Showing and not Telling March 26, 2006 – Posted in: Aberrant Normalcy
Going back and reading sections of your novel you wrote months, perhaps years, before is a bit like going through old diary entries and saying, “Shit, did I write that?“ Yesterday I began my day by heading over to the local coffee shop called Molah when I discovered the place was mobbed with yapping people and screaming babies and snarling dogs and well, there just wasn’t any place for me to sit. So I hobbled over to the Frozen Monkey which could be a really cool place if it didn’t try so hard. You know the type of place: chock full of green vinyl couches built so low your knees have to extend directly out to be comfortable; lamps stolen from the Brady Bunch set; kitschy art on the wall that any child with a digital camera and a simple photoshop filter could create (plus, the smegheads charge for internet access 🙁 ) To their credit though they were playing Pearl Jam’s “Lost Dogs” and Radiohead’s “Kid A.” Not exactly “independent” music, but cool nonetheless.
I bought a coffee, found a seat, plugged my laptop in and began writing. I came across a comment in my novel. “This is too fast. Elaborate this scene.” My heart began thumping and it wasn’t because of the coffee. Since November, I had not really been writing. I had been editing my novel. I wasn’t adding new scenes or being overly creative, with the exception of perhaps variations and adjustments in sentence structure. But now I was forced to redo an entire scene.
I read what I had before. It was classic “telling,” that is, I described exactly what happened in a boring infodump. When I first wrote the scene some months before, I had needed to get from point A to point B. I didn’t want to bother with the in-between. But the section now felt rushed and hasty and incongruous with the rest of the novel’s pacing. I realized with some delight that I could really go to town, that is, I could create an entirely new and full setting because this scene was far from the usual events of the novel.
Two hours passed and I wrote a paragraph.
A man I know only from my frequent visits to Molah came into the Frozen Monkey said hello and told me they’d thinned out over there. We chatted for a few minutes and then I waddled back to Molah, bought another coffee and started again. Hours passed. It was 4:30. I had been writing for four hours. I suddenly looked up and noticed I had reached point B, and I had done it (modesty mode off) magnificently.
Why is this important? Well, with a few exceptions, the past two years of my writing life have been spent on one thing: my novel. So many ideas for short stories have popped into my head, but No, I said. Finish the novel first. You can write those later. Yesterday’s little creative burst, its tiny window was a taste of what’s to come. I savored it.
I have about 89 pages left to edit. Then another smaller rewrite of about 10 pages near the beginning. After that, I’m done. Needless to say, I can’t wait for that moment.