JCB's Ruminations on the Craft of Fiction #18
September 17, 2020
This week I want to talk about proportion. In writing, every words counts. We can only devote so many words to evoking the fictional situation, and the reader expects that the things we’ve chosen to focus on are the most salient aspects of the story. In other words, the space something takes up in the prose of our fiction is proportional to its importance. Paying attention to proportion is key to creating a satisfying story.
Most of us have heard of "Chekhov’s gun." Chekhov is reported to have said, "If in Act I you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act." We can think of this in terms of proportion. Anything that’s important to the story’s development must be made salient to the reader, which requires attention within the prose. To reverse Chekhov: if we know the gun will be used at the end of the story, we have to make sure the reader notices it early in the story.
The more important something is to the story, the more time we have to spend establishing it. If our protagonist needs a knife to ward off an attacker, then we have to put a knife on the table for her to grab. If a storm is going to knock out the power in the neighborhood and force our characters to shelter together and therefore finally confront the disagreement between them, then the storm needs space to be developed. On the other hand, if a character’s breakfast has nothing to do with the mugging he’s about to suffer on his way to work, then we don’t need to spend any time at all on it.
This may all sound familiar. I started off saying I wanted to talk about proportion, but what I’m really talking about is when to show and when to tell. A key to the show/tell distinction is to notice that showing takes more space than telling, which means that anything we want to show the reader will take more words to develop than something we can just tell. Showing inherently gives story elements more narrative weight, which consequently grants them an expectation of proportionate importance within the story. When we show something unimportant, it’s out of proportion to the story, and it’s probably better to just tell it.
Considering a story element’s necessary weight within the story can be a useful guide for figuring out how many words we need to devote to it. We decide with the words we choose what readers will focus on when reading our work, and if we make them focus on unimportant things, they will have trouble following the story.
Next: On the Oxford Comma