Don’t Explain, Reveal
Don’t explain your story, reveal it and let the audience work things out for themselves.
Aleksey Popogrebiskiy’s 2010 film, “How I Ended This Summer”, opens with a striking image: a young man, Pavel, sits atop a rocky cliff, tossing stones onto an ice shelf far below. He’s listening to music through his headphones. Beside him sits a shotgun.
We watch Pavel carry out some unexplained, vaguely scientific—and slightly unsettling—tasks before he wanders back to a shabby research station in the wilderness. Inside, an older man, Sergey, is tending to run-down scientific equipment.
Pavel enters the hut and quietly enters figures into an ancient computer. Sergey follows, holds out his hand, and demands the return of the shotgun cartridges. Dismissively, Pavel opens the shotgun—nothing. He searches his pockets—still nothing.
An awkward pause.
Sergey opens his desk drawer, produces the cartridges, and hands them to Pavel with a pointed comment about bears.
Barely a Word of Explanation
From this small, almost wordless exchange, we immediately piece together a rich backstory:
- Sergey has warned Pavel about bears before.
- Pavel has forgotten the shotgun or cartridges at least once before.
- Pavel thinks Sergey is a rule-bound bore who always insists he knows best.
- Sergey thinks Pavel as careless and arrogant, and likely heading for a fall.
- This tiny moment reveals so much. Because we have to connect the dots ourselves, we’re more engaged and more invested. We sense the unspoken conflict, and we know it will resurface—raising the dramatic tension.
And, because we know how stories work, we sense that bears and carelessness will reappear in this story.
Revealing is more Powerful than Explaining
What if, instead, the film presented a lengthy, heated argument where Pavel and Sergey laid out all their frustrations? There’d be more obvious conflict (what every book on screenwriting says you need), but everything would be spelled out, so it would actually be much less interesting.
Beginning writers love flexing their dialogue muscles by writing long arguments. But spelling out a story detaches the audience.
And not just in the moment. We’ve all seen enough movies to know that if the story is going spell out everything from the beginning, then it’ll probably keep doing it. No need for us to pay attention. It’s not a movie anymore, it’s just chewing gum for our eyes.
Which leads us to one of the great aphorisms about filmmaking:
DON’T EXPLAIN, REVEAL
Don’t explain the story to the audience; reveal it to them. Supply just enough dots, and let the audience join them.
Too much explanation discourages engagement.
Revealing just enough encourages the audience to become actively involved in completing the story.
Instead of being semi-engaged voyeurs, the audience become participants – each of them actively creating their own personal version of your story.
