Showing and Telling - How Best to Write Fiction
Dramatisation Now Reigns Over Exposition - Is There Room for Both?
Nov 3, 2008
The essence of the theory of 'showing' and 'telling' is the interwoven importance of dramatized narrative, or showing, and statements of fact – telling – where narrators can give an understanding of the ‘inner’; notions of intention or emotion, interior thoughts, or statements of motive.
The ‘telling’ narrative is a narrative that conveys all those things that could never be discerned from conversation or observation, which are in turn the staple elements of the ‘showing’ narrative.
No Gods, No Telling
Current literary fashion seems to have a disposition towards the ‘showing’ style of narrative, and a number of critics have explained this penchant as relating to the post-modern deconstruction of ideology; in a world where there are no natural or fundamental hierarchies where the are no natural truths, a number of authors reject the notion that an author can endow themselves with the authority that goes alongside the exploration of the ‘inner’, which it is implied is a natural truth.
‘Showing’, then has become the watchword for modern literature. But, is ‘telling’ now redundant, or can it be incorporated within a ‘showing’ framework for a more accurate concept of mimesis in modern literature?
A Question of Personality
The question posited, that ‘telling’ may be incorporated in a ‘showing’ framework, requires the introduction of a bridge term; acting as extremes, the two concepts need some sort of filter or limiter, so that extremity does not undermine the mimetic value of literature and narrative.
That bridge term is ‘interpretation’, and one of the most cogent ways to divide the terms is according to grammatical persons.
Both the first and the third person – the second person will be left out of this analysis – have equal stakes to the notions of ‘showing’ and ‘telling’, and there is nothing to say either can stake exclusive claim to one or both of the terms in question, but there is a sense that the chosen grammatical person of a work of literature can, with the wrong imbalance of ‘showing’ and ‘telling’ and without the aid of this bridge term interpretation, fall into the realms of extremity and thus render the work a destruction of mimesis.
Striving for Mimesis
Take, for example, a work in the third person. Interpretation, the act of endowing something with meaning, is in the third person endowing the author or narrator with a sense of authority that runs counter to the deconstruction of natural truths, and consequently counter to accurate portrayals of reality within mimesis.
So what is clear is that the third person narrator – the narrative of the omnipotent narrator – interpretation must be limited, so that ‘showing’ presides over ‘telling’, and the narrator becomes an observer; one who simply reports, one who does not pass judgement and does not exert overriding authority.
By neglecting interpretation in the third person narrative framework, a narrator is able to steer clear of the perilous realms of extremity and stay true to the notion that accurate mimetic narrative cannot present natural truths.
The first person, however, is the human person – the presentation of narrative through the imperfect intellect of the human – and so leaves room for interpretation and the idea of a ‘telling’ narrative; writing from the point of view of one character, whose interpretations are naturally flawed, allows the author to give rise to the ‘inner’ without giving rise to supposed natural truths.
When in the first person the narrator is fundamentally flawed, then, it is possible to 'tell' rather than 'show' - give voice to natural truths and natural hierarchy - because the very presence of the flawed narrator negates any notion of objective truth and authority.
Conclusions
It is seems then, that there is still a place for the ‘telling’ narrative in contemporary writing; whilst it once represented a stamp of authority – an authority which has sense been rejected - it can, with reference to authorial interpretation, act as an accurate portrayal of mimesis just as the ‘showing’ narrative can, so that both ways of writing have a legitimate place in contemporary literature and modern mimesis.
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