The Brutality Of Showing, Not Telling

 

 “…if I leave you crying because I just killed a unicorn, I'm not going to tell you how sad the death of the unicorn was. I'm going to kill that unicorn. And I'm going to break your heart.”

Neil Gaiman, “The Art Of Storytelling” (Master Class: https://www.masterclass.com/classes/neil-gaiman-teaches-the-art-of-storytelling)

Every time I’m at a place in a piece where I’m sorting out whether I’m telling instead of showing, I recall this little chunk of advice. Storytelling often seems to be a sunshine-and-morals-and-cookies around the campfire kind of occupation. It isn’t. It’s brutal, it’s right on the edge of what you can stand. Or at least it is if you’re doing it right. And Gaiman is telling us that.

Instead of explaining to us that the witch killing the unicorn has saddened and angered the protagonist, you should be describing what he’s doing and seeing and let the emotional/unseen part of the story coalesce in the reader to do the heavy lifting in the “how does this feel/how does this make me feel/what am I learning” impact of the story.

A real life example? Sure, here ya’ go.

This, from one of my favorite authors, Cormac McCarthy, is a quick scene from “The Crossing”. Note this probably has spoilers in it, so if you’re gonna read this thing someday, you might consider whether to continue. On the other hand, this entire plot, story, hero’s journey, etc., which would make easily a long novel for any of us, is just a sub-story in this single McCarthy novel. So, spoiler alert for this little chunk, I guess. The other stories, what seem to be two or three novels’ worth, are also crammed into this book and will still take your breath away, trust me. Also note that this is only the second book in the so-called “Border Trilogy” (All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities Of The Plain).

OK, a smidge of story background for context: In the mid-late 1930s in rural New Mexico, a 16-year-old boy/man spends weeks of work and learning hard lessons on how wolves think by being consistently out-smarted and out-maneuvered by one of the last of the animals left in the wild which is predating the family’s herd. He finally manages to trap her, more by luck than anything. On actually facing the raw life-force of this pregnant she-wolf with whom he’s been engaged in this life-and-death game, he decides he cannot kill her; he decides, in fact, to take her back home, back to the mountains of northern Mexico. The hero’s journey — many terrible things happen to him, not least because the animal he’s shepherding is smart, dangerous, cannot be tamed, and will never give an inch from its rightful place at the top of the predatory hierarchy. After battling man and animal for weeks, he is finally jailed by corrupt Mexican authorities and the wolf taken from him. When he gets out, he hunts for her, finally finding her staked in the center of a ring, torn and wounded while people surrounding her make bets on the wolf-baiting and send their fighting and hunting dogs to try to take her down. She is exhausted and dying and there is no rescuing her; but when she hears his voice, her head comes up and she looks to him. The boy walks into the room with his rifle and kills her on the spot. He then trades that rifle for the rights to her corpse. There is some argument, but he has learned much from the wolf and her spirit — no man in that room would dare approach him, instinctively recognizing the danger. He steps into the ring and walks to the wolf and takes her, up out of town and to his camp in the mountains where she belongs — and HERE, ladies and gentlemen, is “show, don’t tell”:

“The eye turned to the fire gave back no light and he closed it with his thumb and sat by her and put his hand upon her bloodied forehead and closed his own eyes that he could see her running in the mountains, running in the starlight where the grass was wet and the sun's coming as yet had not undone the rich matrix of creatures passed in the night before her. Deer and hare and dove and groundvole all richly empaneled on the air for her delight, all nations of the possible world ordained by God of which she was one among and not separate from. Where she ran the cries of the coyotes clapped shut as if a door had closed upon them and all was fear and marvel. He took up her stiff head out of the leaves and held it or he reached to hold what cannot be held, what already ran among the mountains at once terrible and of great beauty, like flowers that feed on flesh. What blood and bone are made of but can themselves not make on any altar nor by any wound of war. What we may well believe has power to cut and shape and hollow out the dark form of the world surely if wind can, if rain can. But which cannot be held never be held and is no flower but is swift and a huntress and the wind itself is in terror of it and the world cannot lose it.”

Did you notice anywhere in there that McCarthy says that Billy Parham (the boy’s name) was grieving, or sad, or learning lessons about life, death, time, and the shapes of souls? I’ve seen grown men weep over that paragraph, but there’s not a tear shed anywhere in it. In Gaiman’s terms, the unicorn was killed, and there’s an end to it. YOU sort out the emotional cost and what it means on your own. Making those two elements work to be greater than the whole is storytelling.

And yes, in case you’re wondering, I’m mostly writing this to myself. Partially for NaNo, but mostly because I need reminded now and again that writing is hard, and doing it properly is brutal in all kinds of ways that have nothing to do with the task itself. 

And hardest of all, most brutal of all, is leading your audience down the dangerous path, and letting them take the beating without any help from you. You can’t rescue your audience. They don’t even want you to.  That’s not to say that you should write while disregarding the standard character arcs and whatnot. You gotta be a damned sight better writer than I am before you can start putzing around with the basics THAT deep. But there’s no sense in half-assing it anywhere else. When the story needs them to go down the hole, put the boots to ‘em and drop ‘em in, and never look back. You’ve got the rest of the story to write, and there’s no place in that process where “rescuing” your audience, or making sure they “understand” what they’re supposed to be feeling should be a part.

Oh, on a completely unrelated note, yes, I know that McCarthy quote is about 300 words. Yes, I know it isn’t mine. No, I’m not counting it for NaNo. Picky little snot, aren’t you?