Say it, don't show it

I’m generally not very interested in meta-writing, which is to say, writing about how to write. But for the last few years I’ve had a single sentence from Dickens hanging around on my desktop in a tiny text file, which I open up and re-read from time to time. It’s a moment from The Pickwick Papers. The titular character is attempting to board a stagecoach. It’s crowded and so he has to get on the roof, which is a bit of a challenge because he is old and portly. A passing stranger, seeing his predicament, offers to give him a hand. What happens next is described as follows:

‘Up with you,’ said the stranger, assisting Mr. Pickwick on to the roof with so much precipitation as to impair the gravity of that gentleman’s deportment very materially.

If you’re a fluent reader of the Dickensian style of English, these few words will conjure up a whole short film inside of your head. You might actually have to stop reading for a few moments to let that film develop and play out. And while you’re doing that you might savor the arch and clearly self-aware phrasing that Dickens is using here, which unto itself is a way of poking fun at Mr. Pickwick and his social circle.

A common bit of advice given to people who want to become writers is “show it, don’t say it.” Applied to the above scenario it would probably balloon the description to multiple pages. A “show it” writer would first have to provide a description of the stranger, emphasizing that he had a cheerful and helpful, if somewhat simple-minded disposition combined with great physical strength. Then there would have to be a blow-by-blow description of exactly how the stranger laid hands on Mr. Pickwick to “assist” him (the word “assist” all by itself would never do since it is a “say” rather than “show” kind of word). We would need a description of what specifically transpired after Mr. Pickwick had been “assisted” onto the roof, and an account of the damage inflicted on his clothing, accessories, hair, etc., all to th…