JCB's Ruminations on the Craft of Fiction #15
August 27, 2020
I want to talk about how Show and Tell intersects with POV. Remember, for the most part, we should show any development in the story, while we can tell just about anything else. We should also keep in mind that while a plot is comprised of a collection of events, a story is driven by a character, by how a character's choices intersect with the events of plot. This is why the show/tell advice is so often character-centered, though it's important to keep in mind that we do not need to "show" every aspect of a character, only those things that impact upon the story.
The kinds of things we need to know about a character in order to track the development of the story are their motivations, their emotions, the logic (or illogic) of their decisions, and other belief structures and mental states. A writer trying to give the reader a sense of these things for any important scene must consider how these aspects of the character will be shown to the reader, and this requires a consideration of point of view.
One of the strengths of written fiction over film and TV is our ability to get inside a character's mind. Film is always third person (even in what's called a "POV or first-person shot"), and our only access to a character's thoughts is through their actions and expressions. Dialogue can let us know what a character is thinking, but this is still outside of the head. Narration helps establish a character's state of mind, but narration doesn't usually work in pivotal scenes, as it can slow things down just when they need to be quick. This is the filmmaker's version of "show, don't tell."
Written fiction gives us easy and quick access to a character's thoughts whenever we want to dive into them. We can linger or wallow in a character's internal worries and considerations, or we can get a quick dip to give us a sense of their state of mind. Any time we narrow the psychic distance between the reader and the character's internal thoughts, we are doing something that film cannot do. This is the strength of written fiction, and I think it's one of the things that makes it superior to film. Film demonstrates that it's possible to establish a character's motivations and purpose, their emotions, and why they do what they do, all without giving their internal thoughts. The tools of POV available to written fiction give us much more potential, and finding just the right distance between the reader and the character's thoughts is one of the key decisions for the writer.
We can use the advice to show, don't tell as a guide for considering how close we should get to a character's thoughts in any pivotal scene. If the story's development is contingent on the logic of a character's decision, then it might be much more important to see what they're thinking in the moment than if the scene merely plays out what we already know about their overarching motivations. In the first case, the narrative might need to dive into the character's mind, whereas in the latter case, we can easily track the scene from a psychic remove. In either case, it's a matter of what we need to show that determines how we need to shape the POV.