About "showing" versus "telling"

Discussion in 'Plot Development' started by BillyxRansom, Sep 6, 2008.

  1. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    @SethLoki is the comfort blanketer and I claim my gold star, thank you, people, I'll tease him out with a stick and aerosol to gas his sweet little face, always the same for me thinking from my box zone perspective, but myself, I like to show, don't look anybody, otherwise nobody understands what I'm writing about. I see it in other people's writing - eyes race through the paragraph and I'm entirely lost in space, or sea, possibly field, gunfight. So, I always draw up an armchair or room for my characters for you to see them properly.
     
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  2. EdFromNY

    EdFromNY Hope to improve with age Supporter Contributor

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    Afraid I can't agree. The whole point of "showing" is to place the reader in the middle of the action. If a character describes what transpired between two other people in an event that is central to the story, it's "telling". Only in the revealing of some aspect of herself - her emotional response, for example - would it be "showing". Again, it's not necessarily bad - it could be allowing the story to "fast-forward".
     
  3. Stormburn

    Stormburn Contributor Contributor

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    To me, dialogue can be showing or telling. If the dialogue is from the speaker's POV, even if they are 'telling' to another character, its showing to the reader. Now, if the dialogue changes from the character's POV to the author's,and he's using it as exposition,that is telling.
    That said, there is a time and place for telling. Let's say that your character is transitioning from from place to the next using a flight of stairs. Showing that walk up the stairs, blow by blow, may be important to the story. But, if the progression of the story happens once the character gets up the stairs, then a tell will work just fine.
     
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  4. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    This is part of the reason why the idea of "only showing" can't work. Because in the end no-one can really say for sure what showing really is. Is it telling to describe the surroundings? Is it telling for a character to state that they are depressed instead of letting the reader get the impression by themselves?
     
  5. EdFromNY

    EdFromNY Hope to improve with age Supporter Contributor

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    I agree that "only showing" doesn't work. But I don't agree that "no one can say for sure what showing really is". It's true that there are those who don't understand what constitutes showing and what doesn't, and reasonable people can disagree about examples (as @jannert and I have, above), but in the end, showing is placing the reader in the middle of the action, in the shoes of a character. Describing surroundings effectively can enhance the reader's sense of "being there", and so would certainly be a part of showing, but only in the context of the action taking place. A character saying "I'm depressed" strikes me as telling. Describing that character's loss of interest in what she needs to do, staring into space, contemplating suicide - that would be showing.
     
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  6. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I don't agree that that's the core goal of showing. To me, showing is communicating something by demonstrating it (ideally in all its complexity) rather than flat-out saying it (which usually simplifies it).
     
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  7. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    But that implies that first person could not ever be anything but showing, doesn't it? Because the reader is always there with the character in the action. There is no voice of god, there is no other perspective except that of the character in the moment and thus by your logic it must be showing. But that's clearly not true even though we are there with in the action. When a first person narrator says "My stomach flips over, the hair prickling up the back of my neck as I rush to the front door, a huge grin across my face" this is showing right? But if they say "I run to the front door, so excited that he's back" is that telling? Or showing? We're there in the action, right? And it's less visceral but it's still their thoughts, isn't it? The first one is showing because we aren't told, not because we're in the action.

    I'm sorry I can't agree with this at all. The idea that it's telling to describe the epic vistas of a mountain pass but it becomes showing simply by adding "As he hiked through the mountains he saw..." is kinda foolish. In both cases it's the same thing, the same words and in the same context too because the same action is happening in either case.

    For once in my life I find myself agreeing with Chicken. You don't even need characters to show. You don't need action either. You can show that this world is falling apart by showing the crumbling buildings and starving people and pain and misery everywhere. There's no action there, there's just ambiance and world building but it's still showing. Showing lets you build up mood and theme and feeling without saying what mood or theme or feeling you are going for; that's why it's valuable. It lets the reader get lost in the text and feel things without needing to be told what. It's not connected to action, or even really to context, and there is no clear line between what is and isn't showing or telling.
     
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  8. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Huh. I never saw us as disagreeing that much. I must start paying closer attention.
     
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  9. EdFromNY

    EdFromNY Hope to improve with age Supporter Contributor

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    That's not a goal. That's a method.
     
  10. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    However, you're just quoting a single line of dialogue out of context, which, presumably is part of a conversation. If you show the whole dialogue:

    "I'm depressed."
    Charlie pretended surprise. "Oh, really? I hadn't noticed."
    "No," she retorted. "You never do."

    That's not telling, is it? You're showing us the conversation, and allowing us to make up our own minds about what is happening.

    If the author was telling, it would be done like this:

    Karen told Charlie she was depressed. He pretended to be surprised, which annoyed her.
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2017
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  11. OJB

    OJB A Mean Old Man Contributor

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    This is the part that is 'telling.' What does 'Pretended surprise' sound like? Look like? I can't visualize it.
     
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  12. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Translated to a goal, I would say that the goal is to convey a deeper and more complex understanding and engagement to the reader. Understanding of and engagement with...whatever the writer wants then to understand. That may or may not be compatible with the goal of putting the reader in the middle of the action, and it probably often is, but it's not the same goal.
     
  13. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    I assumed we were in Charlie's POV here. But in a technical sense, you're right. However, I think that's splitting hairs. We only have words to use to convey what is happening. You could leave that tag out, but then the inference would be different. There is a lot of difference between actually being surprised and pretending to be surprised. The dialogue itself won't give that away. I saw this as if Karen doesn't know he's pretending. She thinks he actually hasn't noticed.

    If you're in a certain person's point of view, you have to describe things from their point of view—including the stuff that isn't actually being said or isn't visible. I don't know how else to do it.

    I think if you compare my first example with my second, though, you'll see what I was driving at.
     
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  14. EdFromNY

    EdFromNY Hope to improve with age Supporter Contributor

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    No, it doesn't. Just because a narrative is in 1st person does not automatically make it showing. "I went to the convention. We nominated a candidate." That's telling. "I walked into the jammed convention hall. The head of the Texas delegation , who only an hour before had threatened to deadlock the proceedings, was making his way to the podium. I grabbed his shoulder and wheeled him around. 'Support our candidate, or I'll personally lead the fight in the Senate to revoke those oil subsidies.' He hesitated. 'All right'." That's showing.

    Don't know why you think that a description would be telling. And in all cases, the goal must be to connect it to the action in the story. Otherwise, it's just a mountain pass, no matter how lovely the vistas.

    @jannert - my comment was to address the erroneous assumption that just because something is dialogue, it must by definition be "showing".
     
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  15. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    Right, exactly.

    Sometimes people do actually just tell each other things. And you can still be showing when you're doing that. What matters in terms of showing and telling is how you communicate feeling. Showing is holistic and grey and a bit ambiguous, it's using many small cues that individually could mean lots of things, or nothing at all, but put together gets the reader to feel the right thing. Telling is using one single thing to say how the reader should feel.

    Showing is something that is more typically found 'in the moment' but that's not because showing = in the action. It's because the present lends itself to this type of story telling, because you can weave in those small cues in real time, you have the space to hint and prod and imply. You often tell with past actions because the bulk of most stories is what's happening right now, in the present, and things in the past while sad or hard or important are much more likely to be "things you need to know" instead of "things you need to feel".

    And I think that is why the received wisdom is "show don't tell". Because typically in your stories present you want the audience to feel along with the characters. But that doesn't mean you can't show things in the past or tell things in the present.

    It's all about the emotional investment and impact that comes from your writing and you can use either of these in any context as long as you do so knowingly and with a purpose. It would be weird to see an action scene that was all telling, but you could well do that. If you are writing about a literal robot or a psychopath with no feelings then yeah, you can absolutely write their killing spree as all telling, because that flat emotionless affect suits that. In that context the lack of emotion is what you want. But equally, when you are describing something with zero action (say someone discovering the aftermath of the shooting spree) and show and show and show because you want the audience to feel how absolutely awful it is.
     
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  16. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    I think I get what you mean. If a narrator is directly quoting things that were said earlier at a convention—and he's addressing the reader and not some other character in the story—then those dialogue bits he quotes can be considered 'telling?' Okay, I guess I can give you that.

    However, if you have two characters in a scene, and one of them is telling the other of his experiences at the convention, then that scene between both characters plays out before the readers' eyes in real time—and that's showing. One character tells another character about his experiences, and we get to watch that happen in real time. As soon as both characters are there, the focus shifts ...even if character number two never opens his mouth. You're still watching two characters interacting in real time.

    Again, it's not what is said by any particular character that makes it 'telling' or 'showing.' In fact, it's kind of hard to conceive of dialogue that doesn't involve somebody telling somebody else something. It's the context of the scene itself. Are you showing us the scene as it unfolds, or just summarising it later on?

    Anyway....
     
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  17. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    *sighs* My whole point was that first person isn't always showing. It's your point that showing is anything that puts you there in the moment. I pointed out the contradiction with this by saying that first person always puts you there in the moment, and yet it is not always showing.

    Again; I'm pointing out the problems with your definition. I don't think description is automatically telling. You said that anything that isn't putting you in the moment is telling, which would imply that world building is by definition telling when it's definitely not.

    I never said that things in dialogue were showing; I asked if you would consider a character telling another character to be showing or telling. I asked because you've been insisting that there's a very obvious line between the two, so I asked how you saw some grey area examples off the top of my head. In fact, again, my point was that telling can be both in dialogue and connected to the scenes action.

    You've been saying throughout that showing is things that connect to the action. I've been saying that no you are wrong and here are a number of ways where that classification makes no sense at all.
     
  18. EdFromNY

    EdFromNY Hope to improve with age Supporter Contributor

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    @LostThePlot - I'm not getting into what you said or when you said it. If I misunderstood you, I apologize. The difference between telling and showing is neither deep nor difficult. And, in the end, it doesn't matter if you accept my comments or not. What matters, if one wants to be a successful fiction writer, is that one immerse the reader to the greatest extent possible in the action of one's story, and, where appropriate, in its setting. There are certain points at which the setting is not especially important, and other times when it is vitally important. The trick is to know when it matters.

    Dialogue - internal and external - is a tool. Narration is a tool. Description is a tool. Any of those can be considered showing or telling. In the end, it doesn't matter what you think you're doing. An agent won't care. An editor won't care. What they will care about is how effectively they are engaged in the story. When I write, I never think "Is this showing?" or "Am I doing too much telling?" I care only whether or not the story is engaging enough, gripping enough. YMMV.
     
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  19. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I agree that the tell/show thing isn't deep, but I can't agree that it's not difficult. After all, we have a thread full of people who are all pretty dedicated to the craft of writing and we can't apparently agree on what the terms even mean.

    For my two cents, I agree with the chicken (as I almost always do). I interpret "show" to mean giving the reader the information needed to reach a conclusion, while "tell" is just handing the conclusion over. This makes it difficult or even impossible to determine what is telling and what is showing without having a lot of context and without understanding the intention behind the writing.

    With that in mind, I certainly don't agree that "Every time a character brings out a facet of the story through dialogue, it's "telling"." Now, "brings out a facet of the story" is pretty vague, so maybe it's meant in a way I'm not getting, but I'd say just about every relevant piece of dialogue (which should mean all dialogue) brings out a facet of the story, right?

    If someone says "My first wife knew her place, but I've got some work to do before my second wife is whipped into shape." then he's telling something about his wives, but he's showing something about himself.
     
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  20. MilesTro

    MilesTro Senior Member

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    Has anyone read Ready Player One by Ernest Cline? His writing is full of info dumps. It is almost like a text box than a story that shows you what is happening. And many people complained about his work, although he got published. I only enjoyed the book because of its world-building, pop culture reference, and the action.
     
  21. OJB

    OJB A Mean Old Man Contributor

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    Sorry, Jannert, I couldn't help myself. The whole Show vs. tell I don't apply to dialogue, only to the narration. Dialogue -I feel- has its own rules and methods.

    I would type "She's beautiful," with dialogue. But in narration, I'd type -The girl in the mini-skirt had long legs, arms covered in Led-Zeppelin tattoos, and her hair was dyed pink.-
     
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  22. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    Would you do that for every single beautiful character encountered? Or, if there were some unimportant ones, would you not bother?

    Again, it's show the important stuff, tell the rest in order to keep moving.

    So I would absolutely write something like:

    Lando walked in with a beautiful woman beside him, as usual, but he shook her hand off his arm as soon as he saw Leia.
    If there's nothing significant about the woman's beauty, why waste words on it?
     
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  23. OJB

    OJB A Mean Old Man Contributor

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    I see what you are driving at, and I can't disagree. I don't waste words on unimportant characters. Even when I go out, sure, I might see a bar filled with 200 people, but I am not going to be able to detail all 200, only the ones that stick out.
     
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  24. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    I can see why you would say that, because dialogue always has more ambiguity to it no matter what. When the narration says something then the reader accepts that as being true with little quibbling. The narrator said it so it's like that. And that is a very direct kind of telling. By contrast; within speech characters can lie, they can be wrong, they can be deliberately leaving things out, they can just be deliberately mean; all kinds of ways that what a character says is not to be accepted totally at face value. And, in being something with nuance, even if they are stating things and telling, the way they say it shows us something about them. It might not be something important about them, but there's a reasonable argument to be made that every word in dialogue shows us something. I don't quite subscribe to that, but certainly I think that word choice and style and phrasing can show things even when the character is doing what otherwise would be telling.
     
  25. MilesTro

    MilesTro Senior Member

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    Some readers will use their own imagination to visualize the character. If a character is mentioned beautiful, I would think she looks like a supermodel or something. A few more details could help too.
     

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