Show, don’t tell: ‘Arlene’ as a role model

One of Flash Fiction Magazine’s editors has written a wonderful blog article about my short story “Arlene, the White Oak Tree,” featuring it to illustrate a discourse on the oft-cited writing rule, “show, don’t tell.” Fortunately, Laura Besley makes “Arlene” a role model, not a cautionary tale.

FlashFictionMagazine.com published “Arlene” in April.

Also I am including “Arlene” in my forthcoming short story anthology, Disposable Girl and Other Tales of Brutality and Wonder, to be published later this spring.

Sometimes a writer gets a feeling that something is good. No, we don’t feel that way about everything we write. When I wrote “Arlene” everything about the story just felt right to me, like, “yeah, this is good.” That was long before I got it published, long before anyone had a kind word to say about it. “Arlene” just felt good. In fact, when I first began planning my short story anthology, the working title was Arlene and Other Tales of Amusement and Wonder.

Then I wrote “Disposable Girl” and I got that feeling again, more so. Thus, “Disposable Girl” beat out “Arlene” to be the titular work of the anthology.

But that doesn’t diminish “Arlene.”

I’m not going to offer the show-don’t-tell argument. We’ve all heard it. And Besley presents the case exceptionally well in her blog article, so read that to get the point.

However, I like that Besley points out that certain sections of “Arlene” show, while other sections of “Arlene” tell, and that’s fine. Telling is fine when appropriate. A writer needs to tell sometimes, for exactly the reasons Besley points out, to race through periods of time and space that are real but unworthy of detail.

I started “Arlene” with a section of show, but I have started other stories with a section of tell. I did so willfully and without apology. I call it the “Once upon a time” approach to storytelling. I argue that it’s an approach that is not just valid but tested by time.

Here’s an example of “Once upon a time” writing, the opening of my story “Great Bones“:

The neighborhood developed in the 1920s and ‘30s, and filled with Eastern European immigrants drawn by car factory jobs. Wood or brick, all the houses were small by most standards but well-constructed with pride and quality materials. They had postage-stamp yards, garages off the alleys, flowers in the fronts, and vegetables in the rears. None was more than walking distance from little shops, churches, and corner bars. Sugar maple, crabapple, and dogwood saplings matured in time, gloriously coloring the streets in season.

“Great Bones” goes on like that for several paragraphs before I land in the narrative and start showing. Perhaps I dragged it out too long. I had one journal editor read it and practically shout at me in her notes, SHOW DON’T TELL. I concede it’s possible that I wrecked a good story with that approach, but I still like it.

Tell to advance the plot in a scene. Show to move the story to a scene. No apologies.