Stephen King offers a ’show, don’t tell’ lesson in new novel

Nov 13 2009

Stephen King’s latest magnum opus, Under the Dome: A Novel (aff link), has recently been released. If you haven’t yet made it down to your local bookstore, you might want to take a look. The novel is a brick, weighing in at a whopping 1,074 pages. I plan on reading King’s latest work eventually, but I’ll probably wait until the ebook edition is released later on this year (I only have so much shelf space and I don’t want Stephen King hogging it all).

The premise of the novel is interesting: A clear dome falls over a town and they must somehow survive the consequences of being cut off from the rest of the world. There is a great book review in the NYT – and the review is also where I got the inspiration for this post.

You probably remember from your English classes or creative writing classes to show, not tell. This means that instead of simply describing attributes characters, settings, etc. you should show these attributes through action. Long narrative can be boring. Certainly, there is a place for narrative but it’s not always the best way to pull your readers into your fiction.

Stephen King’s Under the Dome is a great example of how King shows without telling, and without taking anything away from the story. Here’s an example from the NYT book review:

Consider the book’s step-by-step way of defining the Dome. Mr. King isn’t about to do the easy thing, which would be to give a straightforward description of what it is and how it works. Instead he offers a textbook demonstration of how to make action and explication one and the same. First step: A woodchuck on the ground and a pilot in the air named Chuck are sudden victims of the Dome’s guillotinelike slicing descent.

A transparent dome that falls over a town could be hard to describe. But showing the effects of the dome is a much more interesting way to describe the dome without a long narrative.

Another more subtle example of showing and not telling in King’s novel is how he handles the reaction of the town citizens and those on the outside the dome. Again, King could have easily just described the heartache and panic that sets in, although that is not effective:

News crews (notably CNN’s) arrive at the perimeter of the Dome to stake out this colossal human-interest story. And what they observe, on a visiting day when loved ones outside of Chester’s Mill are allowed to venture near the Dome’s dangerous surface, conveys genuine tragedy. As Mr. King puts it, describing what the TV cameras see:

“They observe the townspeople and the visitors pressing their hands together, with the invisible barrier between; they watch them try to kiss; they examine men and women weeping as they look into each other’s eyes; they note the ones who faint, both inside the Dome and out, and those who fall to their knees and pray facing each other with their folded hands raised…

While this is a narrative, it’s not a straightforward description of people feeling lonely and isolated because of the dome. Instead, King gives concrete, realistic examples of how people are reacting to the dome through the eyes of a news crew (CNN) that captures the drama as a human interest story.

The ability to ’show and not tell’ effectively can be challenging, especially for writers just starting out in the world of fiction. Like everything else, it takes a lot of practice.

Read More: Author News, Writing, Writing Tips

One Response

Stephen King “shows” all the time, beginning with the opening paragraphs of the book. “Show don’t tell” is idiotic advice that is offered to naive writing students.

Betty 1/30/2010 5:34 am