If in feedback on your drafts and writing efforts to date you have ever been told the old saw ‘Show, don’t tell,’ then you have run afoul of our subject at hand. This maxim is the pithy warning to avoid exposition in favor of dramatization, and it can apply to the big picture of story and narrative as well as to sentence and word level usage as well. Let’s take a look at each of these two major levels of concern.
EXPOSITION,
or Too Much Information!
Congratulations! Now that you have spent seven years exhaustively researching and building your world it is time to face the hard truth that none of those shelves of information belong in your fiction. So difficult to swallow is this truth that beginning writers often refuse to accept it and insist upon dropping in enormous blocks of description or mini-essays of world history.
None of this belongs in the fiction. These expository passages, sentences, or paragraphs are abysses that suck up all of your hard-won forward impetus; they stagnate momentum; they kill the reader’s dream of participation. They…well, you get the idea. These are among the most deadly of the pits out there lurking for the aspiring heroic fantasy genre writer.
This temptation to slip in the explanatory background details is understandable. But resist. Details, yes. But salient and revealing details only. What are sometimes called ‘telling details.’ Meaning ones that are ‘telling’ (in the revealing sense) of the character or world.
In the interests of demonstration I will provide a few written examples. Normally I would never use my own work to demonstrate any issue, but in the spirit of the classic egalitarian workshop setting I will supply ‘case-study’ rough work. And let me reiterate: these are not presented as some sort of gems of elegant prose. Far from it. These are rough sketches meant to demonstrate that writing—good writing—is all about revision and re-visioning.
The first test case is an example of a possible opening. Now, as discussed above, openings are notoriously difficult. Especially so for the fantasist attempting to establish a new world or setting. The temptation to pack in those expository clauses, sentences, or blocks of background can be almost impossible to resist—but you must. In the case of openings less is very often more.
And just what is meant by this ‘less is more’ cliché anyway? Well, let’s say for the purposes of this example that I want to begin a heroic fantasy piece that happens to be historical. Robert E. Howard wrote a lot of what can be called historical heroic tales. The Solomon Kane novels come to mind, as do his many westerns and tales of the oil-boom days of the southwest. So I see no problem with historical heroic fantasy. And let’s open the tale by telling everything. Complete exposition.
Sometime in the late tenth century a ship sank in a storm off the south coast of Sicily. It carried a noble Norman lady escorted by a band of knights. Scavengers looted a horse and some personal possessions from the wreckage. The only survivor, one of the lady’s bodyguard, later reclaimed the property.
You might notice that expository telling is a lot easier than showing—that is, dramatizing. Dramatizing requires the actual building of a scene, giving details of geography, weather, landscape, and of course character. All this takes up a great deal more space than just telling the reader what you want them to know. And is a lot harder work. But before going on into everything else this piece of exposition lacks let’s compare it to an opening where far less is directly ‘told’ to the reader:
That night the boom of sails and the crash of timber sounded through the storm alerting the villagers that their coast had claimed yet another ship. The men who set out braving the rain and driving winds first came across a horse all alone on the shore. It was wary but exhausted, and between the five of them they managed to catch hold of its bridle. They looted the washed-up corpses of two unfortunates then searched among the rest of the debris. A chest of waterlogged cloth yielded a pouch containing a rich trove of a lady’s personal jewelry; a keg bobbing among rocks proved half-full of wine. Of rope and timber there lay plenty, but such mundane wave-wrack they spurned. Eventually, the chilling spray drove them from the shore. They collected their gleanings in bags and knotted cloths and headed back to the village.
In the largest stable the men tied up the horse then started a fire to sit and sort through the goods. They threw plenty of wood on the blaze as they were cold and wet through. They ate salted pork one had discovered. The wine went down in many toasts to their dead benefactors.
Perhaps it was the roaring fire and the numerous toasts, but none noticed things were awry until one turned to see the horse untied and a stranger standing next to it. He was tall, in a torn sodden shirt and trousers. His hair was lighter than their curly black, and he was fair where sun and wind hadn’t burnished him as dark as they.
“Any of you speak Frank?” he asked into the long silence.
The five edged back from the fire. Hands went to belts where bone and wood handled knives rested. One glanced to his companions then back to the newcomer, his eyes gleaming in the firelight. He answered in kind. “Yes. A little. Why? You are Frank?” The five spread out surrounding the man.
“No,” the newcomer answered. “Norman.” He rested a hand on the horse’s neck. “And the owner of this horse.”
The spokesman held out his arms, advancing. “A bold claim. And wrong. The horse is ours. We found it.”
The Norman’s mouth tightened in disappointment. He twisted a fist in the horse’s long mane. “Don’t make me prove it,” he said with something almost like regret.
The spokesman laughed, waving to his companions. “Some beggar shuffles into Pozzallo and claims our possessions!” The others answered his laughter. Two moved to block the open doors where the wind-whipped rain still slashed the night. “Prove it, then,” this one taunted.
The man edged his head aside in obvious reluctance. “Just hand over everything you picked up and I’ll be on my way.”
“No. You walk away…now,” and the spokesman drew his belt knife, crouching.
The newcomer shouted something in another language and the horse lunged forward, its head darting down, teeth flashing. The spokesman recoiled, howling and shrieking. He staggered, blood gushing from the red ruin that was his face to crash into a post and fall writhing in agony. His companions rushed in but the horse reared, forelimbs lashing, and they scrambled away to disappear into the rain and darkness.
Ignoring the whimpering bloodied thing in the dirt, the man gathered up what looted possessions he could find. Then, knotting his fist once more through the horse’s long mane, walked it out into the night.
Now, this second version of the opening ‘tells’ far less directly to the reader of the exact world setting, the historical period, the circumstances. Yet it is much longer. This is because ‘showing’ demands that one create an actual scene (a place that the characters and readers slip into and truly occupy). Yet, in the creation of a scene, it actually tells the readers so much more about the world.
At this point things get a little tricky. The dramatized opening does of course tell an active engaged reader a fair bit. But it does this indirectly, by showing. Now some of you may be tisking at me right now having noted that I did cheat a little by telling a few salient facts in the dialogue (strictly speaking a no-no). Ideally, one mustn’t warp dialogue into being just another tool to force information onto the reader—if you do, and the resultant dialogue reads forced or out of place, then change it. In the above example I leave it to the reader to decide whether this is the case or not.
DRAMA,
or Action!
Another major problem with any block of exposition is that it lacks something vital to heroic fiction—it lacks action and drama. There’s no excitement in the spoon-serving of information. The reader doesn’t have to discover, or participate, in anything. And so the storytelling lies flat and uninteresting.
Yet of course there remain untold ways our opening sketch can still be improved. For one thing, reading is very much a matter of taste a
nd so some might argue that in fact more explanation is needed here. Fair enough. The scene may be rewritten to have the scavengers come across the drowned corpse of the noble lady herself, a fine sword, or a far greater trove of riches. A wealth of options exists; so long as all involve further action and dramatizing…
In any case, the reader now has work to do. Puzzles to solve. A canvas to fill. This is exactly what we writers want—we want the reader to have to work for every scrap of information. In this manner they will feel involved in the ‘dream’ and will participate as the active partner the writer needs.
For a further fine-tuning of how to avoid expositional telling in preference to showing through dramatizing, let us consider another more focused example. Here, our point of view protagonist is in the world of Malaz and is journeying for the first time to a large metropolitan center named Li Heng:
All through the final day of Toven’s approach up the trader road, the walls of Li Heng reared against the surrounding Seti plain like a distant butte or cliff outcropping. In fields, grain and market garden plots looked ready for harvest. Locals pulled carts burdened with produce while sheep and hogs jostled him on their way to be butchered.
Many of the fields also boasted curious stone mounds that mystified him. After noting a few of these great piles he overtook a girl carrying an awkward yoke suspending baskets of manure.
“Those heaps of stones,” he asked. “What are they?” The girl flinched to be addressed by a stranger and peered up at him, terrified.
“The stones …?” he repeated.
“You must be joking,” the girl snorted and peered about nervously.
“No,” he answered, rather irritated.
“How could anyone alive not know such a thing as that?” she said in open amazement.
Toven bit back on his anger and offered, quite dryly: “Someone not from around here.” Closer now he wrinkled his nose at the stink. The cow shit, one must hope.
The girl laughed now openly mocking. “Not gonna last too long around here if you don’t know the simplest thing such as that!”
“Look child,” Toven snapped before managing to get the better of his temper, “How can I know these things—if you keep prattling on without telling me!”
Let’s examine this scene by looking at word-level cases of our ‘telling’ transgression. For example, the image (or rather, the lack of one): In fields, grain and market garden plots looked ready for harvest. Here, again, we are simply told something without being shown what any of it actually looks like. But more to the point the true failure here, or in truth the missed opportunity, is the vague abstract language. This is the greater underlying danger of telling using adjectives and exposition. Abstract language fails to create concrete sensual details that can be touched, seen, or heard in the mind of the reader. For an aspiring writer of sensual, involving heroic fantasy, this is the far worse trap hidden behind reaching for an adjective to describe something. Abstract language is almost useless and must be avoided at all costs.
Let’s see below how concrete descriptive language can show the fields ready for harvest. Also, further down we come to the abstract term ‘awkward.’ It is an adjective modifying the burden of the yoke. It too represents an opportunity. Let’s show that awkwardness of the yoke’s burden.
All through the final day of his approach up the trader road, the walls of Li Heng reared against the surrounding Seti plain like a distant butte or cliff outcropping. In fields the heavy heads of grain bowed and nodded in the wind, while in market garden plots gourds and melons fattened under the sun. On the road locals crowded him as they pulled carts heaped with produce, and sheep and hogs jostled him on their way to be butchered.
Many of the fields boasted curious stone mounds that mystified him. After noting a few of these great piles he overtook a girl shuffling stiff-legged beneath a six-foot pole slung across her shoulders. Two baskets hung from the yoke, each over-brimming with manure. The burden had scraped her bare shoulders raw and bloodied.
“Those heaps of stones,” he asked. “What are they?” The girl flinched to be addressed by a stranger and peered up at him, terrified.
“The stones …?” he repeated.
“You must be joking,” the girl snorted and peered about nervously.
Everyone might have noted that even more adjectives clutter this—rather over-heated—revision. However, at least these are evocative ones tied to sensual details all of which add up to physical images that can be seen and felt by the reader. I also beefed up the description of the road by showing how it is more ‘crowded.’ Now, after being scolded for adjective use it is understandable that the aspiring writer may come to believe that any adjective is one too many. The truth is this is not the case. Adjectives and adverbs have their place in prose; they appear in all writing from the high to the low. The knack is not to rely overly much on them. Consider the goal of restricting their use as a Platonic ideal for which to constantly strive. Look back over your prose and you may find that each usage is actually an opportunity for dramatization just waiting to be explored. I can almost guarantee that your work will come out all the stronger from exploiting these passed-over chances to broaden and deepen the heroic sensual experience for the reader.
Further along in the draft a sharp-eyed reader might have spotted yet another possibility for revision: The girl flinched to be addressed by a stranger and peered up at him, terrified. Terrified? How so? What does that mean? What does her fear look like? Yet another opportunity to wrench one’s abstract language back down to the concrete of flesh and blood. Something about the girl’s eyes and facial expression, I should think. And so on.
Also in this brief scene readers may have noted how I played with reader’s expectations (or perhaps fears) of ‘telling’ and the transmission of information. Normally, such an encounter might be used for that stereotypical expositional dump of background information about the city, its environs, and history. Yet it is incumbent upon any writer to try to place oneself into the point of view of each character. So, consider this poor girl: struggling beneath her load, in pain, no doubt hungry, why should she oblige some callow young fellow who has the insensitivity to quiz her while she can hardly walk? I know I wouldn’t be in a good mood if I were in her position. Therefore, in this case, it would perhaps be too convenient for her to come forth with all the information our lad, and the reader, might need to know.
The above encounter, then, is something of a demonstration of how, in many cases, it is the withholding of information and not its easy handing over that creates tension and dynamism in any scene—that all important drama in dramatization—certainly necessary for a heroic story. This quality is that other vital aspect of writing that exposition, telling verses showing, weakens.
On a final note, I chose to tackle this particular aspect of writing because it is all too salient to my own prose efforts. We who follow the path of writing must keep in mind that it is an on-going journey of discovery and refinement. One never ‘arrives.’ We are all apprentices striving to improve our craft. The lessons here are ones I must constantly keep in mind as well. By way of encouragement I suggest you trust in our active fantasy readers who are among the best out there in their willingness to give you a chance. They want you to succeed because they want that dream—just as much as you hope to achieve it.
Writing Cinematic Fight Scenes
Brandon Sanderson
Jim exploded through the doors to the hideout. Thugs stood; yells were like thunder. Jim flew into battle, a storm of fists and anger. Jim punched one of the thugs. The thug’s fist blocked. Jim punched again. The thug blocked again. Jim was a fury, a woodsman chopping at wood. He knocked that thug down with a punch. Another thug kicked. And Jim blocked. And Jim kicked that thug. And the thug fell down. And...
And I challenge you to write a paragraph duller than that one. (Okay, so you can probably do so if you try hard enough. Please, don’t.)
If you’re going to write about great heroe
s, chances are good that you’re going to need to write great fight scenes. Fight scenes in books, however, fascinate me—particularly because it’s so easy for them to turn out to be horribly, mind-numbingly, night-at-an-awards-showingly BORING. Of course, pretty much any kind of scene—comedy, action, or drama—can turn out boring when written by the inexperienced. Fight scenes are special in that many newer writers try so hard to be exciting with them, only to succeed in making them more tedious for their efforts.
Heroic genres, in particular, tend to live or die on their fight sequences. So, I figure one of the best ways to teach someone to write this kind of fiction is to talk about ways I’ve found to avoid dull action sequences. It’s only one man’s experience, and like all writing advice, it should be tested cautiously and discarded if it doesn’t work for you. What helps one author doesn’t always help another.
Hopefully, however, you can find something in here to help keep your action sequences from turning into the most skippable sections of your story.
THE DREADED BLOW-BY-BLOW
The paragraph I wrote at the start of this article is exaggeratedly bad. Unfortunately, I often read sequences that aren’t much better. It seems that new writers instinctively write action sequences as dry lists of “who hit whom” and “who missed whom” exchanges.
Writing Fantasy Heroes Page 4