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Show Don't Tell 12/1/2006 8:00:29 AM
Learning to write in the first person is an on-going challenge. Like most writers I have acquired a fairly substantial collection of books about writing. Some are excellent and inspiring, others aren’t. When I get them I read them and then put them on the shelf but every now and then it is a worthwhile endeavor to take one down and revisit it. Last night I began a re-read of William Noble’s Show Don’t Tell and rediscovered what a good book this is.
One of the hardest things to teach beginning writers, and to learn yourself, is the art of showing. It is also the most useful — especially if you write from a first-person narrator. There is something inherent in first-person narration that makes telling an easy trap to fall into. Probably because a first-person narrator tempts us into thinking we are relating a story the way we would tell our friend about a recent trip to the Bahamas we took. That’s not how it works.
There are three ways (probably more) to write from the first person narrator perspective. There is the personal which is what all of us are accustomed to — it is how we write letters, how we write our diaries and reports of activities and projects and blogs. Usually it is told with some level of detail and in a sequential manner. It is as interesting to read as the thing we are writing about or as we are to an individual. “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” is probably far more fascinating to your mother than it is to the average reader — particularly one who doesn’t know you.
The second first person narration is for the writing of a memoir. This is considerably more challenging because, while you are writing from your own perspective, you have to make an effort to engage the reader. Memoirs come in all varieties — dramatic, pathos-laden, humorous, etc. Writing a memoir requires an astonishing amount of self-revelation and not necessarily of the My-name-is-Kathleen-and-I-am-a-closet-novelist variety. It’s a hard thing to accept but very few people read a memoir because they think the writer sounds like an interesting person (the exception to this being celebrities), they read memoirs because the experiences the writer is writing about are of interest to them. A first-person narrator in a memoir has to tell their story but tell it in such a way that the events are more the focus than the person experiencing them.
When Mark was writing F/V Black Sheep, his first person memoir of his life as a Gloucester fisherman, he had a big challenge with this because the narrative shifted — sometimes funny, sometimes dramatic, sometimes frightening. When I first started working with him I was amazed at the way he could tell a story without injecting his opinions into it on one page and then easily shift to what was going on in his head and gut on the next page. He told me, “I keep trying to look at it as if I’m the guy reading it and see how it sounds.” That’s a real writer for you.
But the first-person narrator in a work of fiction is the challenge because you have to get outside yourself and into the person telling the story. And then, having accomplished that, you have to let the narrator blend into the background in places and simply narrate the action without personal involvement. It isn’t easy. I’ve always admired novelists who can tell a story from multiple points of view. Faulkner was the master. I think I want to try that sometime but not for awhile.
So I am learning a lot revisiting my old friends on the bookshelf. It is time well spent. Now is a good time to do that as I polish up the last draft of The Old Mermaid’s Tale. An opportunity to practice what I preach.
