6/10/2023 0 Comments Three little words a memoirAnd we need to just stop saying it to another generation of writers. But that sentence-that command-doesn’t say that. “Show, don’t tell” isn’t a way of reframing William Carlos Williams’ “so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow,” or that brilliant phrase “no ideas but in things” from his poem, “Paterson.” I know the real goal of “show, don’t tell” is to force a discipline that encourages the writer to see subjectivity emerging through those details. In many ways, the practice of writing is a practice of learning to re-see the world. The details are divine, and we should caress them, as Nabokov instructed. And details-pancakes, clenched fists, rainfall-were all I ever wanted, all I ever hoped for as a writer. Chicken soup and a broken figurine of a ceramic goose-there, they make a second life happen, built on images. I had no idea how much damage those three words would do after I’d depended on them for too long.ĭetail makes the mimesis machine start. The directive countered a school-based tendency toward abstraction and vagueness. And sure, it was good for me, in the way training wheels help in learning to ride a bike. When I learned “show, don’t tell,” I thought I’d discovered a guide that would never fail me.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |