The story for this month’s What Makes This Story Exceptional? is “Arlene the White Oak Tree” by Scott Michael Powers. As per usual, there are many things working well within this story, but the main focus will be on showing vs. telling.
Popular writing advice is to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’. What does that mean, exactly? Basically, it means to show the action unfolding rather than telling the reader what happens. Another way to describe it is ‘scene’ vs. ‘summary’. Let’s look at the opening paragraph as an example:
One stormy spring day, Arlene Wollemacher dug a hole in the backyard. She took off all her clothes, climbed in, pushed loose dirt to cover her feet and ankles, stood straight, and stretched her arms toward the clouds.
This is an example of showing; it’s a scene. We can see the character digging that hole, taking her clothes off, climbing in. She pushes the loose dirt over her feet and ankles, she stands up straight and stretches her arms out towards the clouds. If it were ‘telling’ or ‘summary’, it might read something like this:
One day, Arlene Wollemacher became a tree.
Ultimately, we get the same information—Arlene becomes a tree—but we don’t get any of the details. Often in flash fiction what really elevates a piece is the details. When something is described in precise beautiful details, it can help bring a piece alive.
But something that needs to be considered is how to balance these details with moving the story forward. Not everything can be shown. Not everything can unfold in a scene. Some things just need to be told.
After the opening paragraph, the rest of that interaction between Arlene and her husband unfolds in a scene. There’s dialogue between the two of them; there are descriptions of the weather; of Arlene’s long hair flapping in the wind; and that same wind almost knocking Joel off his feet. The scene ends here:
Joel sat in the grass. Heavy rain pelted them both as they realized this, indeed, was it, or might as well be. Not like they didn’t see this coming. Not like this, but still. Joel shuddered and sucked air, his version of crying. Arlene shed her last tear.
Joel went inside to drink alone.
What follows is five paragraphs of summary. The author tells us what happens over the years. We learn that Joel drinks heavily, gets fired, and gets kicked out of the house; Arlene, on the other hand, continues to grow and strengthen. We learn that the house is sold, hired out to tenants until around twenty years later, it burns down. Arlene is unscathed, ‘and a good thirty feet tall, she towered over terrible devastation and smoldering rubble, iced by firemen’s hoses.’ The following paragraph is the end of the summary:
In the spring, a crew with heavy equipment cleared everything except Arlene. After that, a landscape contractor came regularly to cut grass, pull weeds, and prune Arlene’s branches. Cub Scouts planted flowers. Who knew how many more years went by? Arlene didn’t.
Whereas that whole five-paragraph section is summary, I’d like to draw your attention to the difference in how Powers tells us about Arlene and how he tells us about everything else. Joel and the house are dealt with more factually:
He drank even more in coming days, weeks, and months. He never went out back again. He neglected the yard, the house, and himself. He got fired. In due time, the bank foreclosed on the house and kicked Joel out.
In contrast to this, Arlene’s summary sections are still given beautiful and precise details:
Meanwhile, Arlene barked over, budded branches, leaves, flowers, and acorns, and grew.
The story concludes with a final scene: when Joel returns and he tries to overpower her again, but fails.
The structure of this story is scene—summary—scene and for “Arlene the White Oak Tree” that works very well. Why has the author chosen to use summary in the middle? What is the purpose of it? There are a couple of reasons to use summary/telling in a story:
- For things which are less important, for example: we need to know that the house burnt down, but we don’t need to know the details;
- To move the story on timewise, for example: this story covers a lot of time and would turn into a novel if all those years were shown.
To conclude: stories often need a mixture of showing and telling. Showing is for the important parts of the story, often with dialogue and interaction between characters; telling is for the lesser important parts or when you need to move the story on quickly.
The strength of this story is using the two scenes between husband and wife to bookend the entirety and using summary in the middle to give context and cover the spanning years. This allows the author to give us all the information we need to build up a picture of Arlene’s world, but allows the crux of the story to be about the power dynamics between husband and wife.
