drift as easily either way, regardless of POV choice?
Unfortunately, I’m not as funny as Abercrombie. And I’m still working on achieving any level of balance. But you’re right – awareness is the first step toward growth. Thanks much for dishing up the lessons that keep on teaching. Happy new year.
Happy New Year, Vaughn.
I don’t think the inner/outer tools work any differently whether in first or third person. Not really. It might be interesting to look at this issue in the context of omniscient or authorial narration, though.
A future post perhaps, thanks !
Fabulous article, one that I truly gleaned knowledge from. Irony of ironies, I have been often told that my writing style is not unlike Raymond Carver’s, which always feels a little odd because the last time I checked, I’m a girl.
Having said that, I think these “mannerisms” are as subject to fashion as a hemline. Right now, the Raymond Carver style is NOT in fashion. But I will continue to plow ahead, sick in my compulsion to write the way that is natural to me—but now with gratitude to Mr. M. for his wisdom.
The Carver-style New Yorker story may be out of fashion but I doubt it will leave us. Capturing what is (or seems) inchoate is something that literary readers value.
Freaking brilliant, as usual. I struggle to explain this to writers I know. You laid it out plainly. Thank you.
I get to start my year with freaking brilliant! Wow. Raises the bar for the rest of the year, though. Hmm.
I second the motion. I can’t think of anyone who analyzes and informs about fiction more broadly or deeply than you do, Don.
Appreciate that, Ray.
I Heart This Posting. It connects the writer and the reader to the writing. It is a happy 2019.
Heart back to you too, have a great 2019!
Once again, Don, you’ve served up valuable food for thought, something to keep in mind as I polish my WIP. My takeaway includes:
* we need to think about what we put on the page
* we need to feel about what we put on the page
* using both showing and telling can strengthen the impact of a narrative
* no matter what we do, reading is as subjective as writing and our readers may never feel/think what we intend
* to the last point, it’s who and what we are that determine how we approach a narrative, and that’s all right–but we need to be aware of and purposeful about that, not simply instinctive
Thanks, Don.
A+, Ray. You got it.
It’s interesting to see Dave King mentioned in this article. He’s the one who told me that it would be best to let my reader know what my protagonist wants, thinks, expects with each situation so that the reader will know how to respond when the outcome arrives and get close to the character. I see the logic in that.
But, that is not what I had been taught. I was taught to show, to drop clues for the reader to figure out what was going on with the protagonist and to be subtle.
With the novel I am working on now, the Dave King method works perfectly. I am lucky to receive his input.
“Anders’s immersive POV passage is neither right nor wrong, good nor bad. It is either effective for you or not.” This is my favorite line in this post. I try not confusing “I didn’t like it” with “It’s bad.” Generally, I prefer to say, “It didn’t work for me.”
I want to keep that in mind with my own writing. If something isn’t effective for someone, was that someone my audience? The answer to that helps determine my next step.