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show don't tell

Show don't tell - llet t'nod wohS

After last week’s post, where I dropped in the concept of “show don’t tell,” I haven’t been able to let it go. All week, there’s been a vague shadow of an idea, like an irrepressible ghost trying to get through to me.

I’d be cleaning my teeth, and over my shoulder is this thought, just kind of staring at me, eyebrows raised.

I’m in a meeting, and across the room in an empty chair, the thought is sipping ice water and rolling its eyes at my jokes.

Even now, in this bar with the renaissance cat paintings on the wall - the thought is next to me, flicking my glass, drumming its fingers on the table, staring at me expectantly.

Fine, I say to the shadow. I’ll write you.

--

The concept of “show don’t tell” is as old as any story. It’s powerful because it’s true, but it’s not simple, and it’s not binary.

On stage or screen, yes, we craft the story so that the audience can see the character’s identity through the actions they take. But what about literature? We learn so much about a character through their own internal dialogue, about how they perceive their world, and that’s all TELL, without any SHOW.

I am more like a book than a movie. I’m ruminative. I need to talk things through before ever acting. I have to speak, rant, question, second-guess myself, to get some clarity. And it’s not just clarity on what to DO, but even what it is I BELIEVE. My friend Jason and I are both ruminators, and will spend countless hours wandering city streets, spending a whole night on a single topic, just musing and playing with ideas around it, trying to get to the core of what each of us believe.

It sounds a lot like "all talk no action." How does “show don’t tell” work for that?

Often I have behaved as if my life were literature, and others could just read my mind. I’ve assumed that they understand my intentions, my motivations, my heart. On the inside I’m feeling all these things, and believing all these things, while on the outside, I’m as dull as a brick. I remember once being accused of indifference, of not caring about someone, and I was so shocked. To me, I cared deeply about this person - they were always on my mind - but to them, I was distant and uncaring.

Nobody can read our minds. Whatever we are thinking needs to be demonstrated somehow before others can believe it.

So we speak, or we act.

But, if we ONLY speak, then we may not seem authentic. We say things that aren’t proved by actions.

And if we ONLY act, then our actions can be misinterpreted. We do things that aren’t explained clearly.

“Show don’t tell” becomes a lot less simple, and certainly not universally true. To be honest (and to borrow a phrase from a Roblox game my kids play) it’s an absolute clutter-funk.

—

I look over at the shadow-thought, reclining in the candlelight, and I scowl.
"You are not easy to write." I grumble.
“But here you are writing” it replies smugly.
"But all I’m doing is dumping words onto a page. Adding to the noise. It’s all ‘tell.’" I say.
“So it doesn’t matter?”
“If I don’t do this, nothing happens at all. The words stay locked in my head, and nothing reaches anyone.”
“So it does matter?”
“Oh shut up."

—

Show. Tell. Talk. Act. They're all important. And we’ll all do it differently. This dance between speaking our truths, and acting on them, is a fluid, ever-changing energy, and really can't be constrained to a rulebook of specifics.

It's frustrating to admit, but most of our decisions are born from intuition rather than logic. Behind all the words and all the actions is a mysterious drive, a spark, a shadow of an idea that pushes us towards speaking or acting, and I don’t really know how much control we have over that. I heard an interview with a writer this week, and she was asked about her process, the rules she followed for writing her books.

She said that no system has ever worked for her. She said that the words come, and all she can do is write, and observe what she is writing, and make sure she believes it, and then edit appropriately.

Which I thought was wonderful, because I can’t do systems either. For writing or for living. But I can try to stay open to intuition, and respond with both words and actions, and then observe it all, and make changes, and keep growing.

—

I stare over my empty glass with a sigh, and the shadow-idea stares back.

“Is it enough?” I ask, a bit hopelessly.

The shadow leans forward, places a hand on mine, and smiles. “It’s enough."

The "inspirational writer"

This week Rach and I attended a book launch for a dear friend of ours, John Woodhouse, whose book I had designed. It's an enormous art book, so the launch was also a one-night exhibition, with framed proofs of images from the book up on walls for purchase. A few hundred people attended - artists, collectors, models, restauranteurs, business owners, photographers, writers - the group was extraordinarily diverse.

As we mingled and flowed around the artworks, we would strike up conversations with strangers, sharing what we loved about a particular piece on the wall, or what we loved about John. Just as each artwork was born out of nothing, each of our conversations and connections were now doing the same thing. Nothing into something. I was loving the evening.

A half-hour into the event, I was being introduced to someone, and it went like this:

“Nathan is a writer - he writes inspirational words… He’s an inspirational writer. You write inspirational words too, don’t you? Beautiful. You two should talk..”

And we talked. My new friend quickly clarified that no, she’s not an “inspirational writer,” she just writes as honestly as she can, and she hasn’t even done that much lately. And I qualified myself too, explaining that I don’t even understand the term, but it didn’t sound as complimentary as I’m sure it was intended. “Inspirational” sounds like some kind of advertising angle, or self-help guru. Here, have a warm fuzzy to get you through your day.

Not that it matters, really. In writing, in art, in life, we all do things, and everyone else makes it mean something for themselves, and we have very little control over it.

Sometimes the things people conclude about us are complimentary, and we feel great about ourselves. Other times, it’s hard judgement, and we feel horrid. Either way, us humans seem to have this uncanny habit of subscribing to it.

We just go there, immediately.

“She said I was rude to her friends! What a bitch!”
“He called me fat! He’s so mean… but he’s right, I think.”
“They gave me an award! I. Am. Amazing!”
“I didn’t win the award! I'm so crap and talentless.”
“She told me I’m boring… I am so boring.”
“2000 likes! I am so popular!”
“Only 39 likes.. I am such a nobody."
"There's a comment on my feed about my face. Am I ugly?"

We take these tiny comments from others, and we blow them up, we call them truth, and we put so much head and heart space into them. We subscribe.

There is a character in episode five of BJ Novak’s wonderful new show, The Premise, who describes her Instagram commenters as truth-tellers. "They are objectively right” she declares, because they are distant and don’t know her, so can’t be subjective. And her own voice doesn’t matter, because she is too close to herself, so can’t be objective.

Obviously it’s pretty extreme to write off the opinions of anyone who actually knows us, and trust only in the opinions of strangers. But it’s equally extreme to only believe ourselves, our “inner voice” and ignore any praise or criticism from others: how would we ever grow?

So where do we land, then? If everyone is just doing their best to fill in the gaps of their understanding of each other, no-one is going to get it right. We’re all essentially playing Marco Polo in the dark, hoping someone will guide us towards our best selves.

There is a well-known phrase in storytelling, “show don’t tell,” that encourages the writer to let the character come to life through their ACTIONS, not through any words the writer might say about them. If the character is brave, for example, we don’t write “Emily was a brave woman.” Instead we place Emily in a situation that elicits a response, and when she acts bravely, the audience draws the insight of bravery for themselves. The words aren’t truth. The action is truth.

Extending the concept, if Emily were to SAY something like “I am so brave,” it would also not mean anything until she acts. If she says “I’m fun” or “I’m so boring” or “I am not rude” or even “I am inspirational,” none of the words really matter.

Once she acts, then the audience knows the truth. She has to SHOW, not TELL.

To combat all the words, the judgements, the criticisms, the praise, perhaps we could just turn down the volume, and NOT subscribe. Perhaps we can use all that energy that we would have used to reply, defend, share, amplify and put it towards DOING something. Just doing the things that resonate with who we want to be.

People can call me an “inspirational writer” and they can call me a “shallow romantic dreamer.” They can say I’m a super privileged white man, and they can say I’m too young and optimistic. They can even say I’m a bad father, while others tell me I’m dad-of-the-year. And then I can say even more things about myself, just to try and keep up with it all.

But the best thing I can do, and the only thing that can really make any impact, is this:

KNOW what I think is important in life.
DO things that support that.

For me, here’s what I think is important:

I think we are all built to witness - to interpret our world and each other. We are built to inspire, encourage, excite and inform each other.

So when somebody makes what I say or do MEAN something for them, even if it’s different to what I intended, I will try and be interested, instead of defensive. They've seen something I haven't, and it could be useful for me to hear it, without taking out a whole subscription to the idea.

Because I’m still learning about myself, it’s all just words anyway, and tomorrow I’ll be getting right back into the truth-doing.

On the road: Gnaraloo Station

Last week I joined a couple of friends for a drive up the coast to Gnaraloo Station. From Perth, Gnaraloo is a thousand kilometres away.

I had a seat in the back, pressed up against sleeping bags, wetsuits, and something that smelled like banana bread. For the two hours before the sun rose, I watched suburban porchlights streak past, all tungsten yellow, then the city lights, giant bug-zappers of brilliant white, then the northern fringe cities with their pale blues and intermittent fuel-station-golds. And then, nothing. Just a comfortable darkness, visited occasionally by a passing car or a stray streetlight.

Nick drove the entire way. For twelve hours he chatted and laughed and shared his stories and listened to ours. Ian is almost twenty years older than me, and engages with others as if we know the secrets of the ages, and just need the time to get it out in words.

My focus drifted from conversations within the car to conversations with the horizon. For hours it was dirt-red, then a splash of canola yellow, forest green, granite and limestone, then back to dirt. It was quite beautiful, an entire palette comfortable with her loneliness.

Gnaraloo is in the middle of nothing. It really is. It's a sheep station, but I barely saw any sheep. Wild goats, though, they were everywhere. They looked down on us with their proud beards and funny tails, like they owned the place, like they were running the show. A people-farm, run by the goats. The locals of Gnaraloo don't dissuade this idea at all: they are wild and earthy and distant, their language is the land and the ocean. People come here for only three things: to surf, to fish and to feel free.

A few mornings in, I asked Ian why he's here. Why it matters to drive all this way, peel yourself into a wetsuit, and take your board out into the hyperthermic waters to ride a few waves. He had just returned from the ocean, and was crunching through an apple, watching Nick finish up his last wave. I got out and leaned on the car with him, and squinted into the glare. Me with my notebook, Ian with his apple.

"Why do you do this?" I asked him.
"Because it's who I am," he replied, then paused, "but only as long as I'm actually doing it."
He talks like this a lot.
"You don't feel like a surfer unless you're surfing?" I ventured.
"No, I still feel like a surfer, for sure. But that identity requires some action, you know? The longer I don't surf, the more I become a person who used to surf, not a person who actually surfs."
I looked at him and blinked twice, and he took another bite of apple.
"It's about identity," he continued, "by doing this stuff, I'm revisiting my identity, empowering it somehow."
"Empowering it?
"Yeah, I'm empowering myself, my belief in myself. It's one thing to become who you want to be in life, but a whole other challenge to stay there. Over time we can start to question ourselves and our abilities, and we can start to doubt ourselves."
"And our identities can lose their way."
"Exactly. Our identities get blurry. And the only way I know to return to clarity is to act. To do something today that reminds me of who I am."
"And who are you today?"
He laughed. "I am a person who surfs!"

Nick appeared on the path just then, and we headed back to the homestead for breakfast.

-

In storytelling, there is always a tension between a character's aspiration and their reality. There is a version of themselves they WANT to be, or that they THINK they are, and then, there is who they REALLY are. It's a gold mine for writers, exploring those gaps, revealing to the protagonist their reality and pushing them off the cliffs that will grow and transform them.

A character can be amazing, but think they are nothing special. Or they can have some serious flaws, but think they are just perfect. In the end, what they, or others, say about themselves doesn't matter half as much as what they do. Like Ian observed: identity needs action.

After that conversation with Ian, I had to ask myself the same question: "Why am I here? Why did I travel a thousand kilometres to a surfing station when I don't surf or fish?" It was an identity question.

While Ian and Nick were revisiting and strengthening their identities as "people who surf", I found myself revisiting childhood memories. Hours of wandering in white-bright sand dunes, playing with shells, drawing in red dirt, watching the shadows from stones stretch out across my bare toes. Being at peace with the nothingness of those places.

By joining Nick and Ian for the trip, I became what I always thought I was, but perhaps hadn't acted on for a while:

A person who seeks wonder and beauty over comfort or progress.

It just took a few thousands kilometres to remind me it was true.