Writerly Advice #2: Show, Don't Tell - or, Passive Writing

So, this is what I get when a) I'm no good at sticking to a rigorous blogging schedule, b) my schedule is interrupted by exams, and c) I try to write more than one series of articles at a time: there ends up being a looooong gap between articles in the series. Hopefully this doesn't drive anyone other than myself insane, and since I'm pretty much used to being insane, All Shall Be Well. B-)

If, like me, you're just a little bit compulsive and would like to recollect what I had to say in the first Writerly Advice article, click here. If not, keep reading. Of course, the third alternative is 'run away and do something Productive', but let's ignore that one for now...

'Show, don't tell.'

I don't know about you, but this has to just about top the charts for Most Common Piece of Advice Spouted Without Ever Being Defined. I'm going to work on that today - in a bit. Bear with me while I meander my way to my point ;)

So, I see this advice given to beginner writers more than just about anything else. Does this make it the most common mistake, if people feel such an overwhelming need to point it out? I have no evidence either way, but honestly - at least in the early stages of a writer's career -
I suspect so. Why is that?

Quite randomly, and without recalling how I managed to do it, I've been subscribed to this cheery little newsletter for some months now. Every now and than it pops up in my inbox, I skim it, and delete it without too much ado. It's called Seven Steps (...), and it's basically advertising for a program by the same name that's sold as a resource for teachers teaching creative writing to primary school students.

Why am I telling you this? Because it highlights one important factor for me: Telling is what beginner writers (of all ages, but especially young children) do. The newsletter focusses on ways to get children to move beyond simple telling, and move into the realms of showing - the realms of storytelling.

Let's take a look at my own first stories, which I posted yesterday for your amusement :) Aside from the myriad other problems with this story, the main thing to notice is its brevity - and it's brief because it's 99% tell.

Here's a little secret, and I believe from personal experience that it's why most children tell their stories rather than showing them: showing takes longer.

And here's another little secret, based on personal experience: people are lazy.

At 2am, when you're struggling with that awful little story that you swore black and blue you'd finish tonight before you went to bed, when you sense that the end is very nearly in sight and you just want it to be over and finished and have the satisfaction of slamming shut the notebook or throwing down the keyboard and screaming 'It's done!', it can get very tempting to resort to telling. Because it's quicker, remember? You get to the same destination in far less words, and therefore less time. (It's also tempting to do this at less extreme times than 2am, but for now I'll fantasise that we're all Good Little Writers who only resort to extreme measures like telling in the most dire of circumstances.)

So why is this such a bad thing? It gets the draft done, right?

Right. So long as you remember in editing that telling is often the kiss of death for the reader's attention span. Telliness can kill an otherwise excellent story and make it die a long and boring death while the reader writhes on the ground in pain.... Er, no, whoops. That's zombies O:)

(By the way, if you're beginning to get the impression from my posts that a lot of things can kill stories - sorry, you're absolutely correct. Why else do you think everyone who ever dreamed of writing a book - and every book that was ever written - haven't succeeded?)

Okay, we know telling is Evil and is to be Avoided At All Costs. We know it's okay in first drafts, because let's face it, it gets the dang thing done, but that it must be Hunted Down and Destroyed in edits. But... uh, what is it?

What does showing look like, if it isn't telling? Merc has a great article on this exact topic right here, but I'm going to treat you all with my own explanation ;) Oh stop groaning, I can hear you from here \:|

Let's take this fabulous little paragraph from my Elnac story:

At last they were off and travelling to the falls. They had to go around the Beaver’s pond, then to the big pond which the waterfall ran into. There, under the waterfall in the cavern were their friends.

This paragraph is almost entirely tell, because instead of letting us as the reader experience the events of the story, it just summarises them for us. It reads like an outline, not like a story. That's characteristic of telling: if it feels like the story is just skimming over things and not letting you actually envisage them, it's a pretty big clue that it might be telling. So, let's try a quick rewrite, keeping it short for the sake of space and trying to preserve the childlike tone.

At last William was ready.
"Finally," said Danny.
William ignored him and strode outside. Danny grabbed his scarf and raced to keep up - William's legs were a lot longer than his and he had to practically run.
The path sloped gently up to the pond made by the Beaver's dam, and Danny didn't mind too much that he had to run. The air was fresh and clean, just like after rain, and the sun shone warm and bright. Birds twittered in the trees, and before long his nose was twitching at the smell of woodsmoke.

I'm going to leave it there, but you see the point. I've just turned one and half sentences into four paragraphs - and I could keep going. Actually, I could keep going, and going, and going, and going...

Which brings up another important point: you can't - and shouldn't - show everything. This relates both to pace and significance. I've covered pace in the last story elements article, but as a quick refresher in faster paced sections you want to be moving quicker, so you can afford to leave out a bit of that description, and by contrast you can slow the pace down by expanding the amount of detail that you show. Significance is about which details need to be told in order for the story to advance and feel real, and which you can leave to the reader's imagination. More on that another time.

As one final note (yes, breath a sigh of relief, we're nearly done), I'll draw your attention back to my first Writerly Advice article. I left you with a promise to discuss passive writing - and in a round about way, I've done just that. 'Was', that poor little auxiliary that cops so much flak, may not always indicate passive voice, but it sure as heck indicates passive writing with a fair degree of accuracy.

Hang on, wait a moment! I hear you cry. We're talking about showing, here, not passive writing!

I smile.

My dears, what is telling if not passive writing, and showing if not active? And here's another little clue about how this all fits together - it's pretty difficult to 'show' and use 'was'.

Writerly Advice #1: Passivity and 'Was'

One of the most common pieces of critism I see more advanced writers offering newer writers is 'This writing is passive', or equivalents thereof. And one of the commonest phrasings of said critism is: This is passive voice.

STOP. RIGHT. THERE.

This is something I see often, coming from newbies and more experienced writers - and 9 times out of 10, it's WRONG.

Why?

Because 'passive voice' is a grammatical construction, with an actual, concrete definition. It's not a label you can randomly stick on any passage that doesn't grip you.

So what exactly is it? Prepare yourself for a quick grammar lesson. Prepared? Good.

In any language you have two primary categories of words, nouns and verbs. If you're reading this and you're a writer, I jolly well hope you know what those are. But just in case...

Nouns are 'things', though languages like English (the slut of the language world) are a bit hazy on the exact amount of 'thingness' necessary; witness our category of 'abstract nouns', 'things' like love, hate, freedom, happiness...

Verbs are 'doing words'. Actions. Words like jump, run, swim, sashay...

Now, each of these categories (nouns and verbs) can be inflected for a variety of different things, and the things you can inflect them for depends on the language you're speaking. For today, I'll keep it simple and stick to English and, because we're theoretically talking about passivity, to verbs :)

Verbs can be inflected for tense (past, present, future), aspect (perfect, imperfect, progressive) and voice (active, passive). It's been a while since I did this at uni, so if I've missed something that English verbs can inflect for, don't shoot me ;) (Oh, number and person!)

So. Verbs can inflect amongst other things for passive voice. What does this actually mean?

It means this. In every sentence (in English, in simple terms, bear with me here... O:)) you have at the very least a subject (which is a noun) and a verb (which, oddly, is a verb). Eg:

Sarah runs. --> 'Sarah' is the subject noun, and 'runs' is the verb.

You can also have slightly more complex sentences with a subject noun (S), a verb (V), and an object noun (O). Eg:

Sarah eats food. --> 'Sarah' is the S, 'eats' is the V and 'food' is the O.

These sentences are in active voice. Why? Because the subject noun is the one performing the verb - they are the agent. That's important. Memorise that. Because that's what changes with passive voice.

In passive voice the subject noun doesn't perform the verb; it's the thing the verb is done to - the patient. Example:

The food was eaten by Sarah. --> 'food' is still the patient, the thing being eaten. 'Sarah' is still the agent, the thing doing the eating. BUT 'food' is now the S, and 'Sarah' is now the O. Why? Because I said so.

If that's not a good enough reason, then check out the word order. English is what's known as an SVO language - meaning the sentence structure will always be Subject-Verb-Object. We do that so when we hear or read it, we know who the subject is. Other languages use inflections to show that, so can afford to be free and easy with their word order.

So, that's passive voice. Good clues for its existence are those little helper words in there - 'by' and 'was'.

HOWEVER. And this is a big 'however', because this is where most of the confusion stems from. 'Was' is an indicator of passive voice. Yes? Yes. But not always.

"Avoid all 'was's." "'Was' is passive." Etc. This is something I see a lot. And it's not true. Not all 'was's are indicative of passive voice. There's an easy test for this: if you can stick a 'by Fred' on the end, then it's passive. If you can't, it isn't. Eg:

I was hot. --> I was hot by Fred. Uh, no. Thank you.

The dog was hit. --> The dog was hit by Fred. Sure, if he's nasty enough.

I was told passive voice was something to avoid. --> This one's tricky, because there are two of the little suckers. I was told by Fred? Yep, no problemo. Passive voice was something to avoid by Fred? Nope, sorry. Not today.

So where's all this confusion coming from?

'Was' and its affiliates (be, am, are, is, were etc) may not always be indicative of the passive voice, but it sure as heck can be indicative of passive writing.

What's passive writing? Weeelll... That's a question that is unfortunately much harder to answer. And mostly, it relates to that old axiom, 'Show, don't tell.' So I'm going to be evil and leave discussion of passive writing for another time %-)