Pity the Poor Reader

Painting a living picture with words is a technique I call show, not tell. It rests on four principles: meaning detail, favoring the specific over the general, descriptive verbs and artful comparison. Let’s take a close look at each of these principles.

At the heart of shown not tell is the concept of meaningful detail. That is, detail that makes a person, place or thing distinctive yet universal. Sounds like another one of those koan things, doesn’t it, and I suppose it is. Allow me to illuminate.

Any one person is a rich tapestry of detail. Yet you’d hardly make somebody stand out by describing him with hair, a nose and a mouth. All are true, but they’re true of anyone. Such detail is meaningless. If instead you described that same person as smirking under spiky pink hair, his mouth riveted with metal studs, then you’d be starting to reveal personality, to make this person come to life. That’s meaningful detail.

Thanks to the Internet, there’s no shortage of detail in the world today. We're awash in facts and figures, description and quotation, commentary and opinion, memoirs and confessions, some of which are actually true. Trouble is, most of this information is as fleeting and as meaningless as the air escaping from a balloon. 

That’s why writers pan relentlessly for those rare nuggets of fact, description or quotation that are meaningful. Such details are found only through developing a keen power of observation. The sweet spot of writing well involves seeing what others have missed, of identifying and highlighting details that infuse the ordinary and the everyday with meaning. To take, say, a banana and use it as a vehicle through which to illustrate the destructive power of anorexic obsession. That’s exactly what Lindsey, a former Emory University student of mine, did in this passage from her story about anorexia:

“For Colberly, eating a banana was a daunting undertaking. She would cut the fruit into 100 pieces. Each piece was then further sliced into four fragments. She chewed each fragment exactly 30 times. Eating one banana could take Colberly up to three hours. No wonder she dreaded meals, failed to see the necessity of them. Still, she forces herself to eat. "It's like medicine to me," she says.

Lindsey could have simply written “Colberly found eating difficult.” But that would have been telling the reader about Colberly’s struggle with anorexia. Instead, she showed us what that struggle looked like. Marshaling her keen power of observation, Lindsey used a banana to paint an indelible image of anorexia in the readers’ imaginations.

Notice, too, how Lindsey’s passage favors the concrete over the vague. Writers shun vague language such as walk, talk or look. Instead, writers show their readers how someone walked, how they talked, how they looked. In the stories of skilled writers, people saunter, amble or galumph. They murmur, prattle or shout. They glower, glimpse or ogle. Lindsey didn’t write that Colberly disliked eating but wrote instead that “Colberly dreaded meals.”

Show not tell champions the specific over the general. Again, Lindsey’s passage illustrates. Colberly didn’t cut up a banana a lot. She “cut the fruit into 100 pieces. Each piece was then further sliced into four fragments. She chewed each fragment exactly 30 times.” Lindsey uses these few meaningful details to etch this image indelibly in the reader’s imagination.

A big part of making your writing concrete is to anchor it in time and place. Practitioners of show not tell would never write that some person spoke at some place at some time. Rather, they would write Professor Charles Haddad spoke at noon in the Stony Brook newsroom in Melville Library.

In the stories by writers practicing show not tell, real people do real things in real time - even if they are writing fiction.

In show not tell, verbs again play a starring role. They give life to your words, animate the picture you’re trying to paint in the reader’s imagination. Not just any verbs, mind you, but ones that show the reader what’s occurring. Think of the verbs cited in the Art of Brevity. Let’s look at some examples that illustrate how action verbs can enable a writer to show rather than tell:

• “Hamilton Court, with its private school, groomed lawns and security guards, is just one of the exclusive gate communities that have blossomed across India in recent years.”
• “Barometers shattered, brandy froze indoors.”
• “In recent weeks, rumors have swirled that the embattled president would quit.”

In each of these sentences, an interesting, descriptive verb, deployed at the right moment, enlivens the image. In the first, from the New York Times, it’s the verb “blossom,” which portrays modern development as a flowering. The writer could have said “grew up” or “arose” instead, but see how less interesting that would have been? In the second example, from the New Yorker, the use of the verbs “shattered” and “froze” make the cold come alive, animating the picture in the reader’s imagination. And in the third example, from the Wall Street Journal, the writer uses “swirled” to paint the image of a maelstrom. He could not have painted that image using such pedestrian verbs such as “surrounded” or “revolve.” A writer’s choice of verbs can make the difference between an image soon forgotten and one long remembered.

There’s no better way to etch a lasting image in the reader’s imagination than through the artful use of contrast and comparison. That is, likening a fleeting idea to a rapidly deflating balloon or making the meticulous eating of banana represent anorexia. Such comparisons emphasize and highlight, clarify and enliven. They drive understanding deeper. It’s easier to grasp a new idea when a writer compares it to an old one or to a familiar icon of everyday life.

I liken the artful use of contrast and comparison to the concept of dark matter in astrophysics. Dark matter is the unseen force that binds the universe. It’s what gives the illusion of form to our eyes, makes a rock a rock, a ham sandwich a ham sandwich. In truth, the world around us is a mist of floating particles. To understand the concept of dark matter - to see the unseen ties that bind the world - is to understand how everyone and everything is ultimately interconnected.

Think of artful comparison, then, as a writely spotlight. It illuminates the dark matter that binds seemingly disparate facts, figures, ideas and events. Revealing those hidden ties helps readers see the world around them in the bright light of understanding.

Artful comparison takes four forms: analogy, simile, metaphor and - at the highest level of writing - allegory. Now, I’ve been writing for some 30-odd years, and I still confuse analogy with simile and vice versa. But I do understand each of these concepts, if not by name, and know how to use them effectively in my work - and that’s what counts. You can always look up the definitions when it’s necessary to appear knowledgeable (as I did in writing this chapter).

Let’s take a quick look at each of these tools of artful comparison.

An analogy compares two things that are similar in structure or likeness. A writer, for example, might compare the workings of the human brain to a machine or an autocratic society to an ant colony. I once read a story about World War II in which the writer likened Nazi Germany to a colony for army ants, with each citizen mindlessly carrying out his prescribed role. Here’s more examples:

• “The dark stain of his blood on the dusty road was a clear as the outlines of the mountains ahead.”
• “They lay down sandbags as if making peace offerings to a vexed god called the Mississippi.”

In the first example, the blood and the mountains share a similar structure, with each forming a jagged outline. In the second, the writer likens fending off the mighty Mississippi to paying homage to an angry god.

In contrast, a simile compares two unlike things. The contrast helps to clarify. Consider these two examples:

• “The birds plummeted from the sky like stones.”
• “Heat stood in the room like an enemy.”

Birds, of course, aren’t like stones. Yet comparing them to stones emphasizes through contrast. It helps us see just how hard those birds fell. Ditto with heat. How can it be an enemy, given that it isn’t a person or thing? But likening it to an enemy highlights the oppressiveness of that heat.

Like analogy and simile, metaphor is a form of comparison. But it’s a form that imbues a person or object with a larger meaning. Think of Lindsey’s banana, which became the window through which to see the destructive obsession of anorexia. Here’s a famous example:

“You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

This evocative line uses the metaphor of crucifixion to frame the debate over whether Twentieth Century America should continue to peg its currency to the supply of gold. Clearly, this writer thought this an idea harmful to working Americans. He was William Jennings Bryan, who many historians consider our greatest orator. Bryan used this striking metaphor in a speech that won him the Democratic presidential nomination in 1896. While he lost the election, Bryan’s metaphor of the gold-crucified working man won a place in American history.

Allegory is metaphor exalted. It’s a technique that imbues not just an object or person with a larger meaning but an entire story. At first read, allegorical stories seem simple tales. Think of the story about the Gingerbread Man, who entrusts a fox to ferry him across the river. But a closer read reveals a deeper, second meaning, typically a lesson in ethics or morality. It was the Gingerbread Man’s foolish pride that blinded him to the danger of entrusting his safety to a fox. In Western literature, the greatest examples of allegory are Homer’s Iliad and Aesop’s fables.

While practiced since ancient Greece, allegory is as modern as rock ‘n roll. Consider this example, the refrain from a Jimi Hendrix song:

“Castles made of sand melt into the sea, eventually.”

At first glance, this one line story seems simple enough. It describes the natural dynamic between sand and sea. Yet much more can be read into this line. Think of the castle as hubris or power and the sea as time or the sweep of history. In other words, time erodes all hubris. The powerful eventually fall.

What helps to make this one-line refrain so powerful is its simplicity. It contains a mere nine words and anyone can remember and understand them. Hendrix was a master of not only allegory but the art of brevity.

Quotes

The use of dialogue represents another effective way to show, not tell. What a person says, how he says it and when, reveals personality, upbringing, worldview and bias. Consider what’s more persuasive: labeling someone a racist or hearing that person use a racial epithet?

In fiction, writers can put words in the mouths of their characters. Nonfiction writers don’t have that luxury. They must capture the dialogue of real people. That’s no small task. There’s no surer way to lull readers asleep than to quote people verbatim, especially at length. What sounds good in conversation often falls flat on the printed page, in a blog or on a Web site. Even the most erudite and articulate of speakers spout a lot of nonsense. It’s only human to babble. Conversation, stripped of its accompanying gestures, facial expressions and emphasis, can quickly lose meaning. The best of dialogue is often as fleeting as a monarch butterfly on a spring breeze.

While challenging, quotation is well worth the effort. When done right, it adds authenticity and validity, variety and spice.

Capturing the best of what people say requires developing a keen ear for dialogue. A writer learns to always keep one ear dipped into the continual stream of conversation flowing around him. It’s a practice that trains him to recognize authentic speech that’s compelling. The practice also enables a writer to gather material. While letting pass most of what he hears, a writer snags those rare snippets that capture how people talk, what they think and why.

When I was writing my young adult novel I staked out coffeehouses and malls. I’d sit amid a herd of teenagers and pretend to write, slumped in concentration over my laptop. In reality, I was all ears. I jotted down choice snippets of teen dialogue. Many of those captured words ended up in the mouths of my characters. Even in fiction authenticity counts. No one will believe your made up characters unless they sound like real people.

To quote effectively requires an understanding of the role quotes play in a story. Let’s take a look at each of the three primary functions of quotes in nonfiction.

Foremost, quotes provide validity. They substantiate a fact or a story’s theme. If you write that a consensus of scientists agree that the concept of intelligent design is specious, then add weight to your argument by quoting a leading scientist to that effect.

In the winter of 2006, the New York Times depicted the destructive sectarian violence of Iraq through the plight of one Shiite family. It chronicled how Sunni mobs chased the family out one town after another in central Iraq. “We are a ship that sank under the ocean,” bemoans Aziza Mustafa, the family’s 46-year-old matriarch. I’m sure that the reporter of this story had a notebook full of dialogue from fleeing Shiite families. But he peppered his story only with a handful of quotes, such as the one above, which provided the best validation of the family’s plight.

Mustafa’s quote also is a good representation of the second role of quotes: spicing up a story. Keep quotes colorful, use them to say what you could have not said better yourself. Here’s an example. In covering the 2006 Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, the Times tried to cast the war against a backdrop of ancient rivalries between Christian Ethiopia and Muslim Somalia and Eritrea. “The only forces we are pursuing are Eritreans who are hiding behind the skirts of Somali women,” a Ethiopian general told a Times reporter. This quote depicts better than any writerly paraphrasing of Ethiopian disdain for Eritrean fighting prowess.

The Ethiopian general’s quote appeared after many paragraphs of description and it illustrates the third role of quotes. They can add variety to your writing. A colorful quote skillfully employed at the right moment can forestall monotony from taking hold, the killer of many a good story.

Despite their usefulness, quotes are easily abused. Here’s a few simple principals to guide you in when to quote:

• Quote sparingly. Overuse dulls the effect of quotation. A handful of colorful quotes, judiciously placed, go a long way to adding variety and spice to a story.
• Use quotes when they further understanding. Don’t repeat in quotation what has already been said, either in paraphrase or narrative. If you’ve just explained the mayor thinks the chief of police is a bum, there’s no need to quote the mayor repeating himself. Choose either paraphrase or quote, although the latter is preferable if the mayor denounced the police chief with gusto.
• Avoid large blocks of quotes. As a rule, quotes tend to work best when as brief and colorful as possible. This rule isn’t ironclad. The high-brow magazines, such as the New Yorker, are most apt to quote someone at length. These magazines do it because there are times when quoting someone verbatim adds credibility - say when you’re trying to hang someone with their own words. There are some people who, through force of personality and articulateness, can say something better than any writer. But such people, in this age of the sound bite, are a vanishing breed.
• Quotes are not facts. Just because the mayor says the police chief is a bum doesn’t mean it’s so. You must marshal the evidence - documented incidences of incompetence, statistics that track the trend in crime rates under the chief’s tenure - that give truth to the mayor’s assertion. Quotes are the final confirmation of the facts, not conclusive evidence in and of themselves.

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