This is part 2 of a surprise series. I highly recommend reading part 1 before continuing with this post.

Last time, I began (what is shaping up to be) a lengthy discussion on showing and telling. I introduced Peter Rock’s essay “The Telling that Shows” as the piece that ended my own confusion surrounding this topic, as well as the method of writing a planning script to help me utilize both concepts in my stories. Today, I want to focus on telling, how Rock advises writers use it, and the types of things I’ve found work best when told.

Time & Place

“… shifts in time and space are very rarely occasions for drama and very often occasions for much confusion.”

Peter Rock, “The Telling that Shows”

If the conspirators meet at dawn by the docks, just say that they meet at dawn by the docks. You don’t need to spend paragraphs painting the sky in rosy hues or meticulously describe that particular aroma of salt, seaweed, and motor oil. A few sentences are enough to seed the reader’s imagination. Trust them to take it from there.

Telling and being economical with your descriptions also gives you more space to focus on the juiciest bits of your story — the meaty heart of your scenes. In the previous example, it’d be what our conspirators are plotting.

Throughout this series, I’ll be referencing my latest Friday Flash, “To the Capital”, to demonstrate how I use Rock’s advice while crafting my stories. I will cite both the final prose and its planning script, so it may help to keep these open in separate browser tabs.

(Night on the train. Low, rhythmic clatter of wheels. Moonlight peeks in through the window of the compartment.)

I wasted no time establishing where and when this scene takes places at the beginning of my planning script. I then picked out a couple of details I wanted to include in this first narration note — a couple more hooks for the reader’s imagination to latch onto. (Have no idea what a narration note is? Go read part 1.)

The clattering of the train’s wheels activates the reader’s sense of hearing right away. Describing the background ambiance to a scene can also deepen their sense of immersion. The moonlight points to the exact time of night and what the weather outside is like. The moon must be low enough in the sky to shine directly through the windows, and the weather calm and clear enough for the light to reach that far.

Night had fallen. The moon peeked through the window of the train compartment.

When it came to the final draft, two sentences was all I needed to establish time and place. By now, the reader gets that the story takes place at night on board a train. Notice that being quick about it doesn’t mean your sentences have to be bland. I leaned into metaphorical language by making the night and the moon active agents — falling upon the land and peeking through the train’s window respectively.

Just because my first narration note included a sound element doesn’t mean I must include it in the first paragraph of the final prose. I’m allowed to improvise if I come up with a better idea later. That’s what happened with the detail of the train’s wheels clattering. I found a more interesting place to insert it in the third paragraph of the story.

The longer the train’s wheels clattered in their low rhythm, the more unbearable the silence became.

Other Minor Details

“In our early writing, we often have a real aversion to seeming clumsy, or being too straightforward, when the rule of thumb here should be, ‘If you can tell it, tell it.’”

Peter Rock, “The Telling that Shows”

You need to know what details are important for your story and which are less important. What aspects deserve intense focus, requiring more time and words, and which you can afford to gloss over. Time and place are the most common details that can be glossed over — stated once then never addressed again until there’s a notable shift. But they don’t have to be the only ones.

Character Movement

Character movement is another type of detail that is often best to outright state rather than describe. Doing the latter can really slow the pace down, and potentially bring undue focus onto how a character moves. Unless it’s relevant to the story or will serve as an identifying character trait, then it’s wise to gloss over this detail and focus on others.

I knew that how Silas and Kiki moved around the train compartment wasn’t crucial to the story I wanted to write, so I told these details instead of showing them whenever they cropped up. For example, compare the following narration note and its corresponding prose passage.

(Kiki flies over to Silas’ coat hanging on the doorknob on the opposite side of the compartment. She slides into one of the pockets, wedging herself between a pair of gloves for warmth.)

… Kiki flew over to the door of the train compartment. Silas’ coat hung on the knob. Kiki slide into one of the pockets, wedging herself between a pair of gloves for warmth.

The final prose is mostly the same as the narration note. In both, I focused on Kiki’s destination and what she did there, leaving the how to a single verb. The alterations I made in the final draft — such as dividing the note’s two sentences into three — helped the passage flow better and sound more like a definitive end to the piece.

Defining Characteristics

Speaking of identifying characteristics, they are a third category of details I’ve found easiest to tell rather than show. In my experience, readers are good at picking up on and remembering these details. So, whatever distinguishing traits I want to give a character, I only need to state them once.

When I started writing “To the Capital”, I knew that one of Kiki’s defining traits would be her size. It’s also something I knew I had to establish early so the reader could better understand how she’d be interacting with the environment later. Thus, I left the narration note below for my future self when I wrote the planning script.

(I need some way to note her significantly smaller size.)

What I ultimately decided on was to put a lantern into the scene, and compare Kiki’s height to the height of the lantern.

Kiki sat on the bedside table, beside a lantern taller than she was.

I know my fantasy-reading audience would already have a rough idea of how big a lantern is compared to their human selves. By telling the reader that Kiki is shorter than the lantern, the reader could then infer (roughly) how small she is compared to Silas.

Backstory

Backstory — things that happen before the scene begins — are another common category of things that should be told. The narration note below contains the pieces of backstory I wanted to give the reader upfront to provide context for the scene that’s about to unfold.

(Take a minute to hint at why Silas is on the train in the first place. Mention that he hasn’t seen his friend since he was last in the capital — years ago by now. Silas wonders if the family will still recognize him.)

For the final draft, I presented this backstory as memories that Silas is recalling as he reflects on the journey ahead. This framing allowed me to add a couple of flourishes to the second sentence for interest and to highlight how much Raj means to Silas.

His mind flew ahead of the train — to the capital, to Raj. Years had passed since Silas last wandered the city’s streets with him — the first true friend Silas has ever known. Silas wondered if Raj’s family would still recognize him.

It’s perfectly fine to not reveal all of your backstory at the beginning of a scene. You can save pieces of it to drop later, whenever they’re relevant and crucial to the reader’s understanding. This technique is particularly useful when you want to create a sense of mystery. The narration note below is the bit of backstory I wanted to save until after Kiki said a specific line of dialogue.

(Silas’ friend Raj who fell dangerously ill. A friend he was forced to leave behind years ago.)

Here’s how I translated that note into narration for the final draft.

Silas was doing it for Raj — an old friend who had fallen gravely ill. A friend Silas was forced to leave behind years ago.

Pairing this narration with Kiki’s dialogue in the same paragraph leads the reader to assume that these are things that Kiki knows about Silas. Facts that she’s likely recalling in this moment — facts that the reader is learning for the first time.

Next time, I’ll go over what Rock says about showing in his essay. For now, do you better understand what telling is and how to use it in your own stories? To the experienced writers in the crowd, what other details have you found to work best directly stated rather than described — told rather than shown? Please share in the comments below.