Telling Details By Michael A. Black

It’s crunch time for me trying to finish up the first novel of a three-book contract as well as this blog piece and dealing with the latest winter snow storm of the season. Well, the storm really isn’t a factor because, as storms go, this one was pretty much a non-event. It tossed about three to four inches of snow down on Chi-town, which most of us living here in the Mid-West view as little more than an inconvenience. Still, in terms of telling details, it was a rather heavy snow, and made shoveling it a bit more of a workout than if it had been the fine, light, fluffy kind. Regardless, this unusually mild winter continues with the weather prognosticators saying that it’ll reach the 40 degree mark by the end of the weekend, so hopefully, by the time you’re reading this, most of the aforementioned snow should be history.

It strikes me that I’ve been meandering quite a bit the last few times during my times at bat here on The Ladykillers. The topic this time is supposed to be Telling Details, and I’ve been writing about the weather. I hope I put in enough details in the preceding paragraph to qualify.

Whenever I do think about telling details, though, the old writer’s axiom of “show, don’t tell,” comes to mind. Basically, it says the writer should “show” the scene, letting the reader experience it, rather than pedantically “tell” what’s supposed to be happening. And the way you show something is by using those telling details.

As I mentioned, I’m closing in on the CFFL of my latest book. (For those of you who don’t know what a CFFL is, it’s an abbreviation that my former writing partner, Julie Hyzy, and I came up with a few years ago. It stands for the Customary Fight For Life scene that normally appears at the climax of an exciting story.) As I wrap things up, there are a variety of plot points that I have to include in this section. These telling details are needed to round out the various subplots and give the CFFL, or climax, that satisfying resolution. In trying to make sure that I got everything in that I needed to include, prior to writing the scene I devised a list of plot points, or details, that I felt were indispensible. I jotted these details down in random order on a piece of paper, then I numbered them in the sequence which with they needed to happen during the course of the scene. The hero arrives on scene would naturally be the first, and the villain’s last gasp would bring up the rear. In between were the resolutions and fates of a couple subplots and secondary characters. When I’d finished the numbering, it struck me that I had completed a short outline of the entire scene. It was simply a matter of figuring out how to present this list of telling details in a showing manner, and the scene would practically write itself.

I’ve been teaching some creative writing classes at a junior college and one of my sessions involves this show, don’t tell concept. It begins with the advice once given to me by my friend, Sara Paretsky, who graciously gave me some pointers back when I was a fledgling writer. “You have to make the reader feel he’s right there in the scene,” she said. (If there’s ever been a simpler, more eloquent explanation of show, don’t tell, I’ve yet to come across it.) My lesson goes on by giving the students a rather “telling” paragraph:

I followed Breck’s trail through the jungle. It stank and the ground was soft and wet. Plus, it was also very hot. I was sweating heavily.

I then tell them to expand each sentence in the paragraph using one of the five senses. For instance, in looking at the first sentence, I ask, what does the narrator see as he walks along?

I followed Breck’s trail through a maze of high grass and hanging vines, dipping down like snakes and periodically blocking out the sunshine.

The next sense I use is hearing:

Something slithered through the brackish water to my left.

The other senses, touch, smelling, and tasting follow:

The wetness seeped through my shoes as my foot suddenly sank into a murky patch. The stench of rotting vegetation and who knew what else assailed my nostrils and I could taste my own sweat.

I also make it clear that using the list of the five senses to expand the original paragraph in a “show, don’t tell” manner doesn’t have to be done in order. I usually suggest a little tweaking:

I followed Breck’s trail through a maze of high grass and hanging vine, dipping down like snakes and periodically blocking out the sunshine. The stench of rotting vegetation and who knew what else assailed my nostrils and I could taste my own sweat. The wetness seeped through my shoes as my foot suddenly sank into a murky patch. Something slithered through the brackish water to my left.

As you can see, I changed the order so the reader will be left with something slithering through the water right after the narrator’s foot is immersed in a murky patch. But in terms of telling details, how much is too much? Remember, in good writing, every line should advance the plot. The writer must put in enough detail to make the reader feel like he’s there in the scene, but not so much that it diverts the reader’s attention by going off on a tangent of superfluous description.

So how do you tell the difference? The answer is simple: you finish it, let it sit for a bit, then do your revision. As Rolad Dahl was fond of saying, “Good writing is rewriting.” No truer words have ever been spoken. The devil is often in those “telling details,” but the nice thing is, you don’t have to get it exactly right the first time.

Comments

[ann]

I love your example of how to show, not tell, and how to structure paragraph flow, Michael. I'll bet your classes are excellent! Wish I lived close enough to take one.
Good luck in getting through that CFFL and making your deadline! :-)

[Michael A. Black]

Hi, Ann. Thanks. I actually finished the CFFL on Saturday, realized I had an earlier scene that had a similar tactic, and rewrote that one. I did a bit more tweaking yesterday and this morning, and now need to let it sit and ferment for a bit. My deadline is April so I'm a head of the game at this point. I don't know if my suggestions translate well in the classes. I have yet to have full classroom attendance for the entire run.

[Susan Shea]

Funny, Michael, but I just did an exercise like that with a classroom of third graders. We started with a noun and a verb and built first a sentence and then the beginning of a story, with sensory detail, specific verbs, and plot surprises. In my LK post tomorrow, I'll take your excellent post one step further: which details are important and which shouldn't be there to get in the way?

[Mysti]

That cooling-off period is key! Sometimes I have no idea what I was going on about, and it's so easy to cut stuff after a week or two. Okay, easier if not absolutely easy.

Now to look for all those "laugh" "smile" and other habitual actions that sometimes stand in for specific details...a writer's work is never done!

[Staci]

I love how you reordered the sentences, since that can have just as big an impact as including all the sensory details. I love how you ended the paragraph with whatever slithering creature lurks in the water. It's very effective!

[Pat Morin]

Your reordering of the sentences (for the senses) is very effective! I would have fun playing around with those sentences in your class. Great way of showing and not telling, and "getting right in there" with the class scene.