How do I write "Show, Don't Tell" as a person with Asperger Syndrome?
I have been told by my friends that my writing seems a bit blunt in the sense of I rarely practice "Show, Don't Tell" (SDT) in my stories. However, I personally find SDT hard because...I just don't get it due to my Asperger Syndrome.
Having Asperger Syndrome means that I simply lack the knowledge non-verbal communication including body languages, facial expression, and social cue. For example, we all know that somebody who "clenches their fist" is someone who is angry or somebody "who raises their eyebrow" is surprised, right? Unfortunately, I didn't know about it for a very good portion of my life. Funnily enough--I learned about these cues from a "Show, Don't Tell" chapter of a writing book.
Obviously, I read more books and I picked up on more social cues and people have publicized lists of phrases commonly used to describe emotions, but it feels..formula-ish. For me, the process for writing SDT is like.
- Write the emotion I'm trying to demonstrate (e.g. surprised)
- Look up on google what do people do when they're surprised (ooh, they raise their eyebrow.)
- Replace the emotion of being surprised in my novel with their action of raising their eyebrow.
It works, but it doesn't take long before I ran out of phrases and starts becoming repetitive. I lack the finesse for SDT and I'm a bit flustered and hope you can provide me with some guidance.
Update:
There has been some (deleted) discussion on the true nature of Asperger Syndrome (ie. how big in a disadvantage are they, are they truly lacking or they just need to "learn it") which has been rather controversial. Regardless of the actual nature of Asperger Syndrome, I think the premise of the question still holds. This is a writing technique question, not a mental health question.
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Writing isn't really about showing what character's feel. It's about making the reader feel.
You could even have a cold-hearted unfeeling robot (Terminator?), as long as that character makes your audience have the emotions you want them to have, you're doing it right.
I'd suggest reading books, watching movies, TV-shows, and when you feel something, try to figure out what they did to make you feel that. Take notes if you need to...
I'm an Aspie myself and I've come to realize, as an Aspie, you have to make social interaction and human emotions into a science. Observe and try to figure things out. Create theories and see if they work.
Yes, it takes longer. Yes, it's harder. In the end, though, you'll probably have a better knowledge of how it works intellectually, as opposed to everyone else that just go by their gut feelings.
Studying the subject of making people feel you will realize that yes, in fact, one way to do it is to show what your characters, and your POV-person feels.
I personally found that one great step in the right direction was to read Margie Lawson's Empowering Character Emotions. But she also has several other lecture packages that might be of interest. I've only read the one so far, but I plan to read more in the future.
One other thing you'll likely come across is that you should be cautious about copying another author verbatim. That's how you risk falling into the cliché-trap.
Masters of writing watch what others do, observe character emotions and then come up with a fresh, new way to write it.
Done right, you'll not only give your readers the emotion you're aiming for but also elation at your fresh, new way of doing it.
When it comes to mastering all these levels of writing and writing for emotions, you could even argue Asperger is an advantage to writers.
My theory is that writers have to deconstruct human behavior before being able to construct it again in their characters. Depending on that deconstruction in our daily lives at least gives us the incentive to push on when others might give up...
And, being an Aspie also forces us to be intellectual and aware of so many things, chances are we'll see things other people, on autopilot, don't notice. And that, in turn, will give us great, important topics to write about. It may even drive us to action that reverberates around the world!
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/45656. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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"Show don't tell" is a general rule which basically means: immerse your readers in your story. It's not meant literally (as others have pointed out) and it doesn't just apply to body language.
For example, don't state someone's personality then go into ordinary action and dialogue. Instead, have the character express that personality. If someone is kind to other adults but a strict jerk with his kids, don't tell us that, show it over the course of several scenes. In this case, "show don't tell" means to show us the character polite and thoughtful with his neighbor and coworker but yelling at his son and unfair to his daughter.
We all belong to multiple subcultures where words and actions have different meanings. Your gender, sexual orientation, generation, social class, race, country, and so forth are all important factors and will change how you describe a scene. Your disability is also a subculture. Your disability and my disability will be completely different from each other, though there is also a more general disability subculture.
Autism (whether Asperger's or elsewhere on the spectrum) most definitely gives you a different view of the world. And there's a strong community of people in the US and many other countries who identify proudly as autistic and work to create culture and community.
It's certainly very useful to learn how neurotypical people see the world. Not just for your own sake, but as a writer. You do need to know how an NT writer would approach a scene or a character. But this isn't your culture and you don't need to write as if you were something you're not. Just like black writers need to understand the white world to a degree but they certainly don't have to write like white people.
Autistic people have emotions just like neurotypical people do, but your communication of them is different. How would you describe someone being angry to a friend in a letter? Or if you're telling a story to a group of people? (The story can be funny, heartbreaking, silly, serious, etc, and you can imagine how you'd tell different types of stories here.)
You wouldn't just say "he was angry." But you also wouldn't say "he shook his fist at me" because that's not what would have tipped you off, right? How did you know he was angry? Show that. Now do the same thing telling a story about someone who was sad. Or frustrated. How you show this has to come from your own being. Your voice.
It's also not just about emotions. Think of your characters and what is most important to them. What don't they care about? What do they want? What are their goals? Now show them.
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I'm a professional scientist; my point of view might help. The only way I can think of is to approach it analytically. Body language is a language you don't know. There are books on it, some contradictory (giving you freedom to choose). The parts you are missing is that instead of understanding the language and becoming fluent (on paper), you are trying to translate one word at a time using a cross-language dictionary. surprise=X. Anger=Y. But of course you know people express surprise, anger, boredom and excitement in many ways. You need to become more fluent in the language than just consulting a Spanish-English dictionary one word at a time.
I like and suggest evolutionary psychology, as well. Emotions in animals and in humans serve a purpose, each one of them, that has (on average) contributed to the survival of each species. Understanding how and why we express various emotions helps you determine when, where and how emotion needs to be injected.
I suggest re-reading some best sellers you personally enjoyed, but in analysis mode. Catalog the ways that author described body language and why, at that moment, it was needed. What was the character feeling?
Sometimes the character wasn't feeling anything particularly strong. Action can be used for no other purpose than breaking up blocks of dialogue, to keep the reader's mental image of the scene from fading. We need to remind the reader that this happening in a place to people! That is one valid purpose of describing body language.
But also, people sigh in frustration, or boredom. It oxygenates the brain, to think harder or just stay conscious.
Parse the book and look for body language. The first step of science is typically classification or categorization if you prefer: grouping similar things together. That is the first step toward generalization. The next step is finding relationships between the groups. What do exultation and anger have in common? Or depression and anger? Anger can be related to both "victory" and "defeat", like exultation and depression. Tears may be expressed in anger, that is because the anger is sometimes accompanied by defeat. Tears may be an expression of surrender; people often cry when they reach a point of accepting that they have lost something they wanted, or been beaten. And crying comes in degrees; from wiping a tear away to full voice sobbing.
You can become more fluent in body language, getting past the "substitution" phase, by studying it for yourself. I've never experienced being a dog, but I have owned and trained dogs my whole life, and I have a pretty good idea of how they think and feel.
You can do that with literature. See where body language is used, what emotion the character was experiencing, and the ways that emotion is being expressed. In best selling books you yourself enjoy. Not to plagiarize them, but to generalize your own understanding of how emotions get expressed bodily, with those body parts, so you can then go from the general to original specific prose.
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You say other's emotions are clear to you when people are giving verbal hints about them - when they're saying "this is fascinating" etc. This is one tool you could use in your writing.
You can hint at emotions through the way a character talks. Commas and repetitions stress what is important; a character whose speech is more abrupt than usual, perhaps skipping "unnecessary" words, is under some sort of tension (whether positive or negative), etc.
You can imply emotions. For example:
"blah blah blah" Adam swallowed; soldiers didn't cry. "blah blah blah"
By the statement "soldiers don't cry" I have implied that Adam is struggling not to burst into tears, for whatever reason. Whatever he's telling, it's sad. This is implied by the fact that he has to tell himself not to cry.
For your POV character, especially if you're writing in first person, you can also sometimes explicitly state the emotion. "That made me angry" is much more natural than "that made me clench my fists". In fact, a character who is in control of himself might be boiling inside while showing very little outward signs of it.
If your self-reflection skills are good, you can try observing yourself when you are surprised, angry, etc. In conversation with others, you're busy doing other things than self-observing, but when you're on your own and something you read, or something on TV elicits a strong emotion in you, you can take a moment to note your own non-verbal cues. As an example, reading a tense passage in a book, I might be biting my knuckles; or pacing nervously around the room, book in hand. If I'm watching something exciting, I will be leaning towards the screen, eyes wide. Etc.
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