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The topic of showing vs. telling comes up in discussions of crafting fiction quite a bit. While few people enjoy forty-page diatribes by Tom Clancy on how the S.S. Nemitz was built and what it can do before the narrative gets moving again, not all prose passages that engage in "telling" are bad, necessarily. That's a controversial statement, I know. So rather than tell you my opinion, I'm going to show you why I think this is so.I'm going to use, as our proof-text, a small chunk out of James Patterson's recent bestseller, Kill Alex Cross. It's brief, but it'll get the job done.
Secretary of State Martin Cho's Motorcade was running behind schedule, as usual. He'd kept the House and Senate Intelligence Committee chairs waiting most of the morning, and now he was almost an hour late for the Saudi ambassador.
"Call the office, tell them we're on our way," Cho said to the aide sitting across from him in the short Mercedes limo. Her name was Melissa Brandt. She was a recent Harvard grad and young for the job, but promising. Also maybe a little naive.
"Mr. Secretary, they've been notified by the scheduling office already. I called them--"
"Just do it again, please, Melissa," he said. "Make sure the ambassador knows we're thinking of him. That's important to them. They're sensitive people. The ambassador has been pampered all his life."
"Yes, sir," the aide answered.
Crisis talks had been quietly taking place between the two countries for several days now. With the president indisposed, as he was, it was up to the secretary to put in the face time on this one. So far, it had been a dour affair. The pre-9/11 days of arm-in-arm policy making with the Kingdom seemed like a quaint bit of history now.
As Melissa Brandt pulled up the State Department on her phone, she craned her neck to see outside and check their progress up Constitution Avenue.
"Hi, Don, it's Missy with the secretary's office," she said, still looking out the window. "We should be there any minute. We're just passing by the, um --"
All at once, the young woman's pale blue eyes flew open wide.
"Oh my God!" she said. "They're going to hit us! Secretary Cho, look out!"
The scene continues from there, but this is the bit I want to focus on. This section of Kill Alex Cross comes from Chapter 56 of Mr. Patterson's best-seller, and consists of 278 words. Let's take a closer look at it:
Secretary of State Martin Cho's Motorcade was running behind schedule, as usual. He'd kept the House and Senate Intelligence Committee chairs waiting most of the morning, and now he was almost an hour late for the Saudi ambassador.
"Call the office, tell them we're on our way," Cho said to the aide sitting across from him in the short Mercedes limo. Her name was Melissa Brandt. She was a recent Harvard grad and young for the job, but promising. Also maybe a little naive.
"Mr. Secretary, they've been notified by the scheduling office already. I called them--"
"Just do it again, please, Melissa," he said. "Make sure the ambassador knows we're thinking of him. That's important to them. They're sensitive people. The ambassador has been pampered all his life."
"Yes, sir," the aide answered.
Crisis talks had been quietly taking place between the two countries for several days now. With the president indisposed, as he was, it was up to the secretary to put in the face time on this one. So far, it had been a dour affair. The pre-9/11 days of arm-in-arm policy making with the Kingdom seemed like a quaint bit of history now.
As Melissa Brandt pulled up the State Department on her phone, she craned her neck to see outside and check their progress up Constitution Avenue.
"Hi, Don, it's Missy with the secretary's office," she said, still looking out the window. "We should be there any minute. We're just passing by the, um --"
All at once, the young woman's pale blue eyes flew open wide.
"Oh my God!" she said. "They're going to hit us! Secretary Cho, look out!"
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The italicized portions of this text are all TELLING sections, rather than SHOWING sections. They consist of 149 words. 149 words of telling, out of 278, as we open chapter 56.
Now, I'm not going to get into a debate about Mr. Patterson's relative merits as a writer. That's not the focus here. I chose him because millions of people buy his Alex Cross novels and generally enjoy them enough to keep buying them.
But 53.5 percent of this passage consists of telling. Does that make it bad writing? I've run into folks who would suggest so.
"It's over fifty percent telling," they would cry. "Show me this, don't tell me!"
Are they right? Let's take a look at the first chunk of telling:
Secretary of State Martin Cho's Motorcade was running behind schedule, as usual. He'd kept the House and Senate Intelligence Committee chairs waiting most of the morning, and now he was almost an hour late for the Saudi ambassador.
We're being told an awful lot here:
1) That our focus is the Secretary of State.
2) That his name is Martin Cho.
3) That's he's in a motorcade.
4) That's he's running behind schedule.
5) That running behind is the norm for him.
6) Who he's kept waiting with his tardiness before the scene begins.
7) Who he's currently bugging with said tardiness.
8) That the Saudi ambassador has been kept waiting for almost an hour, not an insignificant amount of time.
That's a lot of information for 38 words to convey. And we're told, not shown. It's definitely a telling voice.
However, even the most ardent anti-tellers will allow a bit of scene-setting. They might argue that there would be a way to convey the same information through dialog and scene, but for the most part, this passage might be given a pass.
But we're not done. Here's our next bit of "telling."
Her name was Melissa Brandt. She was a recent Harvard grad and young for the job, but promising. Also maybe a little naive.
Patterson had just introduced a nameless aide in the previous sentence. Now:
1) He names her.
2) Tells us she's recently from Harvard.
3) Tells us she's "young for the job." (So we know our focus is on the Secretary's POV; third person close.)
4) Tells us she shows promise. (In what ways?)
5) Tells us she's a little naive. (I think, given the action that follows, "inexperienced" will be what is actually demonstrated by her actions, so naive might not be the best descriptor.)
Again, this is a lot of information. Both of these characters are appearing for the first time in the novel. In chapter 56. And this is what we're getting about them.
It's a lot of telling and, as I indicated above, at least one descriptor used is not necessarily backed up by Melissa's actual actions.
Some folks might suggest some of this information could "come out in dialogue." Really? How many aides do we assume a presidential cabinet secretary drives around with, having stilted conversations like, "So, how does the White House compare to Harvard, Ms. Brandt, now that you've been here three months?"
Nope, that'd be laughable. A cabinet secretary is a busy, serious position for anyone who holds the position. It wouldn't "ring true" to have this information come out in dialogue.
Also, there's not much reason to insert any earlier scenes about Miss Brandt's background, how she's "promising," or the Secretary's background because, as the chapter goes on, they are attacked and killed in a terrorist strike.
Keep in mind, this is an Alex Cross novel, not a Secretary Cho and aide Melissa Brandt novel. Adding in background chapters for fringe characters would bloat the novel unnecessarily.
Final chunk of telling:
Crisis talks had been quietly taking place between the two countries for several days now. With the president indisposed, as he was, it was up to the secretary to put in the face time on this one. So far, it had been a dour affair. The pre-9/11 days of arm-in-arm policy making with the Kingdom seemed like a quaint bit of history now.
As Melissa Brandt pulled up the State Department on her phone, she craned her neck to see outside and check their progress up Constitution Avenue.
Whoa! That's how some anti-telling purists would react to this chunk.
Hold on there, pard'ner, they'd say. That's just way too much telling. We have crisis talks going on between the US and Saudi Arabia, an oblique reference to the president being indisposed that's not explained here, the talks aren't going well, and a bit of a history vs. now lesson.
And then, "head hopping!" Suddenly we're in Melissa's focus. That's why I included it, since it's not really a bad case of telling. But it is head-hopping, another "no-no."
This is where purists would start shredding the passage.
Why isn't the president's indisposed situation explained? It is, in the context of the novel. By the time you're here, you know very well why he's indisposed.
As for the rest, we're in the Secretary's focus right up until we head-hop, so we're simply being given information on what's weighing on the Secretary's mind. Could that be brought out in dialogue? Not without the scene coming off as incredibly stilted. He's not about to discuss such matters with the driver, who is up front and probably cut off from an audio feed into the back of the limo. Nor would he discuss such matters with Melissa the Underling.
So what is going on here? Is Patterson just, as some would suggest, "a lazy bestselling author, too successful to be tightly edited?" Is he clueless about showing vs. telling? A lazy one-percenter ignoring the ninety-nine percent?
Well, some might suggest that, I suppose.
But no. There's another way to look at this.
And it's this: Not ALL telling is bad. Telling can sometimes keep a story focused, tight, driven, and moving forward in the narrative.
Sure, some of this information could have come out in dialogue. Establishing chapters added. Such background could be played out in dramatic scenes, rather than spoon-fed to us in 149 out of the first 278 words of chapter 58.
Anyone who did that, however, would not be able to accomplish it in 149 words. Their novel would be comparably bloated, overstuffed, boring, and moving at a snail's pace.
You see, whatever you think of Patterson taste-wise, he's not a dumb writer.
What Patterson knows is this:
- People buy Alex Cross novels to read about Alex Cross.
- Not Secretary Cho. Not Melissa the Aide.
They are collateral damage in a smartly and economically-written suspense novel that moves along like a bullet. Patterson wants people to care before Cho and Melissa die, so he tells us a little bit about them.
Not much. It's not thirty pages of background. It's 149 words out of 278. The percentage looks bad; but the overall effect is to briefly establish these characters, elicit a bit of concern over who they are, and then "blow them up real good."
It's a big, dynamic scene to let us know the bad guys have struck again, and they're hitting really high-profile targets. Who can stop them?
That's all this passage was meant to accomplish. Patterson's smart enough as a suspense novelist to know that 149 words of telling may not be ideal on a pure artistic basis, but it is what will keep his steam-engine of a story barreling down the tracks.
Is this a defense of ALL telling passages? Of course not.
However, this as an example that sometimes, used judiciously, telling is an effective storytelling tool.
And very few Patterson readers notice, or care, that he employed telling instead of showing to establish these characters. What they care about is that the bad guys murdered a cabinet secretary of the US.
And in case some people reading his work hate government officials, he includes poor, young, unsuspecting Melissa the Underling in the explosion. That way, even if a reader says, "Well, Secretary Cho, who cares? He's a member of the corrupt Coyle administration," well... they might at least feel bad about poor inexperienced Melissa dying in the process.
Here endeth the lesson.
Craig Hansen is author of young adult novels Shada (Ember Cole Series) and Most Likely.
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