Last night I set up a scene from an imaginary novel, in which a police detective says too much to his superior officer (a guy he doesn’t get along with). The imaginary author (who would appear to be me. I’m not sure how that works) is trying to give us some background on the tragic roots of our hero’s (his name is Slade) obsession with an unsolved child murder. But the method he chooses—having Slade unburden his heart to a guy he doesn’t even like (and certainly doesn’t trust), rings false for any reader with a minimal amount of human experience.

So how could the author convey this information to the reader more naturally?

Here’s a couple possibilities. Both options involve cutting the narrative off after the first line of the 13th paragraph: “Slade took a deep breath.” (If you haven’t read last night’s post, it’s probably a good idea to go back and do that, because I’m not gonna recapitulate it here. Do I have to do everything for you?)



Possibility One:

Slade took a deep breath. He willed himself to calm down, to stuff his emotions. “This guy isn’t worth the trouble I’d get into arguing with him,” he told himself.

Aloud he said, “Message received. Can I get back to work?”

Cherhofsky picked up some paperwork and waved his hand as if he’d already forgotten the matter. “Get out of here,” he said. Slade got.

Back at his desk, he sat for a minute with his eyes closed. He tried to think of calm, pleasant things, of blue skies and golden fields of grain, ripe heads waving in the breeze. But somehow, without his meaning for it to happen, the breeze in his mental picture became a storm wind, and the golden fields became an ocean of snowdrifts, and there it was again—the scene he could never forget. Himself, only twelve years old, tramping through the snowdrifts, crying, “Danny! Danny!” And then he spotted a shape under the snow that was somehow different from all the other shapes, and he knelt beside it and brushed the snow away—

That’s one way to do it. You can go on with the exposition from there.

Or—and this is often even better—you can use a trigger to set off the memory. This is a good technique because it concretizes the character’s thoughts. Also it’s something every reader has experienced. The trigger is an external stimulus—something heard or seen or smelled—that takes the character back to the relevant memory.

However, a trigger “right out of the blue” at the wrong point would be too much of a coincidence. Not that such a thing couldn’t happen in real life, but always bear in mind that coincidences in fiction are far less believable than in real life. Use them sparingly. As a general rule of thumb, you can use a coincidence to kick off a plot, but using coincidences to advance the plot doesn’t generally work. Holding the trigger until Slade gets back to his desk, and having it come out of left field, is too much. But a trigger pulled inside the scene with Cherhofsky would work.

So let’s back up again and put Slade back in Cherhofsky’s office.

Possibility Two:

Slade took a deep breath. He willed himself to calm down, to stuff his emotions. “This guy isn’t worth the trouble I’d get into arguing with him,” he told himself.

Aloud he said, “Message received. Can I get back to work?”

Cherhofsky picked up some paperwork and waved his hand as if he’d already forgotten the matter. “Get out of here,” he said. Slade got.

As he Slade passed through the door, Cherhofsky glanced up and said, “And try to look professional for a change. Jeez. Your shirt’s hanging out there.”

A moment later Slade found himself sitting at his own desk. He couldn’t remember walking down the hall or entering the bullpen.

“Your shirt’s hanging out.”

Had Cherhofsky noticed a change in his expression when he said that? Had he gone pale? Stopped in his tracks for a second? Given himself away completely?

He couldn’t remember a thing.

What he could remember was the freckled face of his brother Danny looking up at him, blushing, so many years ago. How many times had he said to the kid, “Hey, your shirt’s hanging out!” Danny could never seem to keep his shirt-tail in. It probably had to do with how skinny he’d been, and how he had to twist his hips around to walk.

And then his thoughts took him back—against his will—to one terrible winter day….

Both these endings are quickly written, and not great prose. But my point (I hope you see it) is that both of them are great improvements over the scene’s original ending.

They’re better because a) they’re more natural; more like how real people act, and b) because they involve showing the reader a picture of the memory, rather than having Slade describe it.

Show, don’t tell. Words to write by.