Showing Vs. Telling in the Single Character or First-Person Viewpoint

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When writing in the first person viewpoint, it is tempting to tell the reader every feeling the viewpoint character is feeling and telling too much in the process.  Having full access to a character’s internal life makes the act of showing and not telling more difficult to manage. 

In their novel Emily Everafter, Anne Dayton and May Vanderbilt must show their character Emily Hinton’s embarrassment at an episode in a New York museum involving her dad. Even though in one paragraph they use the word embarrassed, they still effectively show Emily’s embarrassment through action and internal monologue. Here is the scene.

The last thing my parents wanted to see before they left New York was a museum, so here we are at the Met.  We did the whole museum in about forty-five minutes—they aren’t exactly art collectors—and now we’re up in the rooftop sculpture garden, and I’m taking a moment to watch the sun stain the green treetops orange at central park.

I turn and see my father lumber over to a pop art sculpture, a metal garden spade fit for a giant, and rap his knuckle on it.  I take off at a tasteful—well, as tasteful as I can manage in my new strappy sandals—sprint to try to stop him.  He rubs his hand over the textured paint job, scratching the metal with his fingernail, manhandling the thing.  It’s too late.  Two museum security guards in blue blazers beat me to him.

“Sir, do not touch the sculpture,” the shorter one barks.

I am at my father’s side in an instant.  He looks at me, wounded and confused, and then back at the men.

“This is the only warning you’ll get, sir. Do not touch any of the art,” the other one says.

“He didn’t mean to, he. . .” I sputter, simultaneously embarrassed by and aching for my poor confused father.

“Sorry about that.  It won’t happen again,” says a deep voice behind me.  Uncle Matthew is striding quickly across the roof on his long legs, his brown hair mussing in he wind, his confident demeanor and calming intonation setting the guards at ease.  “I’ll make sure he behaves,” he laughs, winking at them.

They look at each other and, wordlessly, turn away.  They walk back to the other side of the roof, stepping with almost military precision.  I imagine sticking my leg out to trip them, but I control myself.

I turn and shake my head at my father.  I feel how hot my cheeks are, and I glance around to see how many people have noticed.  Everyone is staring at us.

I thought it was bad when my parents starting singing “Give My Regards to Broadway,” in harmony, in Times Square, but this is far worse.  We stick out like sore thumbs.  The Clampett family in New York.  Green Acres all over again.  Except that this isn’t an old TV show.  It’s my actual nightmare come true.  The Hinton family in New York.

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Mom comes up behind Dad and puts her hand on his shoulder.  “Honey, Dad just wanted to see what it was made of.  He wasn’t going to hurt something as big as that.”  And then she turns around and with her third-grade teacher’s voice belts out a warning to my twin brothers, who are currently across the rooftop garden trying to spit on the people below.  God, just take me now, I say to myself.  Take me now.

This scene leaves little doubt in the reader’s mind that Emily Hinton is thoroughly embarrassed by her current circumstances.  Dayton and Vanderbilt are able to show us through Emily’s hot cheeks, actions, comparisons and internal monologue that Emily would rather be anywhere but where she was in this scene.  And by the end, the reader, too, feels embarrassed for her. 

When writing in the single character viewpoint, you can still show rather than tell through dialogue, action, and even internal monologue.  

What's in a Label?: Creating First Impressions for Your Novel and Short Story Characters

In fiction, labeling is important for introducing your characters and for creating that first impression of your characters on the reader.  As Dwight Swain says in Creating Characters, there are four main labels you must use in the initial creation of story characters: sex, age, vocation, and manner.

The first thing you notice about someone you first meet is that person’s gender.  You never walk away from an initial encounter not remembering whether someone’s male or female.  Therefore sex is usually the first thing you will reveal about your character. 

The next label is that of age.  Even though we may not know a person’s exact age, we usually can make a pretty good guess about it.  Like sex, age is crucial part of a first impression.  It is one of the first things we notice about the people we meet.  So, age is something your reader is going to want to know about your character. 

After you know a person’s sex and age, you usually want to know their vocation, that is, what they do for a living.  Although a person should not be judged by their vocation, their chosen career says a great deal about them.  For instance, a person who decides to become a doctor is telling us something different than someone who decides to be a computer programmer.  Even the retired character can tell us who they are through the hobbies they engage in.  Of course, your character’s vocation will be largely defined by the plot of the story.

The last label that is critical for first impressions is that of manner.  Manner is a bit more complicated to 
achieve but must be achieved nonetheless. You can begin by thinking of manner as an adjective.  Is your character sweet, shy, pushy, calculating, indifferent, or mean?  A character’s manner is defined mainly by the part he or she is playing in the story. 

Once you have decided on the most accurate adjective to describe the manner of your character, Swain says you need to decide how you will reveal it.  As you know, the first rule of fiction writing is “Show, don’t tell.”  So don’t just tell us that X character is pushy, show us. 

Swain says manner can be revealed in one of four ways: appearance, action, dialogue, and introspection.  Sometimes a character’s appearance can say a lot about his or her manner.  Is the character wearing leather and chains?  Are the clothes they are wearing something out of the sixties?  Is the character wearing horn-rimmed glasses?  What about their hair? Appearance can say a great deal about a character.

Action is another sure way of revealing manner.  A shy character will avoid certain social situations.  A cruel character may kick the dog.  Look at the adjective you chose to describe the manner of your character and try to find an action that fits.

What we say and how we say it says a lot about who we are.  Dialogue is another good way of revealing manner.  For instance, a rude person is going to say things differently from a polite person, and an angry person is going to say things in a way a happy person never would.

Like dialogue, introspection can be an effective way to reveal a person’s manner.  Getting inside a person’s head is sure way of knowing who that character really is.  If your character is crazy, you can show the reader by creating interior monologue for your character that reveals irrational thought patterns.

Remember: You only have one chance to make a first impression.  Try to keep your character consistent with the first impression you create for him or her. But don’t worry if in the course of writing your story, you want your character to be different from what you originally intended.  You will just have to do a bit of rewriting.   

Grand Openings: How to Hook Your Reader From the Beginning

   

One thing I always loved about the opening scenes in the James Bond movies was that they always seemed to begin with a bang (sometimes literally).  The screenwriters always placed the viewer in the middle of the action at the beginning.  How boring many of these beginnings would have been if some narrator had come on giving all of the background information prior to any action taking place.  

The same holds true for your novel or short story.  Beginning in the middle of the action engages the reader more quickly and effectively. That is not to say that your first scene has to have explosions or bullets flying.  It just means that you are giving the reader a reason to pay attention and find out what is going on.  Of course, eventually the reader will need to have some idea about the circumstances leading up to the beginning.  This is where exposition comes in. 

You can think of exposition as the made-up past for your made-up story.  But how do you start in the middle of the action and communicate the background information?  There are a number of ways to do this, but here is how Michael Crichton handles the opening of his novel State of Fear : 

     In the darkness, he touched her arm and said, “Stay here.” She did not move, just waited. The smell of salt water was strong. She heard the faint gurgle of water.

     Then the lights came on, reflecting off the surface of a large open tank, perhaps fifty meters long and twenty meters wide.  It might have been an indoor swimming pool, except for all the electronic equipment that surrounded it.

     And the very strange device at the far end of the pool.

     Jonathan Marshall came back to her, grinning like an idiot. “Qu’est-ce que tu penses?” he said, though he knew his pronunciation was terrible.  “What do you think?”

     “It is magnificent,” the girl said.  When she spoke English, her accent sounded exotic.  In fact, everything about her was exotic, Jonathan thought.  With her dark skin, high cheekbones, and black hair, she might have been a model.  And she strutted like a model in her short skirt and spike heels.  She was half Vietnamese, and her name was Marisa. “But no one else is here?” she said, looking around.

     “No, no,” he said.  “It’s Sunday. No one is coming.”

     Jonathan Marshall was twenty-four, a graduate student in physics from London, working for the summer at the ultramodern Laboratoire Ondulatoire—the wave mechanics laboratory—of the French Marine Institute in Vissy, just north of Paris.  But the suburb was mostly the residence of young families, and it had been a lonely summer for Marshall.  Which was why he could not believe his good fortune at meeting this girl.  This extraordinarily beautiful and sexy girl.

     “Show me what it does, this machine,” Marisa said. Her eyes were shining.  “Show me what it is you do.”

And he did. Even though this is not the entire first scene, you get the idea.  Instead of beginning with Jonathan Marshall’s background and his meeting of Marisa, Crichton puts us in the middle of the action, which peaks our curiosity about the story and makes us want to know more.  However, he does intersperse unobtrusively some background information amidst the action and dialogue, providing some orientation.  It is not until the next scene that we learn how Jonathan and Marisa meet.

Again, just as in the first scene, Crichton shows us rather than tells us.  He shows us through sense of place and dialogue how they meet.  We learn that they meet at a cafe where Marisa is having a fight with her boyfriend.  When she grows weary of the argument, she turns to Jonathan who is reading an article on physics and strikes up a conversation. From there, they move on to the laboratory. 

Going back to the first scene, this is how Crichton could have written it:

      Jonathan Marshall was twenty-four, a graduate student in physics from London, working for the summer at the ultramodern Laboratoire Ondulatoire—the wave mechanics laboratory—of the French Marine Institute in Vissy, just north of Paris.  But the suburb was mostly the residence of young families, and it had been a lonely summer for Marshall.  

      One day while having coffee at his favorite cafe and reading a physics article, he noticed a beautiful woman at a nearby table who seemed to be arguing with a guy he assumed was her boyfriend. He tuned them out and continued reading.

     After arguing for several minutes, the woman turned to Jonathan and asked him what he was reading.  Startled, Jonathan looked up and replied, “Physics.” She then asked what kind of physics, to which he replied “Wave mechanics. Ocean waves.”

     The woman continued to ask questions.  Jonathan continued to answer.  Soon the two, with boyfriend in toe, were off to the laboratory where Jonathan would show her exactly what kind of physics he was talking about.

As you can see, this second example is much less engaging because it is more exposition than action.  It tells rather than shows.

Remember the best way to begin is by having your characters doing something. Heart-pounding action isn’t the only way to hook your reader.  You just need to provide your reader with a reason to be a part of the something you have created.