A book called "The Emotion Thesaurus" is a fairly cheap investment that gives a list of physical and emotional responses a person might do or feel from a whole host of different emotions. A quite invaluable tool when looking for the right way to 'show not tell' without recycling the same expressions.
Thanks, guys. I'm just starting out writing, and this is the biggest hurdle I'm trying to get over. The "show don't tell" has just been coming up over and over in criticism o my writing. But I find that specific feeling very hard to do that with.
Eh, that you keep getting the criticism, does this mean that multiple reviewers tell you the same thing, or are you using this description multiple times in your story? Assuming it's in one scene, the reason we get those feelings is only because we're tending to our regular senses. People normally look around, their eyes scan their room or the road, and most of the time we're not aware of it. If you do a little people watching, you should notice that people occasionally look up from their work or book or whatever, and they just glance briefly at the area around them. Most of our senses are used the same way, but it's mostly sight and sound. The reason you would look over your shoulder at all while driving is because you're doing that scanning, and in this case, the sound of the car alerted you. But of course, your brain didn't consciously register it. Since our senses are tied to our feelings, that's why you have that feeling. But you probably knew all of that already. Fortunately, just about everyone does. Which means you don't really have to worry about getting this across to the reader. A simple "Alice looked over her shoulder and there he was, his eyes fixed on her..." should work fine. I think you only need to convey that it was a feeling or sense if you want to highlight that fact for some reason. Just make sure you actually have a reason that is relevant to the scene.
Well, here's a few examples from four different stories: 1) No answer. He peered around the door, only to see that there was no one inside. Henry was starting to feel like he was losing his mind. Yet, he had a feeling like there was someone else there. 2) She remained on her knees near the bed, then slowly crept over to the top of the stairs and gently lay on her stomach. Crawling towards the edge, she was overwhelmed by a strange and unsettling feeling. 3) relief was short-lived. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and goosebumps formed on his arms. He suddenly had a bad feeling again and turned around. To his horror, the body that had been on the table, the one that Martin had been sure was dead just moments ago, was sitting up. He could feel its eyes on him, even though the sheet still covered its face. 4) He walked downhill a ways, and found a tough patch of manzanita. He didn’t know much about the outdoors, but he knew that manzanita was some of the best firewood you could find anywhere in the world, so he started gathering as much as he could. As he was grabbing his second handful, out of nowhere all of the hair on his body stood on end, as if the air around him suddenly became electrically charged. He had a funny feeling like he was being watched. He looked back and noticed that he couldn’t see their campsite anymore.
If I feel watched, I usually get this slow uncomfortable sensation around my shoulders and neck that then move down my arms and spine and I feel more aware of my body, get stiffer, and it's a little like the onset of fever. Don't know if this helps to some way to describe the feeling It might be different for your character of course
Just strike that and you're fine. You mentioned the goosebumps and neck hair, that's the show. There's no reason to tell us he had a bad feeling. You should showed it. Have confidence that the reader will get it the first time. Once is almost always enough. Any further modification suggests that you the writer are not confident in your statement, and that we the readers are too dumb to understand it. This is probably the most common mistake all writers make. Everyone does it over and over. There's no cure for it. The trick is to kill it in the edit, and that will come with experience.
I don't actually see those as bad. Maybe it's a matter of using "had a feeling" too often rather than it being inherently bad? That said, it makes me think of the filtering concept--the difference between "She saw a bird fly past the window" and "A bird flew past the window". I'm wondering if this is filtering rather than show/tell. (And, both filtering and show/tell are pretty simplistic terms for more complex concepts, and filtering and telling aren't always bad, etc., etc., but ideas need labels, so those are the ones I'm using.) If I were to de-filter your examples, both in terms of senses and feelings: No answer. He peered around the door, but there was no one inside. Was he losing his mind, or was there really someone there? relief was short-lived. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and goosebumps formed on his arms. He turned around. The body that had been on the table was sitting up. Looking at him, through the sheet. He walked downhill a ways, and found a tough patch of manzanita. He'd been told that manzanita was some of the best firewood you could find anywhere in the world, so he started gathering as much as he could. As he was grabbing his second handful, the hair on his body stood on end, as if the air around him suddenly became electrically charged. He looked around warily, and realized that he couldn't see their campsite anymore. I skipped the second one, because I'd need to know more about the feeling.
I've got another example of a WIP. It's a short story set on a small rocky island. The M.C. is standing outside and hears a terrifying sound come from the water: [Her muscles tensed up. What the hell was that? She immediately had a feeling like she was exposed. ] So I guess my specific question is, how can I SHOW her feeling exposed, rather than tell? There's a small 4 room cottage on the island as well if that helps. Thanks again, guys.
Random possibility: Her muscles tensed. What the hell was that? Arms folding, she glanced in all directions, suddenly aware of the openness of the landscape and the visibility of her position. Maybe it was time to get back to the cottage.
Following up on @ChickenFreak 's excellent suggestions, my advice would be to focus on physical sensations and actions. I think especially if it's something that could be observed by someone outside of the character's POV it would be more "show" than "tell".
I'm thinking that when you referred to her as feeling "exposed" there was some more specific sensation or visual lurking behind that, even if you were struggling to see it. Really, I shouldn't have presented a rewrite; I should have suggested that you quiz yourself, things like what does the setting look like? What is she doing? What is she looking at? What makes her feel exposed? Does "exposed" mean vulnerable, in the sense of danger, or just a lack of privacy? If it's danger, what's she afraid of? Etc., etc.
It sounds like you're experiencing much of what I was experiencing when I first started writing. Besides doing a TON of research on show vs. tell, one of the methods I used to become better at showing was to take a scene and write it out in a million different ways, then seeing which one fit with what people call "show." What I learned is that I really suck at "showing," but can get around that by diving deep into my POV character's head. For example: A strange feeling washed over him. Turns into: What was this feeling? It was so . . . strange, like being lifted into the air and being pulled through the ground at the same time. Experiment and try new ways to get around saying "he felt this." In all of your examples you have the word "felt" in some form or another, so just rewrite those scenes in any crazy way you can come up with. If something sounds too wild or stupid, write it anyway. That's really the only way to find your personal style
If I may...by diving deep into your character's head, you're not "getting around" showing. You're showing. That's what showing is...at least, that's how I've always interpreted it. Sure, maybe the writing itself could be tightened up (and that can be said for a lot of people, myself included), but it sounds like you've got the idea down.
The skin of my neck tightened like a drum. I looked to my left, and the driver pulling past turned his gaze straight ahead, but not before I saw him staring at me intently. I mean I think he was staring. My stomach felt tight, and my fingers tingled from their tight grip on the wheel. That is showing. it focuses on the physical reactions and visible signs, not on the literal thought. The reader can empathize with the sensations, and recognize the thoughts that bring them about. It's literally a visceral reaction when the feelings in the guts are mentioned.
(Ignore the title) I believe that you get lazy when you are not challenged by others perceptions. You start to believe that your writing is flawless. I was inflected by this thought and had my story suffer for it. I got lazy and simply told things that should be expressed in an entertaining manner. And sense I cannot remove this thread and don't want that awful text lingering on the web, I would just like to thank everyone for being candid and respectful even though there were much to ridicule about my text. I will put it up on the workshop sometime soon and I'm looking forward to more of your comments.
Showing ≠ dialogue Telling ≠ narrative The issue with your question is that you are conflating show & tell with dialogue & narrative. This is not correct.
Ah, I see. Alright, I'll change the question: do you prefer narrative or dialogue? I've been reading Dune for the first time and there is no narrative whatsoever, which I got to admit has its charm, even if it is very confusing in the beginning when you don't have any context to all the names.
I'd rather not learn this at all. This example is an info-dump, designed to clue in the reader on key information that he'll need going forward. Unfortunately, it reads like a textbook on economics (and, sadly, a poorly-edited one). ETA: Both dialogue and narrative are good...in their own way. Too much of either is bad. And what is too much is a matter of taste and circumstance. It's been years since I read Dune, but I don't remember it as being all dialogue.
I have no preference. It really depends on how the writer makes use of the two. Yes, DUNE is very dialogue heavy, and yes, I love that book. I am just now reading The Handmaid's Tale, which contains next-to-no dialogue, and what little dialogue there is so far is reported as part of the narrative. In both books, the writers have used their respective choices with care and intent. DUNE is very very event-driven, so we are given the events, as they play out, and the fun of the story is in piecing the complex web together ourselves. The Handmaid's Tale is a journey inside of a person as she engages a very changed world, a world that she knew before and after the change, so we are given her internal psyche, even the strange thoughts that we all have but we don't admit to others because no one wants others to know these strange things we all think. But the above segment you quoted, as already mentioned, is an info-dump. The issue is not whether it is created out of narrative or out of dialogue. The issue is wether this is needful information, and if it is, then it needs to be better woven into the story.
I don't see any problem with your example. I usually think of show and tell as referring to characters more than the narrative itself. Like, don't tell us your protagonist is a coward, let us see it through their actions. I think you were right not to pad out those details by inserting them into many different scenes. I think of that kind of straightforward storytelling as like the 'Oner' in film (a scene that takes place entirely within one take) in that it is designed to move the story along fairly rapidly.
