Wright’s Writing Corner — Show, Don’t Tell
Posted on 25 August 2010
This week’s Wright’s Writing Corner has some sage advice by David Marcoe –
Show, don’t tell. Yes, oldest advice in the world, but one so often forgotten it helps to list it first. Often, in stories called “dense” or “philosophical,” characters will begin speaking more than acting, stopping to chide, declare or preach, often for an extended periods. The writer has so much to *say* and the simplest way is to put it in the character’s mouths.
The first and simplest mistake is that these conversations don’t naturally arise from what’s happening in the story; they feel like an interruption in what’s going on.
I recommend what he has to say, and wish my characters would follow his guidance voluntarily, and stop making speeches.
Jeesh! I tried reasoning with my characters, and when that failed, had to resort to threats. “Phaethon, shut UP already about Ricardo’s Theory of Comparative Advantage already! You have Space Pirates from the Black Hole of Cygnus X-1 to fight! I already have the alternate ending written where the Silent Oecumene wins, and Atkins runs off with your girl, and your whole life turns out to be a hallucination caused by a library malfuncation! You wanna ave the day and smooch the girl when the credits roll, then do your darned job and stop yacking!” — but by this point, he had tuned his sense filter to exclude me. Moral: never write characters bold enough to ignore their creators.
They wear masks and sneek up on you in disguise, those characters.
Not always. I usually don’t have loud-mouthed characters, but I have had some run away with me. I was working on a take-off of ‘Cinderella’ and decided to have an Elf warrior as a minor character. In and out, just a hint of the magic around the corner, nothing serious. Next thing I knew, this guy had usurped the prince’s position, his personal quest became a serious concern of the story, and I never really knew when he and his band of merry men were going to pop up. Once he got his way, though, he stopped giving me trouble. go figure.
I just leave a cosmic backdoor leading to a pocket dimension containing the Great Old Ones. Make sure technology stays to a reasonably level of development to prevent exit strategies and it’s fullproof. If they try and resist or divert somehow, I’ve at least gotten them off their pesky blabbering.
By the way, I’ve been wanting to ask: In a high fantasy work, how would you approach writing a Cathar-like death cult, worshiping a Luciferian-type fallen being masquerading as a gnostic god, that would be both symbolic of the threat of Jihadism and a stand-in for postmodernism, but not strictly allegorical (I’m trying to Tolkienian parallel, as opposed to allegory)?
From what POV would this cult be viewed?
They are the villains of the work, view externally by the protagonists.
But they present themselves as a humane and enlightened religious order, pacifistic and leading an aesthetic lifestyle. There is then a division between the exoteric and esoteric in their teachings, but both logically arising from them.
build up the infodump.
Also, foreshadow. Give us clues that these guys are not as nice as they seem.
I am not sure in what particular to answer the question: as a Roman Catholic myself, I regard the Cathars as heretics, and the Gnostics as heretics of the most insidious and persistent sort: indeed, the “Modernist Heresy” (as we might label the modern notions of materialistic socialism, social engineering, genetic fatalism, and so on) can be accurately described as merely another school of Gnosticism.
If you are asking about strategy of plotting —
The approach I would take is the same approach taken by Phillip Pullman in his Gnostic fantasy “His Dark Materials” — I would start off with some little girl, perhaps the bastard offspring of one of the allegedly celibate priests of the Cathars, living in the gutters and knowing nothing and caring less about the theological issues of the Cathars. I would have a character analogous to Pullman’s Mrs. Coulter, an insider who actually knows the workings and the true purpose of the evil hierarchy; as well as an outsider, like Pullman’s Azrael, someone to provide the opposite point of view, or even to represent the Orthodox point of view, a Friar Tuck character, or a man from Mars, or a holy innocent, who sees the same things that the little waif girl sees, but interprets them correctly.
Again, the approach taken by CS Lewis in THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH was one of simple contrasts: Mark Studdock was the outsider ushered into the inner circle of the Gnostics at NICE, and at the same time Jane was ushered into the inner circle of their orthodox opposition at St. Anne’s.
In both cases, the authors used the parallel strategy of having a protagonist having legitimate loyalties in both the pro-Gnostic and the anti-Gnostic camps, so that the contrast could be dramatically highlighted.
If you are asking about tactics of world-building —
I have simple rules for inventing make-believe institutions, churches, nation-states, cults and so on. These are called WRIGHT’S RULES OF WORLD BUILDING:
1. Everything has factions (even a given individual has antithetical motives or impulses in him)
2. Every faction has justifications or ideals that motivate it
3. Every faction makes alliances with rival factions
4. Every faction has pragmatic considerations which require it to ignore its ideals from time to time
5. Everybody fights — each faction and each alliance is in conflict with all others
And the more factions you have, the more complex the story is.
Thank you. Very good advice. Mrs. Wright has been generous as a sounding board for other plotting issues.
“I am not sure in what particular to answer the question: as a Roman Catholic myself, I regard the Cathars as heretics, and the Gnostics as heretics of the most insidious and persistent sort: indeed, the ‘Modernist Heresy’ (as we might label the modern notions of materialistic socialism, social engineering, genetic fatalism, and so on) can be accurately described as merely another school of Gnosticism.”
As an orthodox Christian of the Protestant persuasion, I second the judgment of *heretic*. And unlike the sincere error of Tertullian, the well-meaning stupidity of Pelagius or the political compromise Arius (annoying little gnat that he was), they were just out-and-out evil; all manner of debauchery, including incest, to extinguish the appetites, capped off by suicide. And their refusal to take oaths and rejection of all forms of temporal authority made them a knowing existential threat to the social order upon which all depended for corporate survival, thus making them literal terrorists, it being akin to blowing up government buildings and infrastructure. But I’m guessing you know all this already.
Thank you for the very good advice.