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Show And Tell: Which Is Better?

Novice writers (and some professionals) often fall into the trap of
"expositing" information instead of presenting it dramatically. Sometimes
exposition is inevitable, or even desirable. Lloyd Abbey, in his brilliant SF
novel The Last Whales, gives us exactly one line of human dialogue; his
characters, all being whales, can't speak to one another, so the narrator
must tell us what they think and do. Gabriel Garca Marquez can also write
superb exposition for page after page.

Most of us ordinary mortals, however, need to dramatize our characters and
their feelings. Otherwise our readers will tire of our editorials.

Consider the following expository and dramatic passages. Which more
adequately conveys what the author is trying to show to the reader?

---------------

Vanessa was a tall woman of 34 with shoulder-length red hair and a pale
complexion. She often lost her temper; when she did, her fair skin turned a
deep pink, and she often swore. She was full of energy, and became impatient
at even the slightest delay or impediment to her plans. Marshall, her chief
assistant, was a balding, mild-mannered, nervous man of 54 who was often
afraid of her. He was also annoyed with himself for letting her boss him
around.

---------------

Vanessa abruptly got up from her desk. A shaft of sunlight from the window
behind her seemed to strike fire from her long red hair as she shook her head
violently.

"No, Marshall! God damn it, this won't do! Didn't I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Vanessa, b-but--"

"And you understood what I told you, didn't you?" Her pale skin was flushing
pink, and Marshall saw the signs of a classic outburst on the way. She took a
step toward him, forcing him to look up to meet her gaze; she must be a good
three inches taller. He raised his hands in supplication, then caught himself
and tried to make the gesture look like the smoothing of hair he no longer
had. He felt sweat on his bald scalp.

"Vanessa, it was a--"

"It was another one of your screw-ups, Marshall! We're committed to a
Thursday deadline. I'm going to make that damn deadline, whether or not
you're here to help me. Now, am I going to get some cooperation from you, or
not?"

Marshall nodded, cursing himself for his slavish obedience. Fifty-four years
old, and taking orders from a bitch twenty years younger. Why didn't he just
tell her to shove it?

"All the way, Vanessa. We'll get right on it."

"Damn well better." Her voice softened; the pink faded from her cheeks.
"Okay, let's get going."

Comment: A paragraph of exposition has turned into a scene: the portrayal of
a conflict and its resolution. The scene has also prepared us for further
scenes. Maybe Marshall's going to destroy himself for Vanessa, or poison her;
maybe Vanessa's going to learn how to behave better. Most importantly, the
authorial judgments in the exposition are now happening in the minds of the
characters and the mind of the reader--who may well agree with Marshall, or
side with Vanessa.

Here's another example:

---------------
Jerry was 19. Since leaving high school a year before, he had done almost
nothing. He had held a series of part-time jobs, none of them lasting more
than a few weeks. His girl friend Judy, meanwhile, was holding down two
summer jobs to help pay for her second year of college. Jerry controlled her
with a combination of extroverted charm and bullying sulkiness. Secretly he
envied her ambition and feared that she would leave him if he ever relaxed
his grip on her.
---------------

"Hey, good-lookin'," Jerry said as he ambled into the coffee shop and took
his usual booth by the window.

"Hi," said Judy. She took out her order pad.

"Hey, I'm real sorry about what I said last night. I was way outa line."

"Would you like to order?"

"Hey, I said I was sorry, all right? Gimme a break."

"That's fine. But Murray says not to let my social life get in the way of my
job. So you've got to order something for a change."

He snorted incredulously. "Hey, I'm broke, babe."

She stared out the window at the traffic. "You can't hang out here all day
for the price of a cup of coffee, Jerry. Not any more. Murray says he'll have
to let me go if you do."

"Well, tell him to get stuffed."

"Jerry, be reasonable. I can't. I needIthisIjob."

"Christ, you already got the job at the movie theatre."

"That's nights, and it hardly pays anything. I've got my whole second year at
college to pay for this summer. Jerry, maybe we can talk about this after I
get off work, okay?"

"Yeah, right. See you Labor Day, then."

"Jerry, don't be a smartass. See you at four, okay?"

He got up, shrugging. "Yeah, sure. Guess I'll go over to the bus station and
read comic books until then." He glared at her. "Don't be too nice to the
guys who come in here. I find out you been fooling around with anybody, you
know you're in trouble, right?"

"Right, Jerry. I'm really sorry. See you later."

Comment: Again we have a conflict that promises to lead to further conflicts
and their resolution. We want to know if Judy will ditch Jerry, or Jerry will
smarten up. Their relationship reveals itself through their dialogue, not
through the author's editorializing.

Note that both these examples involve a power struggle. Someone is determined
to be the boss, to get his or her way. Most scenes present such a struggle:
someone decides on pizza or hamburgers for dinner, someone chooses the date
for D-Day, someone comes up with the winning strategy to defeat the alien
invaders or elect the first woman president. We as readers want to see the
resources thrown into the struggle: raw masculinity, cynical intelligence,
subtle sexual manipulation, political courage, suicidal desperation.

Depending on which resources win, we endorse one myth or another about the
way the world operates: that raw masculinity always triumphs, that political
courage leads nowhere, and so on. Of course, if we are writing ironically, we
are rejecting the very myths we seem to support. By using raw macho bullying
mixed with a little self-pity, Jerry seems to win his power struggle with
Judy. But few readers would admire him for the way he does it, or expect him
to succeed in the long term with such tactics.

Think carefully about this as you develop your scenes. If your hero always
wins arguments in a blaze of gunfire, he may become awfully tiresome awfully
fast. If your heroine keeps bursting into tears, your readers may want to
hand her a hankie (better yet, a towel) and tell her to get lost. Ideally,
the power struggle in each scene should both tell us something new and
surprising about the characters, and hint at something still hiding beneath
the surface--like the insecurity that underlies Jerry's and Vanessa's
bullying.