show V tell

POSTED BY: wytchcroft
UPDATED: Friday, January 25, 2008 13:42
VIEWED: 3032
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WYTCHCROFT

Wednesday, January 23, 2008 10:57 AM

Show vs tell

Do writers/readers have a preference?
I’m thinking mainly here about characters – motivation and mood.
To give a recent example – In my fic Spiritual Simon elects (for the first time) not to accompany the Serenity crew, on a mission he views as unimportant. This is the first time someone has said no to Mal – and he is pissed. He takes it out on Jayne and Kaylee – as well as enjoying the bruises meted out to Shepherd Face – a victim of River’s anger at Simon’s absence.
Nowhere did I explicitly state – Mal is annoyed with Simon, not just with the thing they’re on a mission for (this is a spoiler free post! Ha ha!) – and River is all sorts of reactions because her Brother is absent.
Telling the fact seemed crude (obviously Simon’s reactions are yet to be seen – they will be though. Ok not entirely spoiler free).

Anyhoo – this little decision made me think again on the whole show vs tell issue…

(Especially tricky in Firefly where actions and words are frequently disjunct until some kind of throw away punch line “I wasn’t gonna? – Oh, well I did anyway– Guess my mom made a hero when she wasn’t looking – whoops did I just hit you again?” post-Buffy kinda thing.)

It’s not as obvious as it may seem… getting some sort of balance between demonstrating and describing – between illustration and information… that is the aim I suppose (not sure I’m that accurate in my shooting in this regard!) -
BUT …
there is the added complication of the busy BSR and the random/hasty nature of many peoples’ access to it – certainly during the day. With the best intentions, keeping up with serials can be hard work! It is somewhat akin to the reality of a tv show –
with all them other channels, other shows, you have to keep the audience’s attention AND their understanding. Certainly in the case of Firefly, executive anxiety in this regard lead to the exposition horrors of The Train Job and, to some extent, Bushwhacked.

Any thoughts?

I haven’t checked for comments on my fic yet (if there are any – it’s early days) to know whether anyone else wondered about this – but I think it’s an interesting dilemma we all face in the BSR – definitely one I have wrestled with, explored and ignored, by turns – in my previous fics here.

The other way in which Show vs Tell crops up is in directing an arc – not so much thematically but the sub-narrative, i.e. In a Post-BDM setting* what happens to the Alliance and what is the reaction of other groups (such as The Guild, The Shepherds, The Underground) to the pax revelation – the Reaver Assault (lead/instigated by Mal) and sundry massacres (Haven and elsewhere – The Operative may have come sideways but he came full force and with no subtlety, whether murdering a Shepherd or calling a swat team into the Companion Training House).

The questions here are worth exploring – (gimme that second series gorram it! and gimme it now!) but I prefer to do so slowly, not too definitively and not at all if it’s wrong for the individual story I wish to tell – I don’t do Epic Serenity sequels and I prefer to investigate possibilities rather than list grand conclusions.

Finally there is the arc of the characters – both River and Mal are perceived to have received some personal closure/growth during the BDM, (in fact some people point to this and say, “That’s it! It’s done – there aint no need for more”… while I reach for some falfa beans and a nice chianti), but it’s always the ‘and then?’ that lures me. Apparent closure is just that – apparent.
Also, as we fans know, the ensemble nature of the show left many other characters dangling – where does Zoe go now? What happens to Simon – he also had his ‘hero’s journey’ right? Well, again, what happens next? (yeh yeh – Kaylee and He, sitting in a tree K.I.S.S.I.N.G – falfa beans I tells ya!)

So… I’ve tried to balance individual stories with a little push forward for all the characters (hopefully not TOO implausibly)… and again without always having some deific anonymous authorial voice stating, for example, ‘Mal will consider h

BADKARMA00

Friday, January 25, 2008 7:32 AM

ROFLMAO at the image of Simon with an eye patch!

Doctor BlackBeard?

For me, writing fanfic, I prefer to work in the post BDM because I don't like the idea of meddling with Joss's work. But that's me, and more a statment to my lack of ability than any personal bias.

As for pushing it too far? I don't think there's any such thing, really. It's become obvious, bad as I hate to admit it, that we, as fans, aren't going to get another movie, or a reborn series.
And Comic books just don't do it for me.

So, we're left to our own devices to continue the storyline, if we don't want it to end. That's why I write the fanfic I do, to keep the story of Firefly alive. Even if it's just in my head.

As for writing? Make the story like you want it! That's what fanfic is all about, anyway, IMO.

Bad_karma
Great and Exalted Grand Pooba, International Brotherhood of Moonshiners, Rednecks, and Good Old Boys.

WYTCHCROFT

Friday, January 25, 2008 1:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by badkarma00:

For me, writing fanfic, I prefer to work in the post BDM because I don't like the idea of meddling with Joss's work. But that's me, and more a statment to my lack of ability than any personal bias.

ha ha! it's funny - as a writer i agree completely...
and yet as a reader not at all! I loved CB Steve's 'Lost Conversations' that ran the gamut of the tv series - and i thought Merry K's exploration of the Serenity Pilot was just wonderful.