Show and Tell: Scenes and Narration

One of the most fundamental ideas in fiction writing is the distinction between Scenes and Narration, most commonly referred to as Show and Tell.  For me, learning this distinction was a watershed moment.  It's another of those things that seem painfully obvious after they've been pointed out to you, but many otherwise decent writers labor in ignorance of this distinction, and it causes them no end of frustration.

Take these two examples:

1:
Harry woke up at six.  After he was dressed, he treated himself to a nutritious breakfast of coffee and cigarettes, then walked the three blocks to the police station where he worked.   On the way, he passed a homeless man digging in a trash can.   Harry knew this was probably the same vagrant that had been going through his trash the previous night, but he said nothing.   Instead, he took a few bucks out of his wallet and tossed them at the man, who smelled like expensive cheese.

2:
The alarm screeched, and Harry slammed his fist down on it.   It stopped.
Take that, you infernal machine.
He rolled over.   Six AM.  Must have slept through the first two.  No time for a proper shower.
Harry slipped the on the least wrinkly suit in the pile by the hamper, and ran a wet comb through his hair.  Thankfully, Chloe had left the coffee pot on after she left for her shift at the hospital, so there was at least coffee for breakfast.   He guzzled down a cup, lit a cigarette and shuffled out the door.
The precinct was only two blocks away, so Harry always walked.  He told Chloe it counted as his exercise.
Cold morning air rose from the asphalt as he made his way down to the corner.  A pair of kids rode by on their bikes, shooting each other with squirt guns.  Harry waved to a man walking by with a golden retriever.
In the alley behind the pizza place, Harry saw a man in a greasy trench coat reaching into a dumpster. He emerged with a half-eaten hamburger, and peeled back the wrinkled paper, trying to gauge whether it was clean enough to eat.
Harry's was a nice neighborhood, but that didn't stop the occasional crook from wandering in.   In LA, the borders between good neighborhoods and bad were always razor-thin.
There was no way to be sure, but the bum looked like the guy who had been going through his garbage the previous night.
Harry had every right to bust this guy, after all, trash cans were private property.   He reached into his jacket, but instead of pulling out his handcuffs, he pulled out a pair of crumpled dollar bills.  He walked over to the guy.
"Here you go."
The vagrant looked at the wadded bills, then back at Harry.
"I mean it," Harry said. "Take it."
The vagrant reached out, and Harry caught a whiff of what smelled like Roquefort.  Not a good smell to be emanating form a person.
The vagrant grabbed the bills but Harry held on for a moment.  "Maybe stay out of the neighborhoods at night though," he said.  "Lot of gun owners around here, wouldn't want anyone getting the wrong idea."
The vagrant nodded, and Harry let go.


What was the difference between those two passages? Obviously one is significantly longer than the other, but what made them read differently?

The answer is that the first passage merely tells us what happened. The second passage shows the events in real time.

I call the first style of writing "Narration" or "Narrative Summary".  It puts a lot of facts over very efficiently, and it can be fun to read if it's written with a sense of style (the above example was pretty dry).  But what Narration can't do is supply real-time action that readers "watch" in their heads. 

The second style of writing is a "Scene".  It happens in real time, and it offers the possibility of dialogue, sensory details, and physical action.  If you've written it well, scenes will lead the reader to actually "see" things in their head, setting off what John Gardner calls "the vivid and continuous dream".   If you're an experienced reader, you are no doubt familiar with this sensation--in fact it's probably half the reason you want to be a writer.

That feeling of being swept away by a story is what keeps people reading books in an age where CG-fueled special effects bonanzas are the order of the day, and even TV is replete wit intense, engaging drama.

Showing (Scenes) is like going to a movie. Telling (Narration) is like reading the plot synopsis on Wikipedia or IMDB. Granted, the synopsis is a lot faster, but it's a lot less interesting and a lot less enjoyable. The only time you would rather read a synopsis is when you are uninterested in the movie. So in a novel you should only tell the uninteresting things. If something is interesting, you should show us.  This works in reverse as well: if you tell us something, we are going to assume it's not interesting or important. But if you show us, we will pay attention

All entertainment is a competition for people's short, fickle attention spans.   As a novelist, you're demanding a greater share than anyone, so the importance of knowing how to engage an audience is even greater.

The simple fact is that scenes more easily engage people's attention. As centuries have ticked by, human attention spans have gotten shorter and more fickle, so modern writers must rely more heavily on scenes if they want to keep readers from putting their books down.

But that doesn't mean there's no room for Narration. Narration is an important part of a novel. It helps you vary the pace, it helps you put across large amounts of information when you need to, and it helps you skip the boring parts of your novel.

Narration is a great way to inform your readers, but the reader rarely wants to be informed--they want to experience the story.  When you tell, the reader knows things. When you show, the reader feels things.

The reader needs information, of course, and authors need to give it to them.   But when we just give it to them, they don't have to work for it, and this pushes them out of the story.   You have to make them work for every drop.  Involve them.  Make them think and feel.  It's hard, and few ever master it, but that's the job.

If you think of Show and Tell as a dimension of narrative space, there are only two positive coordinates: Scenes and Narration.  But there is another location in this dimension, and it's an important one: The Zero Point.

In a story, it's important to know what to skip entirely. In real life, we spend a lot of our time waiting for things, or traveling from one place to another, or taking care of our daily needs (showering, eating, etc).  Unless something else is going on during one of these moments--something vital to your story--it's best to completely skip all this minutia.

That seems like a pretty obvious conclusion, but it's an important one. If you're writing a detailed scene, you may find yourself tempted to walk your character through these parts of their day, because you want to stay close to them.  But my advice is if something crucial isn't going on, cut it.

Furthermore, don't spend too much time "setting the scene" with description.  Every moment in your story has a point, and it's best to get to it.  Description can be nice, and watching someone in their daily routine can show you a lot about them, but it's easy to have too much.  If you spend a lot of time on this kind of thing, readers are going to be wondering "Who just stands around, describing their own house to themselves?" Or worse yet; "Why am I watching this character brush her teeth?   Who cares?"

In fast-paced plots, chances are you will rely almost entirely on Scenes.  Narration conveys information easily, but it's not hard to put information across in scenes using a mixture of dialogue, internal monologue, and action.

Dialogue always seems to be the first choice, but you have to be careful.  You can put information in the mouth of a character, so long as you're not too obvious or heavy-handed.  Just make sure the character has a reason to communicate the information.  Don't force them to do it it just because it's convenient for you.  Ham-fisted, info-dumpy dialogue is only a shade away from telling.

Internal Monologue can be a strong way to put across information.  Show your main character figuring a piece of information out.  This also serves the purpose of letting us get to know your character, because no two people think in the same way.

Action is arguably the strongest way to put information across, especially when it's woven through with internal monologue.  If you're trying to convey general information about a setting, don't just tell the reader about it, because they won't retain what you tell them.  Show the reader some evidence of your setting.  If your story is set in communist Russia, show us a ration line.  If you're writing a post apocalyptic adventure, don't just tell us that the world is recovering from nuclear war, show us people dying of radiation sickness, and fighting over fallout-free food and water.  This goes hand-in-hand with what I've said about setting descriptions: readers don't remember lists of facts, they remember people doing things.

Learn to modulate Scenes and Narration to keep your audience engaged.  Decide what you need, how much, and why, or risk losing the reader's attention forever.

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