Point a camera at it

You've heard it before: show, don't tell.

But do you believe it?

Do you worry that your essay explains your ideas clearly, uses vivid examples, and covers all the important points—yet somehow still feels flat? You can't figure out why readers aren't connecting with it. The problem might not be what you're saying, but how you're structuring the experience.

Pablo, an Argentine software engineer in Amsterdam, had this exact problem. He'd written 1,500 words about "rebuscar"—an Argentine concept meaning the ability to solve problems with whatever you have at hand. But his draft read like a reference document rather than an essay that readers would want to finish.

The solution involved a simple test that transformed how Pablo approached every paragraph: "Could you point a camera at it?"

The Problem

Pablo's draft opened by mentioning that he and his girlfriend were watching a Netflix show about Argentine culture, then quickly pivoted to abstract explanations: rebuscar emerged from historical crises, it shows up in card games, it relates to the Malvinas War and financial instability—all in rapid succession.

When I asked Pablo to identify the specific scene that prompted the essay, he had one: watching the show with his girlfriend and explaining cultural references she didn't understand. She paused it. She asked questions. He explained. But this concrete moment—the actual dramatic situation—was buried deep in the draft, replaced by exposition.

I pointed to the structure: "We don't actually say what happened. We say she's watching a show, and she paused it... I'm saying, pick the scene. Tell me who said what to who, and what made her pause. Give me a scene that perfectly illustrates this concept of rebuscar, and that's when she pauses. And now she is a stand-in for your reader."

Pablo was writing like he was compiling information rather than taking readers on a journey.

The Solution

I introduced the "point a camera at it" test. Every idea in the essay should be grounded in a concrete moment that you could literally film—specific people doing specific things in a specific place.

I used David Gessner's "Learning to Surf" as an example. Gessner threads the abstract concept of "weak stability" through concrete surfing scenes: arriving in a new town, going to the water, trying to surf, falling, learning, quitting, visiting Pelican Island. The structure has forward movement with a clear beginning, middle, and end. It's a simple story—guy learns to surf—but that simplicity makes it concrete.

I suggested Pablo restructure around the simplest possible story with his girlfriend: "Could be just watching a movie, could be you did something weird and she didn't understand why, but try to think what is the concrete beginning, middle, and end of this piece, because the journey that she goes on is the journey that your reader goes on."

For the opening, I recommended adapting David Foster Wallace's technique from "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again"—using a list of specific, tangible observations: "After moving from Argentina, as an Argentine living in Amsterdam, I have seen this. I have seen that... I have gone 700 days without the electricity cutting out. I have seen a public announcement apologizing for a late train, a train that came 2 minutes late."

The Outcome

By the end of the session, Pablo had:

1. Identified his core structure: Status quo (everything works in the Netherlands) → Destabilizing condition (but this creates a gap in understanding Argentine adaptability) → Solution (the concept of rebuscar explains behaviors that seem irrational)
2. Clarified his 2-3 key points about rebuscar: it's an adaptation to context, it's used to solve real problems (but also causes them), and it manifests in Argentine humor when problems can't be solved
3. Recognized his recurring narrative device: His girlfriend serves as both a character in specific scenes and a stand-in for his reader—someone from the West trying to understand Argentine culture

The assignment: develop each key point through focused free-writing sessions, then assemble them into a coherent narrative arc. Every reference to the TV show, card games, or historical events must be anchored in an observable moment, not explained in the abstract.

The test for every paragraph: "If you removed all the commentary, all the philosophy, all the everything about rebuscar, and just looked at the concrete actions that people are performing—could you point a camera at it?"