Every book on writing usually devotes at least a section to the “Show and Not Tell” principle. Over the years, writers in face-to-face critique groups and in online workshops have often labeled my work “too telling” or “too introspective” or said I had to get out of my characters' heads and just describe what the heck was happening. Stop all the character thinking and reflecting. “Okay,” I cried. “Enough already,” and so I decided to work on this damn showing thing for one of my 2009 writing resolutions.

First I went to Hemingway who is considered by many a master of the third person limited or third person objective point of view (POV). Many of you know this perspective as the fly on the wall kind of narrator. One of my favorite Hemingway tales is the very short, “Hills Like White Elephants,” in which a couple waiting for a train in an African railroad station have a conversation, the import and consequences of which can only be deduced from their action and dialogue. The reader is a fly on the wall and observes the couple from that vantage point. After reading “Hills” again, I decided to rewrite the story, or as much as I could remember, using third person objective POV, the object being to better understand how to show and not tell.

Did I succeed? For the most part I did. Once or twice I allowed the female character to THINK the guy sitting across from her was a stupid jerk, but I got down the essence of the story and with a bit more action, dialogue and description of the setting than I would have normally. So as Martha Stewart might say, “That was a good thing.”

Here’s an example of my Hemingway re-write:

The man sighed and said he’d go and check on the train. “It should be here any minute,” he said, then picked up their bags and carried them off to the platform on the opposite side of the small station. She put on her sunglasses and looked out again across the great savannah dotted with thorn and acacia trees. When the man returned, he sat closer to her and put his arm around her. “Very soon it will just be you and me.”

To be honest I haven’t checked the accuracy of my memory against the Hemingway story but my guess is the many years I spent in East Africa as a teacher and Peace Corps volunteer influenced how I re-envisioned this scene. So this was good, right? Not really. The male and female characters felt flat, ho-hum and poorly defined, but I discovered something in doing this exercise. I could write in this POV, but it wasn’t enough to just show and tell. At least, it wasn’t enough for me. I had to get inside the characters’ heads first to discover their specific wants, needs and probable actions and to further develop the plot. I needed both, showing and telling, in order to be happy in my work as a writer.

There were great benefits from the Hemingway exercise, which helped me return to a stalled story, one I’d begun early in the year and abandoned. Could the story now benefit from more objective description, more action and dialogue that revealed character? This process led me first to character analysis, specifically to designing main character trait/personality sheets—several handwritten pages—that led me to narrative summaries of character behavior that led to plot outlines, scene summaries and right into the heart of my stalled story. I even gained greater confidence in the ability to shift POV within individual scenes as well as to create other scenes using only one character’s POV.

 So what does this all mean? I think for me, and maybe for you as a writer, we often need to strike a balance between the show and tell principle and the subjective thoughts and imaginings of the characters. Don’t sacrifice the unique personalities of your wonderful characters or subordinate them to description, action and dialogue. A good story needs it all.

Of course, there’s Hemingway, but he was one of a kind. His “Hills Like Elephants” is a near perfect example of the third person objective POV and a damned good story to boot. If you can do what he did, by all means do it. If you can’t, try the balance I suggested. Now back to my un-stalled story.

P.S. Oh, and like Captain James Lawrence would have said were he a writer: Don’t Give Up (on) the Story!!

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About the Writer:

Paul Alan Fahey is a California Central Coast writer. His work has appeared recently in Byline, New Times, audience, Crimson Highway, Boston Literary Magazine and in the Cup of Comfort Anthology for Single Mothers. He is a five time recipient of the annual "Lillian Dean Award" at the Central Coast Writer's Conference. Paul has just completed two screenplays and three short stories using Syd Field's three-act paradigm as a guide for structure. He lives in Nipomo, California with his partner, Bob, and three loveable yet very unruly shelties.