Tuesday, June 1, 2010
showing and telling
We talked today in our group about how much has to happen in a story. How when we tell each other stories we only tell the highlights, we leave out the mundane parts of life like how much trouble we had finding matching socks or what we ate for breakfast and skip right to the parts where we met a man walking on the beach in nothing but a sarong in February. How does this translate into writing a novel we asked? Do the low points, the rest points, still have to have something happening? And what does happening mean? Can two people be talking? Is that happening? It is not happening, we agreed, if two characters are talking about something else that happened. That would be us as writers, showing people telling, which goes against the maxim: show don't tell. Maybe if we think about watching a play. What takes place off stage, what takes place on stage? Ahh.... so complicated!
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2 comments:
Hi Kari,
I thought your piece today was such a good example of a quiet scene with people talking but still a major thing "happens." The boy is offered a job. That's a major thing in his life. If anyone were to ask him, so what happened to you today, he would say, "I got offered a job." He'd go right to that moment in the day and talk about it!! So...quiet scene but something happened of significance.
Thanks Laurie,
I am starting to understand what yo mean by "happen". I think I try to have some quiet and some happening in most scenes, though I haven't really thought about it that way. I think about it more in terms of purpose. what is the purpose of this scene? What does it bring to the story? And I guess the answer lies in what "happens" in the scene. In this case, a boy is offered a job. :)
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