Telling

“Show, don’t tell.” is the mantra for writing and one I adhere to. Still all writers do tell otherwise it would make for gigantuan books with a lot of boring stuff. But generally, writers do prioritise the experience over the account.

Recently, I bought a science fiction book on Amazon which was one sale. Not a classic. It is recently written. Imagine my surprise that it starts with a whole lot of exposition. Perhaps I should have been more careful in my purchase, you say. But no. Many a SciFi book starts this way. It has a lot, I think to do with the genre. You have to do a lot of scene setting and this explains the phenomena. But it still surprised me in a recently published book.

I read many years ago, Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rendezvous with Rama” and remembered it as an action story. Well, I decided to re-read it and, wow! It started with just piles and piles of background exposition that ran and ran. I just hadn’t remembered it.

Note that Clarke is a major writer. We’re not talking about an unknown and the book is probably one of if not the most iconic of his many stories.

So let’s look a bit at the story by Clarke. If written in the modern show-don’t-tell approach, how would it work today?

First and foremost, the whole initial exposition would be out. Not out, in the sense of not being needed—it is. But it would be weaved into the story and given in thin slices. It might like go like this. The key initiator of the actual story is Rama, an extraterrestial spaceship which speeds through the Solar System. A spaceship is sent to meet it to explore this alien artifact. A first encounter, if you prefer. Given the probe’s central role in the story, this might start with its discovery by some astronomer tasked with checking on comets and the like that potentially threaten Earth. This is, after all, the justification in the book—via the exposition at the start—that allows Rama to be spotted early enough for the mission to explore it to be launched. Thus some of the backstory could be introduced at this point with a fair bit of drama (“It’s not natural!”. Perhaps some would need to be via exposition but most would be through dialogue, etc. (We’re seeking to show here, of course.)

The next element would be the mission itself. It would be seen through the eyes of one or more key characters where they share their feelings at the momentous moment they were living through and participating in. (“I can’t believe I’m commanding this, Jane. It’s insane. Two days ago, I was thinking of retiring and now this…)

And so it goes on… The story isn’t really different, it’s just that it is presented differently and making much more use of the show side of story writing.

Another issue that modern readers would wish for is more character development. Not much seems to happen to the characters throughout the story. Most of their emotions and so on are described. But character development is minimal and very much tick the box stuff and they don’t seem particularly alive and rounded. Again, this reflects a move away from how we want our stories to work for us. Engagement with the characters is much more important than it used to be. For this to have happened, something has changed in readers’ attitude to characters in stories. Maybe it reflects changes in how society is or that very good character-led stories have made readers aware of how much a deeper involvement this creates in a story. But I don’t know.

All-in-all, the lesson is there. You gotta show it!