By Sherry Shahan
As a fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants writer, my early drafts spill over with excess words. I’m fascinated by my characters and long to be part of their daily lives. Pages fill as soon as my protagonist rolls from bed each morning. And then there’s breakfast . . .
The show-don’t-tell edict was etched into my writing style from the beginning. ‘Showing’ gives readers an intimate story experience through plot, actions, sensory details, thoughts, and feelings. Not by the author ‘explaining’ what’s happening through exposition and description.
True enough. However, paragraphs that do little more than follow a character through menial tasks can slow the pace and tension. Unless the activity is humorous or offbeat with subtext, character reveals, or other foundational information.
To clarify, a scene takes place in real-time as a dramatization. A summary happens over condensed time in which the storyteller guides readers.
In later drafts, I ask myself, ‘Is this scene moving the story forward?’ If not, I experiment with replacing it with a summary to accelerate time from Point A to Point B. Especially when transitioning from the present to the future or when the protagonist shifts emotions, attitudes, or perspectives.
Here’s a summary rewritten from a scene. It appears midway through my middle-grade work-in-progress:
‘The scalding summer sun drew a chilling mist from the river. Fog made it impossible to tell where the water ended and land began. Breathing the murky air became difficult, and the old ones stayed indoors. Many slept day and night and neglected their chores.’
The paragraph condenses time and sets an ominous tone for what’s to come. The following excerpt is from Jamie Fitzpatrick’s novel The End of Music, an interwoven story about a young woman in a small town, and the point of view of her son more than 50 years later.
‘They switch to red for dinner. Carter breaks the cork and has to push the rest of it in to pour. They drink and spit flecks of cork. Soon he is finding out things he never knew. His wife hates her hair and has never found a style that can minimize the expansive of her forehead and the impossible thick bridge of her nose.’
The husband’s (narrator) tone is humorous and influenced by an evening of drinking with friends. The passage gives us a trifecta of mood, setting, and character.
Donna Leon is a New York Times bestselling author known for her series of crime novels set in Venice, Italy. This snippet appears early in Transient Desires and follows a summary of young people out on a Saturday night: ‘drinking, and moving from one group to another . . . ’
‘The two young women had been chatting with two men, and some hours later, two men had taken them to the hospital and left them there. There was no sign of sexual activity, nor was there any evidence that either girl had attempted to defend herself from an attack.
“What’s wrong with this picture?” Brunetti muttered to himself.’
Leon chose to summarize the men dropping two women at the hospital. We’ve all seen play-by-play scenes on TV showing someone being taken in for medical care, interacting with professionals, etc. Do readers need to be reminded of how it works?
I have all the information I need in the duel-sentence paragraph. I’m both hooked and intrigued. What happened to these women? Why were they taken to the hospital? Police Commissioner Brunetti is also curious. I’m firmly in the mindset of the protagonist.
DC Diamondopolous is an award-winning short story writer. Captured Up Close: 20th Century Short-Short Stories is a collection of flash fiction spanning 80 years, from 1912 to 1992.
This short extract comes from “1934: The Children’s Hour.”
‘Jean escaped into books, museums, theaters, and music recitals. For a few hour, the stranglehold of her homosexuality vanished into a novel by Pearl Buck, a painting by Matisse, a musical by Cole Porter, or a recital of Gershwin.’
In two sentences, note how much we learn about Jean’s personal life and artistic sensibilities. The tone and point of view never slip into ‘reportage.’ It’s a great example of breaking the ‘show don’t tell’ rule.
As Diamondopolous explains, “ . . . summary was necessary to show how Jean dealt with her homosexuality over a period of years. In a few words, we see she is tormented by who she is and how she copes with it.”
When to consider summary over scene:
- Readers need information, but it isn’t necessary for them to experience it firsthand.
- Juggling a large cast with multiple POVs.
- When the story needs to cover a length of time in a short amount of space.
- A moment in time that offers little dramatic value.
- Transition from one scene or period of time to another.
- To give readers background information briefly and clearly.
What happens if you insert a brief summary into a lengthy scene or conversation? Likewise, try experimenting by adding real time drama within a longer summary.
The challenge is finding the write balance.
BIO: Sherry Shahan is best known for her adventure novels Frozen Stiff and Ice Island. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, taught a creative writing course for UCLA Extension for 10 years, and was nominated for The Pushcart Prize in Poetry, 2024, and The Pushcart Prize in Short Fiction, 2025. Visit her website here.
