New on OUTLIERS PSYCHOLOGY AND WRITING: A Philosopher’s Insight about Show vs. Tell by Katherine Ramsland

OUTLIERS PSYCHOLOGY AND WRITING: A Philosopher’s Insight about Show vs. Tell by Katherine Ramsland

When I interviewed a serial killer over an extended period, I paid attention to two sources of data: what he said and what he showed. At times, they didn’t match. Sometimes, he knew this and sometimes he didn’t. Both responses revealed maneuvers. The former targeted me, the latter protected him. That’s the one that got my attention.

I learned this mode of psychological insight when I studied a nineteenth-century Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard. A keen observer, he’d focused on lived experience, especially our paradoxes.

Don’t worry. I’ll make it simple. Briefly, Kierkegaard’s work offers a tool for developing a nuanced dimension in your characters, real or fictional.

He defines unique psychological factors that infiltrate our personal perception. Kierkegaard coined the phrase, “truth as subjectivity.” By this, he meant that we filter the world through our specific perspective, which shapes how we interpret it. This seems obvious, and it is. But for character development, it offers a subtle layer. There’s a difference, Kierkegaard said, between the what (who we say we are and what we say about our circumstances) and the how (the way we engage with what we say). The former tells; the latter shows.

For example, my subject repeatedly said, “I feel badly about what I did.” Yet he displayed pride, even glee, over those same actions. He made detailed drawings of fantasy victims that took him hours to complete, showing that he enjoyed engaging with the thing he’d claimed repulsed him. No, clearly it didn’t.

How you are in what you verbally present demonstrates your attitudes, emotions, needs, fears and ploys. The how shapes the what: “An existing individual,” Kierkegaard wrote, “is constantly in process of becoming; the actual existing subjective thinker constantly reproduces this existential situation in his thoughts, and translates all his thinking into terms of process.”

The truth about your experience, he believed, could not be expressed directly, because a percentage of our lived experience involves feelings we cannot fully describe. For his books, Kierkegaard developed fictional essayists like “Vigilius Haufniensis” and “Johannes Climacus,” who showed their manner of living in ways that weren’t revealed in what they wrote.

We can’t fully grasp all aspects of our experience, because we’re always in it. But we’re living these aspects right in front of everyone. They see it. If they’re alert, they’ll notice our blindspots.

The offender I studied, for example, believed the narratives he’d crafted controlled what people would know about him. Through words, he’d built a double life. However, his focus on language created a tunnel vision that blocked him from seeing gaps in his narratives. He’d tell everyone he was crafty and careful, for example, leaving nothing to chance. Yet each time he committed a crime, he left multiple things to chance—things he didn’t notice until something went wrong. He was far less careful than he wanted to believe. Thus, the inconsistency between his verbally contrived self-concept and his lived manner of engagement (what vs. how) betrayed him.

Before tapping this source of personality dimension for characters, try observing this what/how distinction in people around you. Here are some examples I’ve seen:

* A woman insists, “I don’t care what anyone thinks of me.” Yet her claim is infused with emotion (she cares) and she constantly seeks others’ opinions.

* A “life coach” offers a plan for resolving conflict by listening carefully to the other person’s perspective. When challenged on one of his points, his face flushes red, blood vessels bulge on his forehead, and his voice drowns out the challenger. His conflict resolution was to dominate the other person.

* A cop says, “I’m in this job to serve others,” yet he asks others to get his coffee, finish his paperwork, and run errands.

*A mother assures her daughter that she’s keenly interested in her life, but constantly interrupts the daughter to tell her own tales. She calls this empathy, but it’s actually narcissism.

*A financial manager insists that he loves and protects his children, but he taps their trust funds for “family emergencies” and uses their identities to shield his illegal acts.

* A man brags about his observation skills but can’t recall the color of the room he just left or describe the last person he encountered.

*A woman constantly complains about her neighbor’s constant complaining.

These people are oblivious to the dissonance between what their narratives offer and how they engage with these narratives (or not) in their lived experience. Within such blind spots lies gold for your characters. Being insensible to what others can clearly see offers opportunities for character quirks and plot twists.

Katherine Ramsland, PhD

https://www.katherineramsland.net/