I want to give a shout out to Pat Rothfuss  index.asp.  There is a very valuable writing lesson in his novel A WISE MAN’S FEARS.  I had read THE NAME OF THE WIND when it first came out, and now I finally picked up Wise Man’s for my trip home to New Mexico for the holidays.

I’m very much enjoying this book.  Kvothe is a terrific character, and the framing device selected by Rothfuss works beautifully.  But today I’m here to praise a choice that he made in Wise Man’s Fears.  The set up is that our young hero is told that perhaps he ought to take a break from his studies at the arcane university because of a court case.  A friend sets him up to work for a nobleman in a different country.  There is a discussion about the dangers of a sea voyage versus a land journey, and I thought “oh no, here we go.  There will be shipwrecks and pirates and sharks and god knows what else.

And then Rothfuss surprised and delighted me.  He skipped it all.  Because it wasn’t relevant to the story he was telling.  The framing device is that Kvothe is telling his life story to a chronicler.  He is hitting the important thing.  The things that made him into the man he is today.  So Rothfuss dispenses with the journey in literally a paragraph.  He basically says there was a storm at sea, pirates, robbery, the upshot being that he arrived in the new city broke and dressed in rags.  I literally jumped up and gave a shout of joy over this elegant choice.  Because none of this so-called-action was relevant to the theme of the story he was telling.  Instead we got to see how Kvothe used his actor background to bluff his way into the palace so he could present his letter of introduction.  How his arcane training helped him serve his new lord, etc. etc.

Some may argue that he skipped over events that would have been exciting.  I don’t agree.  It’s only exciting if it’s important to the story.  Otherwise it ends up feeling like filler.  How many movies have we seen recently where you can hear the audience give an annoyed sigh when yet another CGI action extravaganza begins when all they really wanted was to see if the girl and guy get together, or if the hero finds his father and learns his identity — in other words something real that matters.  That is about human connection.

Think about the latest Hobbit movie.  The only authentic moments in that movie were the ones with Bilbo when he tries to reason with Thorin, when he takes the arkenstone to Bard the Bowman and Thranduil, king of the woodland elves.  The rest of it is sound and fury signifying nothing.

I had made the decision that in my current space opera I’m going to jump two years to two really important scenes between my hero and heroine that occur as they are graduating from the military academy.  I’m skipping two years because while I could make up some events to fill those years what happens during them is not relevant to the story.  And who really wants to read about the classes characters are attending?  I was pretty sure about my decision, but after seeing what Rothfuss did in THE WISE MAN’S FEAR any doubt I might have had about my choice was swept away.

I think the “show don’t tell” meme has been taken too far in writing and it can lead a beginner into a swamp.  Sometimes a simple declarative sentence is really what’s needed.  Not a detailed description of every step in a journey.  Or as my old boss on Star Trek used to say to me.  “Just say the words, Melinda.”