Writing: Revisiting Characters - Show Less, Tell Less, Show And Tell Even Less (Part One Of Three)
If youâve been following this blog for way too long, you know how I feel about creating characters CVâs (or, to put it less pretentiously, creating extended character descriptions). The CV writing process can seem mind-numbingly laborious, and like an utter waste of time and energy, but I still believe in it, because characters, to me, âareâ the story. And, Iâm not limiting characters to human beings, although any relatable characters (robots, animals, errant garbage bags hanging out and causing trouble in a dumpster) have to be personified. Until the day the machines take over and demand that we start writing fiction about their clicks and beeps, no human being is going to care about what happens to a glorified typewriter, unless that typewriter is either
a) A typewriter with human characteristics, flaws, desires, etc
or
b) the property of the human character youâre actually going to be relating to, or with, in the story
One important thing I left out of that old post (that I keep hyper-linking back to so you can read it if you want) is the secondary function of having fully realized characters before you start writing your story. The original post makes lots of good points (if I do say so myself ;) about needing to understand and commit to your characters so that their actions are believable and help you build trust with the reader, etc, but I did leave some things out (Was I thinking this far ahead way back then, or did I just write shorter blog posts? Or do I just lose track bouncing back and forth between solid advice, hashed out in random order, and philosophy? We may never know.).Â
The most important thing I neglected to mention, would be the knowledge of your characters that allows you to:
Show Less and Tell Less and, finally, Show And Tell Even Less
The line above may smack of insanity, I suppose, if youâve been told your entire life that you should show and not tell, when writing fiction. Iâm not actually contradicting that advice (even thought itâs not advice you should follow to the letter in every situation). I do believe you should show more than you tell, but, insofar as characters are concerned, less is more. Both in the showing and in the telling.
So, as Iâm wont to do, Iâll break this down into bullet points! Only one this week, which would usually obviate the need for the bullet point, but Iâm saving the âshow lessâ part for next week (and the âshow and tell even lessâ part for the week after that), because this âlittle postâ is going to run long as it is, and I donât want to give you advice thatâs half-in half-out while also risking your running out of patience with my essay-type writing style. Plus, these three points require lots of examples, which take up tons of space.
1. Tell less. This one is easy, because itâs what most writers will tell you should be a priority. Iâm going to take it up a notch and suggest that, in addition to telling less than you show, you should tell even less than youâre already telling, when it comes to character (Other diatribes on this, and plot, etc, soon to come).
Telling about a character is generally poorly done by either
a) Describing every detail of the setting and character (which will be addressed in Part 3)
or
b) Todayâs focus: Spelling out thoughts and feelings as a way of letting your reader know to expect a description of a thought or feeling, even though your writing should make that unnecessary (and Iâm a perpetrator, myself. All writers are. Thatâs why God invented the rewrite. As a side note, your first draft should be lazy and longer than necessary - Itâs more important that you hammer out the story on the first run and tighten it up after, but Iâm getting off track).
For instance. You might have a relatively simple setup wherein Jimmy is waiting for the bus to come and he realizes that he left his watch in his school locker and heâs got to have his watch, but he canât miss the bus either, and itâs scheduled to arrive in just a few minutes! Letâs face it, it just doesnât get any more dramatic and exciting than that ;)
You might get around that sort of situation, and amp up the urgency, by describing his thoughts and feelings. While this isnât necessarily bad, youâll want to, at least, peel away words at the end and trim it down so itâs not overly difficult to digest. But, hereâs the first lazy run at Jimmyâs conundrum.
Ex: Jimmy arrived at the bus stop. Looking down at his watch to ensure that he hadnât missed the bus, he realized it was missing. Where was it?, he thought. Then he remembered, heâd left it in his locker in the mad rush to get out of the building before the doors locked closed for the night. But the bus was going to be coming in any second. How, he thought, could he possibly retrieve it and still make the bus pick up? The anxiety grew within him as he pondered his options.
Wow, that was just a bad paragraph, altogether! But, for the purposes of illustration, I didnât really try too hard. The two things I wanted to be sure were in there were thoughts and feelings. And, from reading the above, you know what Jimmy thought, because I told you he was thinking it, and you know what he was feeling because, again, I just flat out told you. Other thought/feeling words like wondered, pondered, noticed, realized, recalled, etc, are all generally replaceable with something more immediate. (And Iâm including ensure, because itâs a thought/feeling in disguise. The complete list of thought/feeling words is fucking enormous).
Also, it should be noted that I differentiate between describing feelings (which I try to avoid) and describing sensations (Yes, we âfeelâ the sensations, but the description of sensation allows us to feel without being told to).
So, first, letâs take that horror-show of a paragraph and remove all the thought stuff. Itâs going to be even uglier, of course:
Ex:  Jimmy arrived at the bus stop.  Looking down at his watch to ensure that he hadnât missed the bus, he realized it was missing. Where was it?, he thought.  Then he remembered, heâd left it in his locker in the mad rush to get out of the building before the doors locked closed for the night.  But the bus was going to be coming in any second.  How, he thought, could he possibly retrieve it and still make the bus pick up?  The anxiety grew within him as he pondered his options.Â
With no thought at all given to making that paragraph any better, weâd be left with:
Ex:  Jimmy arrived at the bus stop.  Looking down at his watch to __ that he hadnât missed the bus, ___ it was missing. ___. Then ___, heâd left it in his locker in the mad rush to get out of the building before the doors locked closed for the night.  But the bus was going to be coming in any second.  How, ___, could he possibly retrieve and still make the bus pick up?  The ___ grew within him as ___ his options.
The resulting paragraph doesnât make a whole lot of sense, but itâs still better than the original, in that it points out whatâs missing from the scene (assuming you know what used to be there, of course, but maybe youâll think of something cooler if you donât (???)) and now allows us to fill those gaps with more immediate description (preferably sensory, because the sensations of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching/feeling and tasting are about as immediate as things get, and it takes care of both thought words and feeling words ).
Ex:  Jimmy burst through the doors of the schoolâs lockered halls, screeching to a halt at the bus stop. Looking down at his wrist to check the time, his forehead beaded with an icy sweat. No watch. He gulped hard, the metallic taste of iodine coating his throat as his eyes darted backward. The doors locking closed behind him pounded like thunder, as the bus pulled up to the sidewalk. No hope now. The whining grind of the brakes hammered in time with his heart as he stood, frozen.
Granted, that paragraph was really really over-dramatic, a little clumsy, and riddled with clichĂ©s (And I canât state that more emphatically, except by adding a few more reallyâs to the sentence ;). But, since youâve written Jimmyâs character CV, you know what a hyperactive obsessive-compulsive bi-polar anxiety junkie he is (Still, Jimmy needs to take life a little easier or heâs going to die young ;)
Still, the reworked paragraph should serve as a basic example of how you can change lazy thought and feeling words into more immediate and sensational (pun intended, I suppose) sensory words. And, you may have noticed, itâs somehow more intense, even though Jimmy doesnât have any workable options to freak out over in the rewrite, which was originally spelled-out as the source of tension. Even though the blatant description of the âhope vs. fearâ dynamic was written out of the paragraph, that dynamic still exists. Also, I never actually stated that he was feeling anxiety. I also only implied that his watch was left in his locker. Maybe it wasnât. I figure, if the characterâs confused, maybe the reader should be, too. And that was my first rewrite. Iâm sure that paragraph (if it actually needed to exist) could be written better, but that would be aside from the point.
Now, please donât get me wrong. You probably wonât be able to remove all of your thought/feeling words (although itâs, ironically, easier if you write most of your story as thoughts and feelings), and, if you actually can write an entire story without ever using any of them (and their gigantic multiples of variants), youâll officially be the first person in history to ever tell a coherent and compelling story while doing so.
The object of todayâs lesson (If youâll allow me the presumption that Iâm teaching you something) is basically to become aware of where your fiction relies heavily on those kind of lazy thought/feeling words.
Go back to a story youâve written and re-read it (Or have other people read it. Even better, as long as you can count on them to be honest with you). Where have you allowed things to lull with lazy thought/feeling words when you could be making the action more immediate and sensory? The more you can replace the former with the latter (without completely losing your story) the better.
In short, the closer the reader feels to your characters or your story, the more theyâll be engaged with them or it (sensations are some of the most highly relatable things that exist). And, by removing long drawn out thoughts and descriptions of feelings that read like the back of a shampoo bottle, youâll also be shortening your prose.
Telling Less.
Next time, weâll get into âShowing Lessâ and crank that up a notch higher than, maybe, youâve gone before. And, by that, I mean one step further than the less showing youâre already doing in relation to the telling, which youâre now telling less of. And, after that, weâll move on to âShowing And Telling Even Less,â which is my personal favourite, because it's magic! :)
Trust me, all three parts will make sense together (although, they should make sense individually). Until then, this is a good exercise to try on any piece of writing. Itâs something you can keep in your toolbox forever. I still use it, I donât foresee ever not using it (because we all get lazy from time to time. Some times on purpose in the first draft phase) and Iâm willing to bet that a lot of your favourite authors use it, too.
Enjoy!
And, as always, peace,
Mike
