Point of View Off the Rails, part 2
What does "show, don't tell" have to do with point of view?
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This week, I’ll continue our discussion of point of view, addressing more of Nicholas’s question. If you haven’t read part 1 yet, get it here.
Nicholas wrote:
Too often, POV is discussed as if it's a set of rails that you commit to for an entire story, and a good writer never goes "off track" the least little bit. But in reality, great stories very much do adjust the "POV settings" as they go along, almost from scene to scene, and certainly in between scenes. This is similar to "Show Don't Tell": great stories slip into "telling mode" to summarize boring parts and get the reader straight to the next stretch of good stuff, which is "shown" of course. In fact, I wish you would talk about the interplay between POV and showing/telling (immersive vs summarial passages). It seems like depth of POV directly correlates with depth of immersion ("show"), and very few stories any longer than flash fiction are able to peg the needle at "max depth of POV/100% show" for their entire length. At some point there comes a transition or a description that eases off at least a little bit; you can't "show" every step of the protagonist's uneventful trip to the airport or we'd never get there. But once you debunk this impossible oversimplification, and show the correlation here, can you recommend when and how an author should "zoom in" and "zoom out"? Or any other tips that occur to you that will help us navigate these nuances?
For the second part of this conversation, let’s tackle the “show, don’t tell” issue.
First: As with people telling you to never deviate from a strictly defined point of view, who I always suspect are not really understanding the intricacies of point of view, people who insist you “Show, show, show!” probably don’t really understand what is being advised. When “show, don’t tell” is oversimplified, writers tend to stick to action and dialogue, avoiding narrative as though any sort of exposition is the kiss of death. But narrative exposition IS storytelling. (Yes, I did all caps and italicize my verb.)
What does this have to do with point of view? As discussed in the first part of this article, point of view is about your protagonist’s perspective and your narrator. When writers focus too hard on the character’s POV, they commit an error I call “the POV stranglehold.” The story starts to read like the protagonist can’t bear to share the stage with the narrator. He’s up there choking the storyteller until the poor thing needs a cup of tea and lozenge to even squeak out a short sentence. As a result, the world of the story and the reader’s experience shrinks down…down…down.
A story needs narrative exposition.
The question becomes what is the difference between showing and telling, if it’s not just action and dialogue versus everything else? Showing is quality narrative exposition. Telling is poor narrative exposition. I’ll give an example.
Showing:
She sat silent, her hands clasped on her work, and it seemed to him that a warm current flowed toward him along the strip of stuff that still lay unrolled between them. Cautiously he slid his hand palm-downward along the table till his finger-tips touched the end of the stuff. A faint vibration of her lashes seemed to show that she was aware of his gesture, and that it had sent a counter-current back to her; and she let her hands lie motionless on the other end of the strip.
From Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton*
Telling:
She sat there quietly, sewing a bit of fabric, her evening mending. He reached his hand across the table, but did not touch her hand. He touched the end of her fabric. That was enough to send an electric charge through them both.
Bad telling:
He reached across the table and touched her sewing. Sparks. She sat there, pretending nothing had happened.
In Wharton’s stunning, spare prose, we have the action on the stage of the page, what we can see actors actually performing: a man and woman sitting at a table quietly. She is sewing. He touches her fabric. There is no dialogue.
We also have interiority, when the narrator enters a character’s perspective without leaving exposition to produce quoted thoughts, dialogue, or action. The narrator enters Ethan’s mind to give us his perspective on the moment. This is interiority: It seems to him a warm current flows toward him. Cautiously he slides his hand. And in the woman’s response, Wharton is true to Ethan’s point of view; this is a single, third person story and the point of view character is Ethan. He notices a faint vibration of her lashes (external, visible response) that seems to show that she is aware of the gesture.
Beyond all of that, look at the prose, the distinctive style of writing in the few sentences above. The care an author takes with narrative is what gives a story voice and makes it more than a set of stage directions peppered through bursts of dialogue. Because of Wharton’s narrative, her storytelling, we sense what this moment is all about: he longs to connect with her, but they are afraid (it would be wrong). Neither of them can bring themselves to commit a wrongdoing, so the extent of their romantic connection is this: he slowly, carefully slides his hand out on the table to barely touch the fabric she holds. And not for nothing; her eyelashes quiver. She feels it, too.
When narrative is done well, it communicates meaningfully, utilizing subtext (which is a subject for another day).
Showing allows a story to breathe both on the page and in the reader’s mind. Showing communicates the author’s vision and purpose to the reader in such a way that there is nothing for the reader to do beyond take it in, feel it, experience it. Showing invites the reader to engage in an experience.
Telling is brief compared to showing. It focuses on the tangible or actable movements between the characters, dipping into a head for a thought or feeling here and there. It leaves room for the reader to interpret and leaves room to imagine much of the story for herself. In that way, telling makes the reader work.
When you think of the stories that endure, both in your own memory and in the culture, they are the ones that move readers to have an experience. If you do not fully and effectively utilize your narrator, you will not create an immersive experience of your story for your reader.
Within every genre—however quick or slow paced, dialogue heavy or light, descriptive or spare, technical or fantastical or realistic—a writer can use the narrator to good effect or poor. Your narrative point of view shapes the dance on the page. You have plenty of choices to make in shaping your narrative style. Start exploring narrative point of view by writing outside the bounds of what you normally write.
Practice. Use freewriting to explore various styles of storytelling.
What happens when you write short, punchy sentences? What about long, luxurious sentences, heavy with detail? How much description do you find yourself using? How much interiority?
You might practice by emulating different story types. Adopt the narrator of a noir detective pulp novel. Adopt the narrator of a 19th century romance. Use third person.
Take on the rumination of a country vicar, a boxer, a love-sick teenage girl. Use first person. Avoid action, focus on interiority.
In a close third, how does the vicar’s worldview shape the narrator’s voice? The boxer’s? The girl’s? Create any variety of characters you’d like to play with.
Don’t try to make anything happen on the page. As with the Ethan Frome passage above, much of great storytelling has nothing to do with action or dialogue.
In the third installment of this discussion of point of view, I’ll give you some tips on controlling distance.
*Listen to Kathryn and me discuss Ethan Frome on the Story Works Round Table Writers Book Club.
Do you have questions about point of view? I’d love to hear them! I’d also love to hear your thoughts on this. What kind of advice have you been given about POV? What other craft topics would you like me to address in A Room Full of Books & Pencils?
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