To Help Show Instead of Tell, Nix Your Internal Monologues

One of the oldest pieces of writing advice out there is, "Show, don't tell." If you're a writer you've probably seen this in every style guide, heard it from most of your creative writing teachers, and seen it mentioned in blogs just like this one. The problem is that this writing proverb (because that's really what it is) doesn't offer a lot of concrete ways to actually do what it's suggesting.

As such I thought I'd make a suggestion for this week... cut out your internal monologues. Or, if you can't cut them out entirely, keep them short, simple, and to-the-point.

I remember it was 1917 the first time I heard that name...

Don't Make Your Book Feel Like a Recipe Blog

Since quarantine began I, like everyone else, have been doing far more cooking than I ever actually did before. And since I have a sweet tooth I wanted to find something tasty I could make without causing my waistline to swell, since I'm doing home workouts instead of going to the gym these days. When I put up a recipe in Creamy Yogurt Jello: An Ideal Dessert For Those Looking To Lose Weight, all the commenters who saw it said the same thing.

"This looks really good. Thank you for not putting up some story about your family tradition when all we wanted was the recipe!"

 

My grandmother first taught me this when I was 17 and dating my first girlfriend...

I had seen the memes and jokes about how any time you try to find a simple recipe for homemade cornbread or peach cobbler that you always had to wade through paragraphs of fluff about how the author first learned to make this recipe as a child, or about some traumatic life event that gave birth to a new family tradition. I thought it was exaggerated... for those not used to searching through cooking blogs looking for recipes, there is no exaggeration. Several sites I visited literally had a "Skip To The Recipe" button on top that automatically bypassed 3/4 of the page to get to the part that mattered.

Internal monologues can end up like that; a big, bloated, ponderous read that might be interesting under the right circumstances, but which kills the pace and frustrates the reader.

 

Show Us The Reaction

The key thing about "Show, Don't Tell" is that it's about insinuation. It's when you paint the audience a picture, and lead them to draw conclusions. You do this through atmosphere, tone, and by narrating events that happen, but not by opening up someone's head and just giving the audience a Shakespearian aside.

Give you an example. Take the following exchange:

"Hey Jake," Marjorie said.

Oh God, I thought. She's talking to me... she's really talking to me! Be cool, don't worry, it's fine. Say something smooth. Don't stare! You're staring, shit, open your mouth and get it in gear!

 

"You mind if I get past you, here?" she asked.

"Huh?" I managed. "Oh, yeah, no problem."

That was smooth, guy. Real smooth.

Does this work? Sure, it conveys the sense of nervous panic of our protagonist screwing up a social interaction. It's clumsy, though, and it doesn't offer any nuance or set dressing... it's just telling the audience exactly what the lead is thinking in his own words.

For contrast, try the following.

"Hey Jake," Marjorie said.

My heart hammered, thumping in my ears. I swallowed, hoping it might quiet the noise in my head a bit. I turned, smiling, but when I tried to say something my mouth had gone completely dry. I coughed, trying to clear my throat.

"Sorry," I finally managed. "What do you need?"

"Could I get past you?" she said, pointing with one lacquered nail at the space just down the narrow hall.

"Huh?" I followed where she was pointing. I felt the flush creeping up my neck, and tried not to think about it. That just made it worse. "Oh, yeah, no problem."

This description is a little melodramatic, but it gets the point across. Our protagonist, whoever he is, comes completely undone when Marjorie is near him. But rather than just giving the audience the soundtrack of Jake's panicked mind, we get to see the reaction he has to her presence. We can make the connection easily enough without being told by Jake's own running monologue what he's thinking.

If You Need To Tell, Put It In Dialogue

Not every internal monologue is related to a social situation like this, though. Sometimes these monologues are used as a way to information dump important plot elements. Maybe it's the ghost story behind a particular abandoned house, a traumatic experience a character had as a child, or a complicated relationship they have with another character.

If you absolutely need to say something directly to the audience, try putting it in dialogue between two or more characters. It tends to make things flow a lot more organically, and you usually cut out a lot of needless detail when you force yourself to frame information in the context of speech.

Just have them talk... trust me, it works a lot better.

Take some of the following examples:

- "You're seriously not scared of this place, are you?" Jack asked. He held up his hands, wiggling his fingers and widening his eyes. "Who's that crossing my threshold? Whose blood do I smell?"

- I held up the report, frowning as I read over the pertinent details. "Rachel, they're not serious about this, are they? The suspect had 12 witnesses and a video call showing they were out of town. It's open and shut!"

- "Look, I know you and your dad have had your problems in the past," Jennie said. "But he's really tried to change. Just take the weekend, and give him a chance?"

Each of these gives the reader a clue to the nature of what's going on in the story, without bogging them down with unnecessary details. Because sure, the full ghost story about Bloody Charlie might be important to the narrative overall, but it will be way better if it's told in dialogue around a campfire, or during a power outage in a different scene. The full police report being referenced might have a lot of names, times, and information, but if it's not pertinent right then and there you don't need to have the detective mentally read it for the audience. The character with the rough relationship with their dad might have been abused or neglected, or just had a falling out over differences of opinion... unless it's absolutely necessary to give full details for context in that moment (and it almost never is), just tell the reader the important bit (Jake is scared of a ghost story, the case against a character is very flimsy, there's a bad history at work), and move on.

Think of It Like a Play

If you've never written for stage and screen, it's an activity that can put a fine edge on your craft. Because you have to use set details, lighting, direction, action, and dialogue to put things on display for the audience. Sometimes characters will monologue, but often you need the audience to realize deeper implications by having them witness expressions, tone, emotion, and behavior.

That sort of thing is a crash course in showing, instead of telling.

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That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my short story collection The Rejects!

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