![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mbarker Original Posting May 18, 2018
Writer's Digest, May 1990, had an article by Stanley Schmidt with the title, "Staging" Your Fiction. The subtitle reads, "A fiction writer and editor explains a technique for writing sharply written stories -- imagine them as works on a stage, and then write them down." Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it?
Stanley starts by pointing out that writers often are verbally oriented. However, many of their readers are less so. Frankly, readers mostly are not buying a novel or short story to admire clever phrases, they want to "experience vicariously something they cannot experience directly." What you're trying to do is make them forget that they are reading, and give them the illusion of being there. That's what "Show, don't tell" really means.
Stanley says that "I found that the most important key to making a reader see a scene vividly is that the author must see it clearly to be able to convey the illusion to someone else." Then he says that the best advice he can give is "Try rewriting it as a play."
Telling instead of showing really consists of several different kinds of faults. Describing character rather than showing it through dialogue and action, directly disclosing thoughts of non-viewpoint characters, summarizing dialogue as indirect discourse instead of quoting it directly, and speaking in generalities instead of specifics. All of these distance readers from the scene, and reduce the illusion that you are there.
However, in a play, you can't do these things. Nobody on stage tells you what kind of people the characters are. You watch them and see what they do and listen to what they say. So if your scene has you telling too much instead of showing it, recast the scene as a play, and you'll find you have to solve the problems. Then translate that back into a story.
Stanley gives an example of a hypothetical badly-written story. I'm not going to transcribe that here, but he translates a scene into a play. and then back into a story. It's a pretty cool exercise or discipline. Go ahead, take a scene that you have written, and rewrite it as a scene in a play. A few parenthetical descriptions of the setting and characters, an occasional parenthetical direction for action, but mostly, dialogue, dialogue, dialogue! Then take that and convert it back into a story. See what happens.
For extra points, Stanley suggests something that an actor and playwright friend suggested. Don't just write it as a play, write it as a play "without parenthetical instructions to the actors on how to say their lines." Wow!
There is a sidebar on this article. Basically, Stanley points out some of the differences between a play and a story. For example, readers can't see the stage, so you have to create it in their minds. Be aware that we have been talking about seeing, but you really want perceiving and experiencing. Good writers often consciously try to include three or more senses. You need to give the reader a picture, suitable as a setting for the action, and just enough for verisimilitude.
Okay, go for it. Scenes into plays into stories! Show us what's happening on the stage in your mind. Make us one of the players!
Write!
Writer's Digest, May 1990, had an article by Stanley Schmidt with the title, "Staging" Your Fiction. The subtitle reads, "A fiction writer and editor explains a technique for writing sharply written stories -- imagine them as works on a stage, and then write them down." Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it?
Stanley starts by pointing out that writers often are verbally oriented. However, many of their readers are less so. Frankly, readers mostly are not buying a novel or short story to admire clever phrases, they want to "experience vicariously something they cannot experience directly." What you're trying to do is make them forget that they are reading, and give them the illusion of being there. That's what "Show, don't tell" really means.
Stanley says that "I found that the most important key to making a reader see a scene vividly is that the author must see it clearly to be able to convey the illusion to someone else." Then he says that the best advice he can give is "Try rewriting it as a play."
Telling instead of showing really consists of several different kinds of faults. Describing character rather than showing it through dialogue and action, directly disclosing thoughts of non-viewpoint characters, summarizing dialogue as indirect discourse instead of quoting it directly, and speaking in generalities instead of specifics. All of these distance readers from the scene, and reduce the illusion that you are there.
However, in a play, you can't do these things. Nobody on stage tells you what kind of people the characters are. You watch them and see what they do and listen to what they say. So if your scene has you telling too much instead of showing it, recast the scene as a play, and you'll find you have to solve the problems. Then translate that back into a story.
Stanley gives an example of a hypothetical badly-written story. I'm not going to transcribe that here, but he translates a scene into a play. and then back into a story. It's a pretty cool exercise or discipline. Go ahead, take a scene that you have written, and rewrite it as a scene in a play. A few parenthetical descriptions of the setting and characters, an occasional parenthetical direction for action, but mostly, dialogue, dialogue, dialogue! Then take that and convert it back into a story. See what happens.
For extra points, Stanley suggests something that an actor and playwright friend suggested. Don't just write it as a play, write it as a play "without parenthetical instructions to the actors on how to say their lines." Wow!
There is a sidebar on this article. Basically, Stanley points out some of the differences between a play and a story. For example, readers can't see the stage, so you have to create it in their minds. Be aware that we have been talking about seeing, but you really want perceiving and experiencing. Good writers often consciously try to include three or more senses. You need to give the reader a picture, suitable as a setting for the action, and just enough for verisimilitude.
Okay, go for it. Scenes into plays into stories! Show us what's happening on the stage in your mind. Make us one of the players!
Write!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
