In Kit’s Wilderness by David Almond, Kit deals with losing his grandfather to Alzheimer’s disease. Many chapters are spent with him worrying internally. In one scene, Ally, his best friend cast as the lead in the school play, gushes about her acting skills and how great she is for being cast in the lead role. He looks at her and says, “You. It’s always about you!” He gets up and leaves her very puzzled. Ally is perplexed as to what caused the outburst, but Kit never says. Later on in the novel, Ally is present for one of the grandfather’s episodes, where he can’t remember where he is and falls down in a fit of confusion, and it all makes sense to her. It’s never stated that she now understood why Kit was so edgy, but it’s implied.
Lesson learned: Rather than explaining the main character’s actions to the secondary characters, a technique to “show” would be to put the secondary character in the midst of the event that is causing the main character to act the way he or she does.
In Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson, the author takes the tell approach. Leslie tells Jesse that the reason Janice Avery, the school bully, acts out is because her home situation is less than ideal. The Almond approach would have Jesse and Leslie witness a glimpse of Janice’s poor home life, maybe as a relative drops her off, or overhearing a phone conversation or overhearing a snippet of a parent-teacher conference with a relative of Janice.
This is definitely a technique I’ll be filing away for future use.
