Using Viewpoint Character to Show and Not Tell in Your Ficiton Writing

If you have ever taken a course on creative writing or read a book on the subject, you understand the importance of showing and not telling.  The showing verses telling aspect of fiction writing sets it apart from the way most of us were taught in school.  Reports and research papers both required facts without a lot of  the emotion or sensory perception afforded in fiction writing.  In fiction you must move from fact to feeling without telling your reader how or what to feel.  Doing this effectively requires that you allow your readers to experience your story world in the same way they would the real world—through their senses.  One of the best ways for your readers to experience your story world is through the senses of your viewpoint character.  One of the hazards of writing in the omniscient viewpoint is that it can limit the reader’s ability to fully experience the world within the story. 

 

In his article “Mastering Fiction’s First Rule,” Jack M. Bickham  breaks down the process of  showing, not telling, into four essential steps:

·         Selection of, and adherence to, a single character’s viewpoint

·         Imagining the crucial sense or thought impressions that character is experiencing at any given moment

·         Presenting those impressions as vividly and briefly as possible

·         Giving those impressions to readers in logical order

He says that when you stay solidly in a viewpoint character, you are less likely to lecture readers.  You are more likely to let the readers experience the story world as it is revealed through the thoughts, feelings and experiences of the viewpoint character.  What the readers experience is more real and more credible because they are learning and perceiving along with the viewpoint character. 

Stick with one viewpoint character per scene, and you will be more likely to show and not simply tell.

Tips for Planning Your Novel Part 2

When writing your first novel, it is always good to have a plan.  You need a map that helps you know where you are and where you are going.

I mentioned in my last blog that a good place to start in your planning is to get a notebook or binder and to create three main sections in it: plot, characters, and outline.  

Here in your notebook you can write freely about the plot ideas that pop into your head. As a result, your plotting section can grow to be many pages, which is why binders are helpful.

Plotting helps you work through the scenes and events that will ultimately communicate the point of your story.  Think back to your favorite novel or movie.  What was the theme? What events occurred in the story that helped to communicate the theme?

Simply put, plotting is crafting the story so that it makes your point. 

Once you have decided on your problem situation you can begin to think more clearly about your characters. Here you can start jotting down ideas for your characters including their names. 

This may seem unimportant, but the names you pick can be significant, as novelist and creative writing professor Phyllis Whitney points out in her book Guide to Fiction Writing. She writes how she slipped up in Listen for the Whisperer by using the names Leigh and Laura. By the time she realized the confusion it created, it was too late to make any changes. 

Some writers, she says, fall into a first-letter obsession without realizing it.  For instance, using Jim, John, and Jack in the same story may cause the reader to spend extra energy keeping them straight.

To keep from doing this in your story, I suggest writing down a list of all the first and last names of your characters and going through them to make sure you are not using too many names that start with the same letter.

You can also begin the process of getting to know your characters: what they look like, what they do for a living, whether they are married or single, et cetera.  Here you can decide who your characters are and what parts they are going to play.

    

Lastly, I want to discuss the outline.  When I say outline here, I do not necessarily mean the Roman numeral variety with points A, B, and C.  This is just the point at which you can decide what you want to have happen in each chapter of your book.  Begin each chapter on a new page and write down the main events and scenes you would like to include in each of those chapters.

Know, however, that nothing is set in stone. You may find that once you start writing, your story evolves into something quite different from what you had mapped out in your outline. 

 

As the old saying goes, a map is not a journey.  It’s just a starting point.

Fiction Writing's First Rule: Show Don't Tell

Once you have conceived your story idea, you must begin the process of fleshing it out.  And as most creative writing teachers would tell you, while engaging in this process of fleshing out your story you had better show, and not tell.  But what exactly does “show, don’t tell” mean?  This concept is best illustrated through scene or a sense of place.  It’s more than just giving the facts; it’s helping the reader experience the facts through vivid detail and description.

 

Setting the scene is one of the main ways you can show your story rather than just tell it.

Consider the following passage:

I noticed her hair for the first time was not pulled back into a bun like it usually was, but instead was hanging down below her shoulders.  It had been lightly sprinkled with glitter.  She wore a white dress that fit her well and a tad bit of makeup on her face where she wore a slight smile as if she were harboring a secret.  Just what her part required.

Here is how Nicholas Sparks writes it in his novel A Walk to Remember :

For the first time since I’d known her, her honey-colored hair wasn’t pulled into a tight bun. Instead it was hanging loosely, longer than I imagined, reaching below her shoulder blades. There was a trace of glitter in her hair, and it caught the stage lights, sparkling like a crystal halo. Set against her flowing white dress tailored exactly for her, it was absolutely amazing to behold. She didn’t look like the girl I’d grown up with or the girl I’d come recently to know. She wore a touch of makeup, too—not a lot, just enough to bring out the softness of her features.  She was smiling slightly, as if she were holding a secret close to her heart, just like the part called for her to do.

Notice the differences between these two passages.  One is more factual while the other is more descriptive.  The first passage allows the reader to picture the scene, but the second passage allows the reader to experience it. The passage by Sparks is much more descriptive because it includes more detail. Detail is key in separating showing from telling.

Using the active voice also helps with showing.  Make sure that she threw the vase and not that the vase was thrown by her.

  

In addition to using an active voice, showing can also be accomplished by using strong, vivid verbs.  If you find yourself using verbs like was consistently, you might want to ask yourself if a more descriptive verb could be used in its place.  The more specific the verb, the more the reader can accurately picture what is happening. 

 

However you create your scenes, make sure they are showing us your story, not just telling us about it.  Or as Ansen Dibell (Plot) puts it: “Creating scenes means finding ways for your story to show itself, rather than ways for you to tell it.”