SHOW DON’T TELL
This is the one thing I have written down and pasted on my wall. It is always above my computer next to Gertrude Stein.
This is not a sentiment which is unique to screenwriters. Mark Twain when talking about writing once said (something like) “Don’t tell me out about your sweet old Grandmother who foiled the burglars, bring the old bird on and let her talk for herself.”
Why is it so important?
1. First and most obviously. They are called moving pictures for a reason. If your idea for a movie involves a lot of sitting around and talking; interior monologues or philosophical arguments, the chances are it should be something other than a screenplay. If it’s mainly emotional confrontations or long battles over relationships you need to find a good setting for it. We are there to see something. The central activity of your movie needs to be visual. Your characters need to be doing something we can watch. If you can take your philosophical idea and visualize it as Tom Twyker did in Run Lola Run, that’s fine, but those are hard come by. And Lola didn’t know she was in a philosophical statement; she was trying to save Manny.
If you can illustrate your interior monologue the way Danny Boyle does in Trainspotting fine, but that only served to support what the main actor was doing – struggling quite vividly with a heroin addiction. The story and the characters are the most important thing – but they must be visual – the stories unfold in front of us, the character’s internal psychology is externalized in some visual way.
I am not saying great funny dialogue or emotional confrontations are less significant than the pictures, but there is an aspect of audience involvement which doesn’t happen without them. Think of the opening of the original Star Wars – what really made you feel like you were in a galaxy far far away. The words scrolling across the screen telling you that’s where you were or the giant ship passing right over you and blocking out the sky.
So try to begin your conceptualizing your story visually. It may not happen that way for you – you may begin with a character who feels compelled to shred his relationships – or you may just have to tell the story of the founding of a town – but it’s important to grapple with those ideas in terms of what we see – the images, the external actions – as soon as possible because they are the meat of your movie..
2. More importantly, however, you must learn to show rather than tell as a story teller no matter what form of fiction you are writing. When you TELL people things you are being didactic, directive, controlling. When you SHOW them things, they get to draw their own conclusions about what is happening and who these people are. They bring something to the table. This goes both ways. You also want to let your characters talk for themselves and in general, they don’t know how the story comes out, so they may have some other opinions than you about what to say and when
In a movie there is no narrative voice. You may begin with one, as in Trainspotting or About a Boy, but they tend to fade as the reality of the movie takes hold. Unlike a novelist, you can’t tell the audience what your character is thinking and feeling unless he or she does. We can hear things from other characters who react to them but we may or may not believe them. (Actually you can use this to great effect but we will discuss that in Week four.)
In a screenplay, actions really do speak louder than words. You have to find actions and attitudes which express those interior thoughts. In Lethal Weapon what tells us that Riggs is a borderline personality who takes too many risks – Murtaugh’s character complaining about teaming up with him or watching Riggs chase a bad guy across five lanes of traffic? The important thing is that you have to let the reader, the actor, director and audience interpet what they mean. In a very real sense, the audience becomes a part of telling the story by completing it.
This works on a lot of levels.
1. First of all, in characterization. The writer introduces the characters as they are doing something quite ordinary; the audience draws conclusions about them from the choices they make. (Some famous examples: Harper in the William Goldman screenplay of the same name, where he has run out of coffee and makes the decision to use yesterday’s old grounds which are in the trash. Cher selecting her clothes from the computer matching program in Clueless. Charles in Four Weddings and a Funeral, sleeping through two alarms. ) So many movies start with ordinary routines of life – getting up, getting dressed, going to work – because they are universal experiences and the audience, each of whom does these things, identify with the character and his or her choices in these moments. We’ll discuss this further in Week 4.
2. The second is that dramatic story telling relies on your ability to set up anticipation in the audience. You show them something and don’t tell them what the consequences are. The active audience member is sitting there spinning the possible consequences for you. They start tingling with anticipation to see what it turns out to be. They want to be right; they’re terrified of one consequence, they hope for another. In other words, their identification with the character and the situation becomes more intense and more complete as the story unfolds. What starts off with small opening sequences can work for the whole character. Frequently what they anticipate with great pleasure is the character reversal. A classic example of this is in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Shakespeare establishes a very stiff and pompous character named Malvolio, a puritan and the enemy of joy and love. In the second act, Sir Toby who is a drunk and a rascal, plays a trick to make Malvolio wear yellow cross garters, thinking to win the love of his mistress. I don’t think most modern audiences have any idea what yellow cross garters are – I certainly don’t – but I’ve seen Twelfth Night about ten times and every time you see pompous preening Malvolio after Sir Toby sets the bait, you are anticipating him appearing in yellow cross garters. When he walks on in the fourth act wearing them, the audience falls on the floor. Every time, like clockwork, this happens. They’ve been anticipating the reversal on his character and when it comes it’s a pleasure. In Casablanca, almost the first words out of Humphrey Bogart’s mouth is “I stick my head out for no man.” We are put off by that at the beginning, but we come to see that he’s a man who’s been hurt, who is pretending not to care. And the immense satisfaction we feel when he does risk himself emotionally and stick his neck out again, is not only pleasurable, but it’s a scene we can see again and again, because we like to see that turn. In Star Wars, I would argue that Hans Solo reversing himself and showing up to save “the kid” is what completes the emotional process for us and gives us pleasure – and puts us all on that bombing run with Luke.
How does this relate to show and tell? Well, you have show Malvolio, Rick and Hans at the very beginning and let the audience draw their own conclusions about what will happen to them. If you insert yourself as the story teller in that process and tell them what’s going to happen – telegraph the alternatives too clearly,– or worse, leave only one avenue for a conclusion – you risk the audience resisting you and losing interest. Things will go flat. Of course, there are a lot story tellers who do this – and do it brilliantly. Oliver Stone, for example, is always in your face, telling you what to think. Woody Allen, Spike Lee, or Michael Moore. And we hang out with these guys because we like what they are saying, we go along for the ride, but rarely do we lose ourselves in their films. (I will be glad to concede that occasionally these guys get out of the way and let their characters speak, but not often.)
3. The last thing about showing and not telling is the importance of images to what we do. Contrary to popular belief they are not all created by directors and production designers. Movies are ultimately an emotional medium and it is the images linger in us rather than messages. Images are pregnant with meaning that is not specific or tied down. We don’t quite know why they carry the weight they do in our psyches, but they do. The wide sweep of the prairie in Dances with Wolves, the first view of the Emerald City, the briefcase glowing in Pulp Fiction, the little boy opening the door to the light in Close Encounters, the image of Andy opening his arms to the rain in Shawshank Redemption, Ferris Bueller singing Danke Schein in the Chicago Parade, all of Grand Central Station waltzing in The Fisher King, the terrifying eye of Sauron in the scorched world of Gondor contrasted with the cozy homes of the Hobbits in jolly old England, uhm the Shrine. None of these things have specific meaning and yet they summarize the movie in a way that plot summaries can’t.
So trust your imagination and the audience’s imagination and show them the world of your story, show them the characters, show them drama and they will return again and again for another look.
Aristotles lost book of Screenwriting 