It’s been a while since my last blog post. It’s not that I haven’t had anything to say, more that I haven’t had time to reflect enough on what to say before, well, saying it. In the past month or so I’ve had to write six short stories, do quite a lot of editing work and take a creative writing course at Denman College at the last minute after the tutor became ill. The course was a lot of fun, partly because it had to be pretty spontaneous. Also, when I thought about it on the way there, I reckoned I’ve had a tremendously varied experience with taking and giving different kinds of courses, in different parts of the world, in different genres and different formats. Which should be good for the students. I don’t adhere to any particular way of teaching, just try to find methods and practices that will help each student become the kind of writer they want to be. If they know what that is, of course.

For the blog, I could have bashed out some more Tales from the Street but they wouldn’t have been given any reflection. By which I don’t mean doing a lot of re-writing or polishing. It’s more to do with having the time to push an idea beyond the first, immediate level of cognisance.

For example, ‘brainstorming’ is an exercise beloved of trainers. You fill flip-charts and cover the walls with Post-it notes of the first things that pop into people’s minds. At the end, you stand back and admire all the sheer stuff everyone’s produced. Someone writes it up but when/if anyone looks at it later all they see is the bleeding obvious. I believe this is because, while it may be true to assume everyone has gold inside them, it’s definitely true that to get to it, you have to bypass all the rubble and rock in the way. And that takes both courage and time. So, it might be better instead to choose the three best thinkers in the group and give them a few days to come up with ideas that are new and challenging. But of course that’s not a very democratic approach.

You see a similar effect with critics, especially these days when everyone wants to read a review immediately, even during if possible, the release of a new film/book/TV programme. So, critics brainstorm with themselves. They watch, say, the latest BBC’s ‘Sherlock’ and brainstorm their review with the easy to grab hold of rubble and rock lying around in their front brains: Cumberbatch, bromance, Gatiss/Moffat-is-God, in-jokes, etc, and come up with exactly what’s in everyone else’s front brain. Which these days passes as a good review. Later, a strange thing happens. Critics, often the same ones, make more reflective comments which are oddly contradictory to what they said earlier. Now they talk about how the latest ‘Sherlock’ was something of a disappointment; that the plots just didn’t add up; that there were too many nods to the fan-boys; that the whole ‘Are they gay?’ thing with Holmes and Watson was over-done, and so on.

Now, I’m going to move this into writing. I’ve just reviewed ‘Dust’ by Hugh Howey for Arc (New Scientist’s online magazine for Science Fiction, reviews, etc). It’s the final book in his series set in a dystopian future USA where people live in giant silos surrounded by poisonous air. I thought it was the best of the bunch and I really like Howey’s integrity and obvious passion for what he writes. However, while the lead character, Juliette, is just what you need in such a story – gutsy but with faults, heart mostly in the right place, determined and brave – most of the rest of the characters don’t come across as much more than sign-posts for plot developments. Which on the surface is strange, since Howey spends quite a bit of time telling us what characters are thinking, including a lot of their history and their hopes and fears. Whole pages are taken up describing someone’s every thought as they walk between rooms. But somehow all that information doesn’t really tell us what they’re like.

If you’re with a friend in the pub, and they’re telling you about this interesting new person who started work at their office today, all you really want to know is what they’re like. So, if your friend goes, “Jack wore a plain blue suit today the same one, he told me, he always wore when starting a new job. At 10 am he made a coffee for himself, using a one-cup cafetiere that he said he took everywhere with him. I joined him and he told me that his mother is in hospital for routine surgery, he supports Spurs and his cat is called–“

“Yes, but what’s he like?” you scream.

Now we need to take a detour and look briefly at Show Not Tell (SNT), which is of course one of the important lessons a writer has to learn. In essence, it’s about causing a reaction in the reader so that they discover for themselves the nature of a character or a scene, rather than you just telling them what it is. A classic example is to portray a character doing and saying things that make the reader laugh, so he says to himself, “Hey, this character is really funny!” rather than you telling the reader that the character is really funny – oh, how everyone laughed at the hilarious things he said, and so on – which of course is likely to cause pretty much the opposite in the reader who just wants to laugh.

However, like most principles, SNT only goes so far. It can get your readers laughing, say, at your funny character, but it’s perhaps not so good at conveying what they’re really like. Yes, better writers will avoid the trap of just piling in lots of information and action and hope that it will somehow Show you the character. They’ll provide plenty of touches of actual emotion; plenty of Show. But I’ve been thinking lately that something else is needed; perhaps a higher level of Telling.

Back to your friend in the pub. If he says something like, “There’s this guy at work called Alex who just loves an audience. He even walks into the open plan area wearing a show biz smile, arms held up, nodding warmly at his people . . . ” you get a pretty good idea of Alex, even though your friend isn’t really showing you Alex, he’s telling you about him.

But this kind of Telling requires reflection. It stems from a mind which is always curious about other people; always trying to work out what they’re really saying and what they’re really thinking. It requires a sort of confidence, tinged with arrogance: that you know you’re right about this character; you don’t have to hide it behind a lot of Showing.

Anyway, with these ideas sort of in the background, I’m going to resume the blog proper next week, possibly with a short series on writing short fiction but with the intention of Telling about it perhaps, more than Showing; the challenge being to make it this second tier of Telling that I’ve been struggling to understand recently.