“You have a gift from above such as other people have not: you have talent. Do not disparage yourself to rouse compassion. Smash the vodka bottle, lie down and read. Develop the aesthetic feeling in yourself. Allow your heart to ache for what the eye does not see.”
—Anton Chekhov, from a letter to Nikolai Chekhov written c. May 1888. (via xshayarsha)
“…and he sat and was silent, and did not say to me: "Don’t weep.” He understood that I must weep, and that the time for this had come.
I saw from his eyes that he was sorry for me; and I was sorry for him, too, and vexed with this timid, unsuccessful man who could not make a life for me, nor for himself.“
’‘Oturdu, sessizdi, ve bana 'ağlama’ demedi, ağlamam gerektiğini, ağlama vaktimin geldiğini biliyordu.
Gözlerinden benim için üzüldüğünü anladım, ben de onun için üzülüyordum, ve bu başarısız, korkak adamın ne benim, ne de kendisi için bir hayat yaratamamasından dolayı dargındım.”
“The Present” by Andrew Upton, adapted from Chekhov’s “Platonov”
Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 2016
Starring Cate Blanchett, Richard Roxburgh, Anna Bamford, Andrew Buchanan, David Downer, Eamon Farren, Martin Jacobs, Brandon McClelland, Jacqueline McKenzie, Marshall Napier, Susan Prior, Chris Ryan & Toby Schmitz
“When you live on cash, you understand the limits of the world around which you navigate each day. Credit leads into a desert with invisible boundaries.”
Anton Chekhov (January 1860 - July 1904)
(note: excerpt from a letter written to A.S. Suvorin, 1893)
A popular piece of advice given to fiction writers is show, don’t tell. It is frequently backed up by a quotation attributed to Anton Chekhov:
Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
According to the excellent Quote Investigator this isn’t quite what Chekhov wrote, but it is presented in that form so often that many aspiring writers will have come across it like that.
Did they then ask themselves, “What broken glass?” In the letter which seems to be the source of the distorted remark, Chekhov actually referred to a “a piece of glass from a broken bottle”. Perhaps 19th century Russia was strewn with broken bottles, but you can’t rely on one being there when you need it. Perhaps there had better be a pile of fragments from a broken window. That might work, but was it not Chekhov who also told us that “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired”? So what does that pile of glass imply? Someone broke the window. If the glass is outside, it was broken from within. That’s a minor mystery. Perhaps it was Piotr, the stable boy. In that case, better go back and put a cut on his hand as evidence, so that later he will be linked to the broken window. Then we might learn what he was doing inside the building.
We seem to have invented a whole sub-plot, which now needs resolving, just to avoid telling the reader that the moon was shining. Perhaps there’s an easier way. Maybe if Ivan’s glasses fall off as he is killed in the duel, the moon might glint off the fragments. It’s been done before, but it’s quite effective. The only trouble is, the reader needed to know about the moon before the duel took place. Anyway, don’t duellists usually wait until dawn?
I could go on, but I’ll spare you any more. It would have been so much simpler to just say that the moon was shining and get on with the story about the duel without getting distracted by Piotr’s doings.
A variation on this advice is to use action to convey emotion. Don’t write “Ethel was angry”, describe her throwing her coffee cup across the room and slamming the door as she flounced out of the room. But what if she didn’t? What if “nothing in her demeanour betrayed the anger that simmered within her”? Ethel is noted for her self-control. Turning her into the sort of person who chucks crockery around when her coffee has gone cold because she was delayed by a phone call from a scammer would require a complete revision of her character.
Writing is done with words. A writer never shows anything; that’s for painters, photographers and film makers. It’s good to put in significant details instead of being lazy and using a convenient phrase like “she was angry”, but if it doesn’t fit with character or setting, showing instead of telling may do more harm than good.
