Tell, Don't Show

by Charlotte Hinger

One of the most misunderstood "rules" in writing successful novels is the instruction to "Show, don't tell." Sometimes a story moves more quickly by using the limited dissection of the limited omniscience viewpoint. He describes his struggles with the beginning of his novel, First Blood. The book is a literary novel, by the way. He warns readers it's nothing like the movie. And it isn't.


In his book, The Successful Novelist, he writes about experimenting with different viewpoints. He tried limited third person through Rambo's eyes. It didn't work. He tried alternating third person between Rambo and Teasle, the relentless policeman. He still wasn't happy with the beginning. Then he came up with this:

His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing up by pump of a gas station on the outskirts of  Madison, Kentucky. He had a long heavy beard, and his hair was hanging down over his ears to his neck. . . ."

Other best-selling authors begin books with limited omniscience.  

Consider this beginning from Tana French's best seller, In the Woods:  

Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in a small-town 1950s. This is none of Ireland's subtle seasons mixed for a connoisseur's palate. . . ." 

Of the beginning of Elizabeth George's novel, A Place of Hiding:

Santa Ana winds were no friends of photography, but that was something you could not tell an egomanical architect who believed his entire reputation rested upon capturing for posterity--and for Architectural Digest--fifty-two thousand square feet of unfinished hillside sprawl today.   

Morrell recommends experimenting with different points of view. 

One rule that I consider set in stone is this: If something works, it works.