Immediate Scenes vs. Narrative Summary

[youngsquire]

What's your guys' take on immediate scenes vs. narrative summary?

For example, instead of writing "Tom was nervous," writing "Tom tapped his fingers frantically on the table." This also might be called "showing not telling."

Here's an example of narrative summary, an excerpt from the novel "The World According to Garp" by John Irving:

"Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater. This was shortly after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and people were being tolerant of soldiers, because suddenly everyone was a soldier, but Jenny Fields was quiete a firm in her intolerance of the behavior of men in general and soldiers in particular."

Here's an example of immediate scenes, an excerpt from the novel "Rabbit Run" by John Updike:

"Boys are paying basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it. Legs, shouts. The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires."

The first one is summary, and the second one puts you right in the scene.

I've heard that immediate scenes are always preferable, but I've also seen lots of books use narrative summary. Which is better? When should you use one versus the other?

Does anyone recommend any books that masterfully use immediate scenes?

[ennison]

I've not heard the term "immediate scenes" before. It has a fairly appropriate sound. Most good writers do more showing than telling. If you are telling the reader all the time you lose dramatic intensity. You not only lose that but you become dull, boring, preachy through excess of narrative summary as you call it. The shorter your text the greater should be your use of the dramatic intensity created by showing. A large novel can stand some summary and digression. Any good novel has scenes which you describe as "immediate". They don't have to be in the present tense as your example is to carry out their "showing". This is a general ... Rule but like all rules it can be broken. For example I'd say the most successful short stories cover a short period of real time in some detail (Call this the slo mo approach for the time being) to try to tackle longer periods of time in a short story leads to dissipation of narrative power but there are some short stories - rare - which work even though they break that rule.

[Marbles]

Primary material of your story such as gradual characterisations of main protagonists and situations should follow show, don't tell as much as possible. But this is a guiding principle not a mathematical formula to adhere to. Not each and every single thing needs to be 'shown', because if you follow it to the letter the novel will perhaps never end. With regards to secondary details, you will notice that writers use what's called 'info dump' to give background info about the place, characters and situations to set the tone for further telling of the story or to introduce a new twist. The lines from The World According to Garp is an example of info dump. As with other things, a good writer will incorporate both elements in a way that doesn't jar the narrative but smoothly becomes part of the body of text. When and how well you segue from one mode of telling to the other depends on how good a writer you are.

That said, the quality of your writing is directly proportional to the richness of its imagistic content. Suppose your character has checked into a hotel and you're tasked to describe it. Consider this:


A faint smell of smoke entered his nostrils as James opened the door. He threw his bag on the floor and turned on the light. It made only a small difference to the darkness of the interior. He sat on a chair that creaked, and on the table to his left observed the statuette of a ballerina with broken head whose outstretched arm was illuminated by a wayward shaft of light pouring in from the hazy glass of the window.

Let's take stock of this sentence.

The room has stale air which means it's poorly ventilated; its decorative statuette has its head missing, which points to clumsy maintenance of decorative paraphernalia; the windowpanes are cloudy which leads us to think that they are not clean or the glass is low quality (or maybe it's the weather?); the chair creaks which informs us that it's old with loose joints; the lighting of the room is inappropriate as it doesn't brighten the interior. All this points to a cheap hotel with poorly maintained rooms - a rundown and decrepit place.

Now this can be said in a very few words as follows:


James checked into a cheap hotel whose rooms were rundown and furniture old and broken. The lighting of the room was bad and it was poorly ventilated (but how?)

The line above doesn't answer how. It's a series of absolute statements without a single image and therefore bad writing.

[JCamilo]

Show not tell is not a rule, should not be a rule, will never be a rule. There is time for suggestion or internal character disgression. The initial examples in this thread are both descriptive, not really different on this, only just described the opinion about a character, instead an event. (There is a difference on the time of the sentences, but we really need new terms for it, one evokes something distant, another something closer)

But there is a lot of time for telling, get Candide by Voltaire and you will get a lot of it and 99,9% of people who teach in those creative writing curses and make up those wonderful terms cannt write anything as good as Voltaire in his bad days.

[Marbles]

Show not tell is not a rule, should not be a rule, will never be a rule. There is time for suggestion or internal character disgression.

I think it may be a good starting point for aspiring writers to keep this in mind as a broad guideline. When they are past basic stage they don't think about it anymore, like we don't rehearse alphabet before writing. It's so basic and yet at the same time one of the most common mistakes new writers make. But I agree it is not a rule per se; there are many variations of style and narrative voice one may employ to tell a story. I am thinking of one of the masters of the 20th century fiction - Borges - whose writings constantly flout show, don't tell.

[JCamilo]

The point is not having or not a guideline (the professional writer is the one who will actually have his own guidelines and follow then, if there is a time for adventures is when you are a child), it is how "show not tell" is not one. It was so fast to hear the claptrap "great writers only show", "short stories are perfect for showing", which are obviously false and misleading.

There goes for the two new terms, I am not even sure what is the relevancy or if it is possible to analyse anything in the two short sentences...

Anyways, Borges didn't use 'show,not tell". He has stories, Like Pierre Menard who are analytical, almost like a technical book. He have tales where he describes book, telling the story of the book with minimal words, giving his (false) opinion on it. In the end it is a matter of style, what matter is how you show and how you tell and in like literature, when you do it. If so, Borges used show and tell.

There is no problem trying your hand with all variations possible inside the text, but the over-simplification of the idolatry over "show, don't tell" is just forgetting that Homer start telling us Achilles is angry.

[Emil Miller]

If you set out to write a novel, the 'show/tell' dichotomy will simply depend on how you personally wish to tell the story.
Here are two extracts from Pro Bono Publico. The first might be said to fit the 'tell' category and is the end of a chapter, whereas the second, which follows on immediately, shows what is happening. I didn't consciously set out to write them this way, the second just followed naturally.


However maladroit the British public were at choosing their political masters, nobody could fault a great sense of humour that now came to the fore as satirists highlighted the absurdities of the political establishment, and MPs were mercilessly lampooned in the media. The gilded Palace of Westminster stood magnificently at the heart of the country’s capital, but its occupants, no longer respected and frequently subjected to public derision, could only tinker where root-and-branch reform was needed.

Rowley Peterson sipped his brandy with a feeling of annoyance. He'd arrived on time to meet the vicar of St. Anne’s, only to find neither he nor any of the production team was there. Having lunched at the Ritz, he’d strolled down Piccadilly to Dean Street, and finding the church inexplicably locked, walked round to the back of the building to see if he could gain access, but the rear entrance was bolted. He looked around the churchyard that was deserted except for a couple of drunks sleeping on the grass, and carefully avoiding the plastic syringes abandoned by drug addicts, descended some steps leading to the crypt, only to discover that entrance was also inaccessible.

[Eiseabhal]

I get bored quickly with those who tell me what to think. Including the rightist Mr Borges

[Paulclem]

I'm also not familiar with those terms, but I would think the narrative style adopted by the author would be affected by the person it is written in.

The third person places the reader at a distance from the story, and may facilitate the narrative summary, though not necessarily. The first person brings the reader onto the mind of the character in a fairly distant way as in a diary style, or a more intimate way as in stream of consciousness.

[Eiseabhal]

Thanks for the ellipsis Ennison. It makes sense. Rule is only a word, only a guide to help us escape the dry dictatorship of the tellers.

[ennison]

Ach you're a grand fellow Eiseabhal to notice the little things in life!

[Emil Miller]

I'm also not familiar with those terms, but I would think the narrative style adopted by the author would be affected by the person it is written in.

The third person places the reader at a distance from the story, and may facilitate the narrative summary, though not necessarily. The first person brings the reader onto the mind of the character in a fairly distant way as in a diary style, or a more intimate way as in stream of consciousness.

This is true but it depends on the type of novel. In the case of Pro Bono Publico, the story is primarily about the post-war decline of the UK and therefore uses the third person of necessity since the narrative is told from the standpoint of my own experience. The characters are a mixture of invention and real life people but the historical content is factual and pre-eminent and this is what decided me to write it in the third person.
If the underlying fictional story had been pre-eminent, I might have chosen to write it in the first person.

[Paulclem]

I agree Emil. I was merely adding to the definition rather than responding to your post.

The author and their stylistic development combined with the appropriateness of the narrative form must dictate how a work is written. I like the varieties of forms available to authors. I can read a genre novel and generally begin at the beginning and end at the end, or I can read a literary novel which may use stream of consciousness, multiple narratives and points of views, flashbacks, parallel narratives that reflect and comment on each other etc etc. It's very rich.

[youngsquire]

What are some novels that use immediate scenes well which one could use as good examples of "showing" (i.e., immediate scenes)?

[Eiseabhal]

Nearly all good novels do that. It might be better to try to find good novels that do not do that.