[Perry] You Are the Man!

There’s a piece of writing advice that I’ve seen bandied about a fair bit, and that’s the one that runs along the line of “show, don’t tell.”

I’m here to offer an alternative solution which runs more along the lines of “show then tell.”

Backstory

Back when I was just a wee lad, all dewy-eyed and in the first year of my university classes, I attended a class called Bible and Literature.

Now, this wasn’t a class that studied the bible from a religious perspective. The class focused on the story-telling techniques in the bible and how they’ve influenced the literary culture over the years.

It makes sense, if you think about it. Regardless of your personal stance regarding the messages of the bible, it’s one of the most widespread books that have ever existed. It’s bound to have influenced the literary culture of many countries.

My professor spent a class teaching us about something he called the “You are the man!” technique.

The Technique

In the bible, there’s a story about a King David. In the story, David was walking along the walls of his castle when he saw a woman being all nekkid and bathing and decided that he had to have her.

What?

No, nevermind why the woman’s bathing naked on the roof of her house. That’s not part of the story.

Moving on…

Various things happen and David orders the woman’s husband, a soldier, to be put on the front lines of the next battle, and sure enough? Soldier buy buys the farm in the next fight.

David consoles the wife before eventually making her his own.

God is totally not down with that noise. He wiggles his head and snaps his fingers in a zigzagging, Z shape and he’s all like, “Oh no you didn’t!”

God then sends a prophet to David to tell him a story. And the prophet tells the king a story about a rich man with many sheeps and junk who’s visited by a poor traveler who only has one sheep…and the rich man kills the poor man’s one sheep for their supper.

David gets all angry at the story and is all like, “That’s an outrage! The rich guy is such a douchebag! He should be struck dead! What a horrible so and so!”

And right then? The prophet gets all righteous angry and points and David and is all “You are the man!”

How It Works

How it works is simple. First, you have a situation where you have some fellows give various examples (showing). Then? You follow it up with letting the fellows hang with the noose they wove together (telling).

The important part of this is timing.

You need to hit that sweet spot.

If you go IMMEDIATELY from showing to telling, you don’t really have much of an impact. It just becomes part of some character’s dialogue.

If you wait too long? The moment is lost and you don’t get that hammer-blow impact.

What you want to do is set it up so that the audience and reader realizes what you’re getting at RIGHT before you deliver the lines that tells em they’re right.

An Example

I started thinking about this on a recent re-read of Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi.

There’s a point where a bunch of freshly augmented soldier recruits from earth are going through basic training before they’re sent out among the stars to fight aliens that threaten humanity’s interests.

And over the course of basic training? They realize that they can run faster, hit harder, shoot straighter, and generally, out perform ANYONE they knew back on earth.

So you sort of start getting the sense that these super soldiers are amazing. Nothing can stand up to them!

One of the soldiers makes this remark in the hearing of the master sergeant, who flips out on him.

He rants about the fact that no army has ever equipped an army with MORE than they needed to defeat the enemy. The sergeant drills home the point that the new soldiers have all these augments because this was the very LEAST of what was needed in order to survive.

In short, they had these augments, not because the army wanted to give them a huge advantage over the enemy…but because without these augments, they wouldn’t stand the barest whisper of a chance.

The sergeant’s little rant cows the boasting soldier and made me raise my eyebrows as I read, thinking to myself, “Dayumn….”

It was a powerful moment.

Conclusion

There’s a lot to be said for “show, don’t tell.” I’m not going to argue with that.

Just keep in mind that it’s a TOOL. It’s not a requirement. Different tools do different things and are useful in various circumstances.

“Show, don’t tell” is best used when you want to pull the reader into a scene. Make them feel a part of it, like they’re using their own eyes to mark out various things about the aspects of certain characters.

“Show, AND tell” is best used to really hammer a point home. To pound it into the reader’s mind in a way they won’t forget as they read the rest of your story.

Heck, I’ve even used “Tell, THEN show” successfully on an occasion or two. I’m not 100% certain as to why or how that one works, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t effective.

But that’s a story for another time ;)

 

 

 

Related posts:

[Perry] Not Everything Needs to Make Sense
[Perry] Listen to Your Story
[Perry] Don’t Force Symbolism