It’s one of the oldest and hoariest dictums in fiction writing and screenwriting: Show, don’t tell. Screenwriters are better at this than fiction writers because this is the nature of the game. They are creating visuals only. Exposition and characters’ internal thoughts in movies and TV theoretically can happen, but in practice it is almost nil. Forget your notions of writing an epic script with overlaid narration. It’s just won’t happen.
Writers of fiction are permitted to give a greater richness to their stories with exposition and internal thoughts. After all, that’s the nature of the fiction game. That’s the pleasure of reading a novel. Novels devoid of characters’ thoughts feel sterile and lifeless. Novels that do not employ exposition can lumber along and get caught up in unnecessary details.
But it’s all too easy for fiction writers to fall into the telling trap. If you find that you are continually editing your thoughts before they translate to paper and pixel form, do as science fiction writer Marc Scott Zicree suggests:
Think about if you’re writing down a line like, “I hate you, Bob,” the most obvious thing that comes to mind. You can start with that but then cross it out and think, Okay how could we know that this person hates Bob without…him or her overtly saying it? And that’s going to give you a line that’s going to be much much much more interesting.
In other words, refrain from excessive self-editing during the first draft if your natural inclination is to tell, not show. But double back and convert exposition to concrete visuals. I would argue that this has to happen fairly quickly. Devote a second, short session within the same day or early the next day to translating expository text.
Zicree goes on:
I mean it can literally be almost any line. It can be, “Are you going to eat?” It can be, “You chose to wear that today?” You’ll find that it gives you much more richness and…it makes it just makes it more interesting.
Be rigorous: that’s what I get from Zicree saying that it can “be almost any line.” Root out opportunities. Push for more concrete details.
