My Storytelling Approach, Pt. 2: Two Basic Rules

I know that I said I was going to describe my editing process this week, but as I started writing it, I realized that maybe the things I think about while writing might interest someone. The world must be build before it can be torn down, right? So, editing can wait for now.

In fact, after I ditched the editing post, my plan was write about my approached to character development. Then my writer friend in British Columbia, who's just starting a new MAJOR edit of the first book in her series, sent me her reworked first chapter. While critiquing her changes, I ended up with a completely different post for today.

There are two popular maxims floating around like spooks on the internet, haunting writers: “write what you know” and “show don’t tell.” They are logical statements, but are open to varied interpretation. After having given them a lot of thought over years, this is what that advice has come to mean for me.

Write What You Know

Spiderman wears Jason Bourne pajamas.

Let me ask you…do you think that Robert Ludlum, author of The Bourne Trilogy, was a contract assassin for the CIA during the Cold War? Do you think that he ever rampaged through Hong Kong looking for his wife or killed an adversary in a Russian spy training village?

If that all seems a little like…well, fiction…it’s because it is. Mostly. Ludlum was a US Marine, so the soldier aspect of Jason Bourne’s back story comes from first-hand service experience. But unlike his creator, Jason wasn’t a frat boy or a theater actor. (I make the distinction because the former spy was an actor; the whole world was his stage.)  They were both academics, but it’s never revealed whether Bourne's alter-ego David Webb spent his formative years in boarding schools. (I don’t believe that fits with the story.)

Jason and Marie have a moment.

So now let me ask you this…do you think that Ludlum might have ever been angry in his life? Do you think he might have ever fallen in love, felt desperate, afraid, or disillusioned? If that question seems a little silly, of course it is. The man was human, after all, complete with a heart, lungs, and nervous system.

“Writing what you know” is to incorporate your experiences into your work. Basing your lead character on the simple details of your life—ie. Japanese-American female, 37, married, mother of one who spends most of her waking day with a computer keyboard, but not writing—that’s writing autobiographically, which isn’t the same thing. We are not the sum total of our attributes. We are each much greater than that.

Recall the grief over losing your grandmother to cancer and share it with a character whose boyfriend was killed in a car accident. Remember the astonishment you felt when you unwrapped a "just because" gift and found something wonderful inside. Pass that rush to an archeology student as he sees the rock city in Petra, Jordan, for the first time. Dredge the depths of your memory to a time when you were dared to eat something really gross and give your vomiting reflex to the camper who finds a mutilated body.

Above all, remember the immortal words of Mies van der Rohe, the father of the modern skyscraper, “Less is more.”

Show, Don’t Tell

I chose to work through this advice second because it’s a problem of mine. My dear husband pointed out that I have a problem with overwriting AND telling rather than showing.  His critique has merit, and not just for the flaws in my storytelling.

How in the world could you provide tons of descriptive detail and still be telling?  Well, to answer that, you have to understand what the reader needs to be shown. (And yes, I understand it, and STILL have a problem working it through.)

Let’s start with blue. There are light blues and dark, bright and dull, pastels and neon shades. Suddenly just blue doesn’t seem all that interesting, so you feel inclined to designate the shade of blue. You pick say, cornflower…and that’s where you’ve just messed up. First of all, are your readers going to have to dig out their kids box of crayons to find cornflower? Second, does your reader care what cornflower actually looks like. So yes, you have shown the reader something specific…but does it have anything to do with your plot? If yes, by all means, carry on. If not, I invite you to join me at 7 p.m. on Wednesday for Overwriters Anonymous. There will be coffee and cookies.

I know what you’re thinking. Am I really suggesting that we never mention color…or hair color/length, height, weight, build, skin tone, etc? Well, certainly not if you’re going to do it like that! Sheesh. I don’t know about your country, but medical records are confidential in the United States. (Just kidding!) There are ways to do it and figuring out some ways as examples for this post are research for me, and hopefully good advice for you. (Got ideas or examples? Please post them in the comments.)

Leto and his spicy blues

This photograph represents eye color as a critical element of character development and plot. The character, Leto Atreides II, was not born with these eyes. Nor was his sister, whom he is seen talking to here, but she has them as well. It is shared by Fremen people of Arakis and anyone who else who has consumed sufficient quantities of a spice called mélange that comes from there. The spice is used to extend the lifespan of the elderly, and for religious ritual by the Bene Gesserit and the Fremen tribes. The drawback is that it is highly addictive and the withdrawal is lethal.

In Dune's universe, eye color is not simply a descriptor. It provides the reader very specific information about the character that has them: 1) he has a spice habit, and 2) he has undergone some sort of transformation as a result of it.

When a writer describes smoke curling off the end of a cigarette, he is showing many other things as well.  It sets the scene...the degree of circulation in a room, the ambient light, and the fact that a smoker is present, or was recently.  Given widespread smoking bans in recent years, this information may be more or less significant depending on when the story takes place.

The height of two characters can be emphasized at once by having one stand on a log to give the other a kiss. A man’s eye color can be described by having a female character notice that what she thought was blue actually has a green in it. A character’s long hair can be shown by having another character asking when he’s going to cut it. You can bring attention to a shiner around the POV’s eyes by having a friend ask him, “Dude, what happened to your face?”

As Mies van der Rohe also said, “God is in the details.”

Great Dialog

When I was in the sixth grade, I participated in the Wyoming Young Author’s competition. I wrote this short story about these diamond-shaped crystals that had to be found and reassembled into their proper pyramid configuration or bad things would happen. Don’t ask about the hell that would be unleashed, because I really don’t remember. What I do recall is a scene with eight or so people deciding to do something, I have long forgotten what, and for some reason, I thought they all should all verbally agree to go.

You can see that on paper, right? Six secondary character names listed on the page, each followed by “said,” and all saying something to the effect of, “I’m in,” or “me, too.” I was eleven-years-old, mind you. It would be another nine years before I was exposed to truly fantastic dialog, and ten more years  before being similarly impressed.

In 1994, Quentin Tarantino released his film “Pulp Fiction,” and with it, the most brilliant approach to dialog my 20-year-old self had ever seen. Jules and Vincent are talking about what a quarter-pound cheeseburger is called in France. A perfectly average conversation for two newly acquainted co-workers to have.

It’s common with new writers to use dialog to dump plot details. I did it when I started. In one cringe-worthy instance, I dumped the same information in at least three conversations. Yes, in real life, people do verbally pass along information…when one or more person in the party doesn’t have the information.

Jules and Vincent know where they’re going. They know what they’re going to do when they get there. The only reason to talk about the job would be to fill in the viewer, and Tarantino intends to show that later. (Tell vs show in action.) Also, they don’t talk about what happened in the apartment when they leave. They were both there. The only reason to talk about it would be to explain to the viewer what happened. Tarantino respects his audience’s intelligence more than that.

In real life, people on the same page talk about other things…their wives, their kids,  last night's Fringe episode, where they want to grab lunch, or something that happened while on vacation. That’s what Tarantino does…he reflects the audience by showing his incredible characters in very average situations. In writing them in such a way, he humanizes killers at the same time as he cements their inhumanity. I mean, how does a man get to be so ice cold that he can talk about foot massages on his way to retrieve the holy grail, knowing he’s going to shoot the kid who has it?

I had this conversation with my husband recently.  I thought aloud that Jules and Vincent had crossed through the woods to the other side to become average people again in spite of their day job. My husband suggested that they never stopped being average people and perhaps that was Tarantino's point.

Every work by Tarantino has similar gems, and I had begun to wonder if I’d ever see his equal. Turns out I had…years before I saw “Pulp Fiction.”

I read Frank Herbert’s “Dune” in high school. A lot of it was lost on me at the time, but I came away from the book with a deep love of the Bene Gesserit and religious orders. I watched David Lynch’s movie several times growing up, but it was SyFy’s “Children of Dune” that opened my eyes to the importance of dialog delivery.

The children of Paul Muah’Dib by his concubine Chani have been raised by his wife, Princess Irulan Corrino, while rule of the empire has been carried by their aunt, Alia. Irulan is fiercely protective of the children and trusts no one regarding them…not Alia, not their grandmother, no one. In the story, there is a conversation between Irulan and her mother-in-law, a Bene Gesserit reverend mother, Jessica.

In the scene, Irulan and Jessica are sitting in a garden, having a polite conversation. Normally, this type of chit-chat would bring a novel to a screeching halt. It’s boring. It’s annoying to the reader. It’s a conversation that a reader might expect them to have but a mention that it took place would suffice. But Frank Herbert’s matrons are not simply catching up. Jessica never cared for Irulan all that much and the princess knows it. The last thing either might like to do is hang out in the other’s company, which gives the scene added gravitas.

Herbert uses this meeting between the women to do three things: show off the their Bene Gesserit training, show Irulan’s devotion to the children, and convey RM Jessica’s support of Irulan’s position. And he accomplishes all of the above without the women saying much of substance. The spoken conversation is for the benefit of potential eavesdroppers. The actual conversation is being carried out discretely, and simultaneously, in sign language.

I tried to find a video online, but there doesn’t seem to be one. (I thought there was video for everything on YouTube!)

Dialog can’t always be double-speak, innuendo, or smoke screen. That’s just silly. But narration is the place for plot detail. Dialog should flow.  It may convey details if it can do so naturally, but it should always build upon the character who is speaking.  It should build upon the scene and drive plot not simply by the words, but also through delivery and juxtaposition. “Pulp Fiction” and “Children of Dune” are shining examples.

For more on how great dialog, I recommend Anne Mini’s “Author, Author” site. Actually, I recommend that site for anything at all you ever wanted to know about writing/publishing.