Don't Bother me with the Weather

“To those who refuse to see: Please get well soon.”

        If there were ever a train wreck, it happened upon her head. No one was quite sure what it was or why it happened. Purple and green and yellow and orange were splattered and spotted across a fusion of puffy and bristled hair. But perhaps the only reasonable excuse could be mustered in defense against her ruddy face, which was truly an accident. As she paced back and forth across the room, her students head's bobbed like buoys lost at sea.

“Good morning,” said Professor Corrah, finally resting at her lectern.

      What's wrong with the above? A few would say nothing, but there is a large following that would cry foul from the rooftops. They would claim the writer is cheating the reader. Instead of experiencing a great story, the author commits to the easy road and simply narrates. Let's call the predicament, “Showing versus Telling.” When writing a story we find it very tempting to narrate everything. A woman's dress was elegant, swiftly gliding across the dance floor. A man, with a pointy noise and bloodshot eyes, kept glancing at the clock, watching as his essay deadline approached. Maybe something a bit more exotic took place, and we found a student with a bright, smiling face, hand-in his essay on time. In every instance we start walking down a knife point. Do we choose to narrate or do we choose to show? I believe I have an answer: Both.

        It's a cheater's way to begin, but it's true – and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Monopolizing the way an individual writes is perhaps the greatest crime against humanity. No one prefers a statutory book, and no one wants a pamphlet full of fast pace events which end at the last period. Each method tries to tear an amateur writer to their side of the world. But as readers, we all know what we enjoy. What we enjoy is something in-between, a fusion of narrative and experience, a combination of showing and telling. But that's precisely what we need to understand: how can we blend showing and telling?

        There are only a handful of tools every writer must posses. A writer can narrate a scene or be equally creative and use dialogue to probe his surroundings. He may decide to speed up his events or slow them down, holding onto every second of every moment. It's a simple square that writers all over the world pass off for “greater” and “better” things. But lets take a moment and stay principled.
 
        We rain fire on narrations and dialogues alike because we forget what they are for. If we called the narrator the champion of us all then the world would be as lifeless as the whispers of abstract winds as they rustle through trees. If we hailed dialogue as our king, then why do we write books? Stop reading and watch a movie, or, better yet, go see a play. There must be a balance and it is found in our purpose. And that is it. What is the purpose of narration or the purpose of dialogue? It's to convey meaning. We prefer narration when the object of our gaze is our concern. A labyrinthine temple is much more ominous than a character's whimsical thoughts about the arches – unless the purpose is to demonstrate how short-witted your characters are, which proves my second point. Dialogue is always preferable to narration when your characters have a color to splash with. A series of Uh-um's and that's-interesting's may save you from a decent conversation but that won't cut it when you're wasting words on nothing. Yes, that's right. Uh-um's and that's-interesting's even in conversation express only one thing: I've got nothing on that.
       
        But narration and dialogue each posses a special trait that we tend to forget. We narrate because we want to “get on with it,” and nothing more. In a high speed car chase, who cares about the grass? It's about life and death, it's about who has the larger gun or more bullets, it's about me or him. Narration is about mastering the uncanny ability to cut out all excess information, forcing the reader to see the world as one painful point. On the other hand, we can use dialogue to express an intimate moment or to hold an answer in mid-flight. Imagine a mother rushing home because a hooded man tried to grab her in the parking lot. She arrives home to her husband who's waiting at the kitchen table. He looks at her then the door, and asks, “Where's my boy?”

        Timing is another consideration. Stories may be slowed or quickened to heighten effect. But what must be considered is the moment being expressed. A lovely scene becomes more tender the longer it lasts or becomes more bitter, sad, and desperate when it's shortened. Two youngesters holding hands as they take a midnight stroll through the park is a tender moment. The next morning when their town is destroyed by aliens, allowing you to describe their last moment as a battle to stay together as they are separated by storming mobs of people is bitter, sad, and, definitely, desperate. The juxtaposition of both of those scenes flips and magnifies the overall perspective into a tide of criminal allegations from your readers that you're a heartless wretch – they'll thank you later when you reunite them... in heaven. (That's brutal.) What I'll encourage you to do is play with your timing. Stretch it out and see what happens, shorten it and wonder if the effect captures the moment.

        The differences between showing and telling is only paralleled by the predicament of dialogue and narration. Some writers will choke you if you prefer narration and others will burn you at the stake and charge you with treason for favoring the tools of a playwright. The choice is up to you, every tool is free for the taking. Experiment with it, see what happens, and, if fire falls from the heavens, remember what Ray Bradbury said, “If you don't like my books, go write you own.”