Conflict and Showing
I read some interesting comments lately about conflict in stories, and how what you might think of as conflict – characters arguing, for example – can be exactly what you don’t need. We’re often told that stories need conflict. But obvious, shouting-at-each-other conflict can actually decrease the level of tension. Two people stepping around each other, misunderstanding, simmering, is usually more intriguing than a fight where everything gets laid out.
This reminded me of something I’ve always remembered from a Film as Lit class in high school. We were watching The Postman Always Knocks Twice, I think. An old black and white movie. There was a scene between a man and a woman where they were just talking while she was cooking hamburgers. And the teacher pointed out that this scene was so much more sensual, and sexy, than the more overtly sexual scenes in modern movies. You could see, and feel, what these characters were feeling for each other, even though it wasn’t spoken and wasn’t acted on.
I suppose that’s just another example of “show, don’t tell.” Or, more accurately, an example of showing subtly. You can hit your audience over the head with showing as much as you can with telling. Your protagonist is mad at her boyfriend? Okay, yes, she can yell at him or hit him with a pillow. Or she can put too much butter on his toast because he hates that. Or refuse to hold his hand which makes him insecure which makes her … and so on. Not the best examples, but you get the idea.
By the way, here is my favorite explanation of showing vs. telling as it involves settings and descriptions. In a nutshell:
“The first example describes the setting. The second tells you how the Point of View (POV) character feels about the setting. The third takes you there.
What makes the third so much richer than the first (or even the second)? It’s the (write this down!) involuntary physical reaction to the glare of the sun.”
That bit about using the character’s involuntary physical reaction has stuck with me every since I read the post. Part of my brain went, ah-ha! Yes! That’s exactly right! I hadn’t explicitly thought about physical reactions before, but I’ve been noticing it ever since.
My daughter came back home last Wednesday after a three-week trip. All my nice little routines have now, of course, gone out the window. Add in getting a nifty new cell phone over the weekend, and you get very little words written. I seem to naturally hit these down times, though, and I don’t beat myself up about them. I’ve had my few days off: now it’s time to get back in the game.