Category Archives: Technique

Dialog vs. Narration

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“Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.”

One of the most common suggestions I get from my critique groups is to switch from narration to dialog or (rarely) vice versa. By letting characters speak, dialog injects emotion, personality, and movement, particularly if the words are in the character’s voice and fall trippingly on the tongue, as Hamlet instructed his players. But direct speech requires more space (and two or more people, unless one is writing internal monologue). Narrative stops the story while the author tells the reader stuff; however, narrative is efficient: a short paragraph of narrative can often get across information that would need several pages of conversation.

At least in most writing, dialog is the “Let’s do this ..” part of the story, and narrative is the “and here’s how it happened and why” part.

Not giving details speeds up the story and creates tension. Unfortunately, one of the thesaurus synonyms for tension is confusion anxiousness, and agitation.  Narrative is the train standing in the station, loading passengers. Dialog is the train moving out of the station toward its destination.

Those of you who have been with me for a while have surely noticed that I have written fewer posts in the recent past. Given pandemic restrictions for nearly two years, there should be more posts, right? I guess, without really analyzing it, I was following form. Pilgrimage was, after all, established to trace my learning cycle as a writer. Insights, at least large ones, have become fewer as I’ve progressed. So posts have become fewer. Sooo … I’m planning to broaden my focus a bit, and post a bit more often. If you have writing topics you’d like to discuss, shoot them to me.

And, as always, thanks for listening.

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The Show and the Tell

 

All writers balance the Show and the Tell. All writers have been told to “show, don’t tell” more than once.

This morning, I’m reminded of this moldy aphorism because I’m judging for the Royal Palm Literary Awards, and I just wrote it. As beginning writers, all of us lean toward using both a Show (to describe the situation) and a Tell (to nail it down). I think there’s something of human nature in this: the need for control. As a novice writer, I work the words to show the look of astonishment on a character’s face changing to anger when she learns an uncomfortable truth. Not easy to describe, so just in case the reader doesn’t get the picture, I tell them that she’s astonished, then angry.

 

 

 

It takes a bit of writing and getting critique to understand the truth of writing: The picture in the reader’s mind is unique to the reader, a mix of the writer’s words and the reader’s experience. The writer needs to balance the Show and the Tell skillfully to create a vibrant picture in the reader’s mind … accurate, but not exact.

The normal critique group comment is “cut the Tell.” That’s almost always said in the context of dialog. Tell has its place, because Tell is compact, a good way of giving information quickly.

I think the reason we often lean toward the belt and suspenders Show/Tell is that need for the reader to see it our way. (The mental equivalent of the plaintive, “What I meant to say was …”).

I must be maturing; I’m learning from advance readers of Skins and Bone that I sometimes do too little Tell. (advertisement: You, too, can be and advance reader. Punch HERE.)