“No, not like that. You’re writing a story. You know, like in a book.”
“I don’t read books.”
“When was the last time you read a book?”
“I don’t know, I don’t read books. I watch movies.”
Trying to get my sophomores to write short stories has been an interesting experiment. They can come up with a decent plot outline, but when actually writing the body of the piece, what they end up with is a disjointed narrative which moves haphazardly from one event to another, abruptly stopping at the end of the major action event with nothing to tie together at the end. No deeper meaning, no realization, no development, no clear resolution. Just a list of events, one after another. Until the last sentence.
“This is not a story.” I tell Robert, who has just handed me a page and a half of typed text. ”You’re doing what everybody else is doing. You’re telling me about it as though I’m listening to you explain to me what happened, but you haven’t written a short story.” I feel like I’ve said this fifteen times to fifteen other students. There must be a better way to do this. ”What you have to do is slow down, develop each moment, really put me there.” Fumbling for advice to give my student, I remember what my husband, a fiction writer, recently told me. It sounds right, so I try it out.
“Don’t tell me what’s happening. Show me.” Yeah, I think. That’s it. Show me.
Robert slumps in his chair and sighs. ”I don’t know how I’m supposed to show you anything when I’m just writing words. Why can’t I just tell you what happened?”
I fidgeted and clicked my mechanical pencil, frustrated. I realized that my students are telling me stories just the way they are most comfortable telling stories, as they would in conversations with friends. But good narrative writing doesn’t look like their stories. How could I get them to see how to get from where they are to where I’m trying to take them? I tried giving Robert some advice again. ”You know, give me little clues so that I, as the reader, have to figure out the story rather than just listening to your narrator tell me everything. When the narrator just tells me everything, it’s boring and I don’t want to read anymore.” That sounded good, I thought to myself. That’s probably going to help him understand.
“What do you mean, give you clues?” Robert sounds bored. He didn’t understand.
Robert’s story was about a time when he and his friend spent a camping trip on the Illinois River. After fishing and camping for a while, they tried pulling some rather risky stunts diving from trees whose branches extended over the river. He had a dangerous escapade but survived and got home okay. As far as plot went, he had the makings of a great story. But it died in the telling of it.
I decided to try something. ”Here’s let me show you.” I motioned to his chair, he stood up and I took a seat in front of the keyboard. I flexed my fingers and popped the knuckles in readiness over the keys. ”So where does the story start? Where are you? What does it look like? What kind of weather do you remember that day?”
“It was sunny, I guess.”
“Where was the sun?”
“In the sky.”
“No, I mean where was it in the sky? Was it low, coming through the trees? Was it directly overhead, shining on the water? Where was it?”
“Overhead I guess. It was around noon.”
I began typing. The sunlight glinted on the surface of the waves. ”Okay, so you were fishing. Was it you and your friend together or were you alone?”
“My friend was fishing with me.”
“What kind of a river was it? Muddy? Stony? Big and wide or more like a stream?”
“Muddy, pretty big and wide.”
I began typing again. I twitched my toes in the soft mud and watched the ripples– “Wait, how fast was the water flowing? Fast or slowly?”
“Kind of slow” Robert replied.
“Were there grasses or cattails or plants at the edge?”
“Some short grasses, I think.” He sounded more thoughtful.
–watched the ripples play around the edges of the short grasses lining the bank of the river. I looked at Robert. ”What kind of fishing pole did you have?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Never mind. Did you have a bobber?”
“No. I just had a worm.” He thought for a minute. ”A plastic worm.”
“What color was it?”
“Red.”
I typed. I fixed my eyes on a quiet spot far out ahead of me, leaned back to cast, and gently swung my arm forward, listening for the soft plunk of the plastic worm as it hit the surface of the water and sank.
“Are you a good fisherman?” I asked Robert.
“What do you mean?“
“I mean, do you sit in one place for a long time before you catch anything or did you catch a lot of fish in a short time?“
“Well, we stayed in that spot for about half and hour. I mean, it’s just luck whether you catch anything or not.“
I nodded and typed. Even though we had been there for thirty minutes, we hadn’t caught anything. It was all about luck, really.
I pushed away from the keyboard and read the paragraph back to him.
The sunlight glinted on the surface of the waves. I twitched my toes in the soft mud and watched the ripples play around the edges of the short grasses lining the bank of the river. I fixed my eyes on a quiet spot far out ahead of me, leaned back to cast, and gently swung my arm forward, listening for the soft plunk of the plastic worm as it hit the surface of the water and sank. Even though we had been there for thirty minutes, we hadn’t caught anything. It was all about luck, really.
I looked at Robert and asked him, “Do you understand what I’m talking about now? This is what I mean. In this paragraph, I have the same information you started with, but now I know a little more about you, I can picture the place where you are, and I really feel like I’m there. Do you think you can do that?”
Robert raised his eyebrows and let out his breath in a quick sigh. ”Yeah, but not as good as you.”
“Give it a try.” I told him, and then look around at the twenty-three other students who were all writing similar types of narratives, influenced by conversational style rather than a written, reflective, slowdevelopment. I looked at the clock. The hour was almost up. I had spent most of my time with just one student. I felt like he got it, but he would still need to experiment, run into brick walls and receive some guidance to get him started in the right direction again.
How was I going to get this across to them all? Time, among other factors, was against me. Somehow I had to figure out a lesson plan to help communicate this to all twenty-four of these sophomores, while keeping them all focused and engaged.
Any ideas? Book recommendations?
Lol that was good
You did a great job communicating the essential difference between show and tell. Of course, you know your class better than I do. But you asked for ideas …
So here goes … .
It isn’t necessary to leave the other students out when you focus on one. Try including them by asking them to come up with questions about each others’ stories. Or write a “story” like they write, and tackle improving it as a group until the class has a story to enter in a Best Story competition between your classes with some kind of prize. Each class gets to rate the other classes’ stories, not their own. The story with the highest average rating from the other classes gets GRAND PRIZE, then each class gets a prize of lesser and lesser value, based on rating. Even the class with the worst story gets something IF they tried.
I’d meet the students where they are, tie in to what’s important to them. I’d have them dissect not-too-awful movies everyone’s familiar with, asking them such things as whether the movie would be as good if a narrator had stood in front of a blank wall to blah-blah the plot or if there had been a commentator telling them everything they were seeing on screen instead of just letting them experience the movie. Written stories are a lot like well-directed movies with the main difference being the ability to get inside characters’ heads, the opportunity to participate in the casting and shooting of scenes in the theatre of the mind, and the opportunity to pause whenever you want to contemplate what’s going on.
I’d commend what’s commendable in their current efforts as a good starting point from which to embark on an exciting journey in storytelling … letting them know that this journey could lead to any of the following outcomes, depending on how far they want to go:
–get a good grade for entertaining their peers (something many of them try to do for free anyway);
–be able to captivate and hold the attention of people (most people enjoy a good story told well);
–entertain young children in babysitting situations or summer camp job or birthday parties (all $-makers);
–write features for the school paper or start a free newsletter (creative non-fiction relies on storytelling techniques) to gain attention and have people “listen” to their ideas and care about what’s important to them;
–start a podcast where they tell stories in serial installments and see how many fans they can get to listen
–make some really good pocket money (often $50, $100, +) by writing short pieces for publication IF they learn the craft;
–get hired to write for game companies who need a good storyteller to create the plots and characters that the computer geeks turn into computer games;
–someday earn a decent living from home working their own hours and seeing their name in print–or on the big screen if they opt for screenwriting.
As for books, I’d first see what I could glean from the web site http://www.writermag.com because there are some extremely good articles on every aspect of writing on that site and most are available to non-subscribers. I can recommend Raymond Obstfeld’s book, Novelist’s Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes for your purposes. Its focus on scenes, not the novel as a whole or writing in general, makes it a good choice for your purposes. It has sidebar Tips and an “Instant Workshop” at the end of most chapters that may give you ideas. It’s over 200 pages of good stuff that covers every aspect of scene-writing, which is, as you pointed out, the heart of good story-telling. Other books that might be good for you to take a look at include Nancy Kress’s Beginnings, Middles, and Ends and a book by Peter Rubie and Gary Provost called How to Tell a Story: The Secrets of Writing Captivating Tales. (I apologize for not knowing how to italicize these titles.)
Just think, what you learn from your class about teaching non-readers how to write stories should make it all the easier to teach the art and craft of fiction to your well-read daughters, especially the one who wants to write novels like her Nana. Now, Nana wants to indulge her fiction addiction awhile and so will end her rather lengthy reply.
May you enjoy abundant blessings from above as you show Christ’s love to your students, and may He grant you favor with them and with all who are involved in your work.
I hate it when I don’t edit what I’ve written but just blithely hit the Submit button and then have to live with all those glaring errors. Shudder. Please overlook.
That was very helpful. Thank you so much. I now have those books on my Amazon gift list… in case you were interested.