About "showing" versus "telling"

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

  1. captain kate

    captain kate Senior Member

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    You can't...not really possible. Even the best written classical novel still has telling in it.
     
  2. Rapscallion

    Rapscallion Active Member

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    It's about finding a good imbalance between show and tell in order to keep things moving. There's a knack to learning where to place what.
     
  3. captain kate

    captain kate Senior Member

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    Exactly, a lot of battle scenes are big mixes of showing and telling or they'd go one for pages and pages...kind of like David Weber's do...
     
  4. digitig

    digitig Contributor Contributor

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    Jack is partly right. Every declarative sentence is, strictly speaking, "telling", but that's not what the advice means. What the advice is usually about is whether you are telling something the reader will see ("showing") or not ("telling") -- the latter might be going inside a characters head, it might be telling the author's interpretation; something like that. The current fashion is for "showing" to predominate, although it is a fashion, and in the past the fashion was pretty much the opposite. And it's true that beginners tend to "tell" far more than fits in with the current fashion. But that most certainly doesn't mean that "telling" is bad, or that it should actually be avoided. If you cut "telling" out completely the result will be just as unreadable as if you tell too much. It's just that the former error hardly ever occurs in novice writers. It usually only happens when the "show, don't tell" message has been badly taught and hammered in.

    If a good teacher tells you that you are "telling" too much, what they are saying is that the text didn't engage them; it read more like a textbook than a story. Their suggestion is to move to a more descriptive style with less interpretation. The key thing is that the teacher didn't find the text engaging. If they enjoy reading the text then they will be looking for how you succeeded, not looking for defects. That's valuable feedback, and gives you a suggested way of improving.

    If a bad teacher tells you that you are "telling" too much, what they are saying is that they are unwilling to give a personal opinion and are looking for simple tick-lists that they can justify if they are challenged. That is only valuable feedback if you have the option of changing teacher.

    The way to tell the difference is that the latter will flag absolutely every instance where you write something that cannot actually be seen. The former will look at whether you choose well when to "show" and when to "tell".

    For what it's worth, in isolation "showing" can seem unduly verbose, which is another sense in which I think Jack is right. In isolation, the "showing" examples often are worse than the "telling" examples. It's only in a larger context that sustaining reader engagement starts to matter. Out of context, "showing" is just a worse way of telling!
     
  5. prisonchild

    prisonchild New Member

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    ulysses was written in the stream of consciousness style, there was very little (if any) telling.
     
  6. captain kate

    captain kate Senior Member

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    And your reaction should come if, when your first readers say that. Because one person makes that comment doesn't mean the writing style is wrong. Each person has their own opinion on writing. If several people make the comment, then you need to seriously reconsider.

    I still stand behind my original comment.
     
  7. MilesTro

    MilesTro Senior Member

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    It is hard for me to show and not tell. Sometimes my sentences sound like they are showing, but I don't know if it is telling.

    Also when I read other people's novels, sometimes I do not understand what the characters are doing or feeling.

    Pretty much you just use action words to describe what is going on instead of using words that name stuff.
     
  8. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Mostly, showing involves presenting directly observable cues instead of the conclusion the observer draws from them.

    For example, Mark is looking you straight in the eye, talking very quietly and slowly. He's standing unusually close, and leaning forward slightly. He's close enough that you would step back if you weren't already against the wall.

    Your conclusion is that that he is angry. Saying that he is angry would be telling, but describing what you actually perceive is showing. Yes, it requires a bit more from the reader. That is not a bad thing.

    Have you ever played tennis? Basketball? Any sport? If you play against superior opponents, your own game is always better. Your readers are not opponents, but "playing" to a superior reader makes you a better writer. Assume your reader has a keen eye and a quick brain, and you yourself will write smarter.
     
  9. B93

    B93 Active Member

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    I'm always afraid that I'm losing some readers - they aren't all superior readers, Sherlock Holmes, or a psychologist, or see the world the way I do.

    In Cogito's example, is Mark secretive or angry? If the accompanying dialog was even slightly ambiguous about that, it would make me insecure.

    So I've been accused of showing and then also telling the same thing. It's hard to know where to draw the line.
     
  10. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Insecure as a writer or a reader? I suspect that the reader would enjoy the slight mystery of puzzling out why Mark is acting that way.

    Edited to add: And, yes, exactly the same passage can be telling one thing and showing another. If you say, "Mark didn't get out of bed until that evening," then you are 'telling' the reader what Mark did that day. But you are 'showing' that Mark was in an unusual emotional or health state. There are increasing levels of "telling" or explaining or spoonfeeding or whatever you want to call it:

    1) Mark didn't get out of bed until that evening.
    2) Mark was very depressed the next day, so he didn't get out of bed until evening.
    3) The next day, Mark was very depressed about Jane's decision to go away for the weekend, so he didn't get out of bed until evening.
    4) Mark was very depressed about Jane's decision to go away for the weekend. It raised memories of childhood abandonment by his mother. He was so depressed the next day that he didn't get out of bed until evening.

    And so on and so on. Showing/telling isn't all one or the other; it's a spectrum.
     
  11. Michelle Stone

    Michelle Stone Member

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    Permit me to show from my own writing:

    This is telling:

     
  12. captain kate

    captain kate Senior Member

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    Exactly, Michelle. Once of the easiest ways, that I've found and I'm sure someone will argue with me over it, is if you have nothing but very short sentences when in narration, or description, your telling. Telling is very jarring to a reader when it's done constantly, instead of in a mix, because each sentence doesn't flow and feels very choppy.
     
  13. JackElliott

    JackElliott New Member

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    Not exactly a fair comparison. Sure, when presented that way, who would ever want to 'tell' things to the reader, when they could 'show' them all the lush, lovely details?

    But not all exposition is told in such an awful, dreary way.
     
  14. MilesTro

    MilesTro Senior Member

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    The showing example sounds more like a story about the old man than the telling example.

    The telling example just tells what he looks like and what he likes.
     
  15. TrinityRevolution

    TrinityRevolution New Member

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    I really have to agree with this. Not saying #4 was bad, because it was a well formed sentence, but I found that living (and basically dying) by this rule lead my writing down a very long, boring and clunky path.

    If you're able to show in a way that provokes mental imagery it's a very great way of writing.
     
  16. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    But I don't think that "show, don't tell" is about imagery. I think that "show" doesn't mean, "describe visual stuff" but "demonstrate".

    This makes me want to rephrase the advice as "demonstrate, don't pontificate." I rather like that, but that's probably just the rhyme. :)
     
  17. TrinityRevolution

    TrinityRevolution New Member

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    Demonstrate is more appropriate I think, now you mention it.

    I'm one of those people that doesn't mind a lot of verbs, adjectives and what not, because I feel that I don't have to read so much as they kind of help get things straight to the point.

    The only major issue I have is repetition, which I suffer through reading and in my own work. It tends to come about through too much description. If I ever read anyones work on here; just a note... I like to know what a character looks like, but once is sufficient.
     
  18. superpsycho

    superpsycho New Member

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    Showing is about imparting to the reader the personal perceptions and emotions experienced by the characters. A narrator’s physical descriptions of places and action are dry and lifeless, where a character’s impressions of those same things, come from their feelings and state of mind, so they have impact for the reader. However, it cannot be all show and no tell. There are times the story needs show and others where tell is more effective. The trick, for any writer is to know when to do one versus the other, at key points in the story.
     
  19. MilesTro

    MilesTro Senior Member

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    When do you know when to show and tell?

    It is hard for me to know what I should show and what I should tell.

    It seems like most authors tell more in their books than how they show it to their readers.
     
  20. superpsycho

    superpsycho New Member

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    The obvious time is when a character uncovers or discovers something but any big decision or turning points are also places where you typical ‘show’. It gives the reader an understanding of how those points affect the characters state of mind, motivation and emotions.

    Revelations to the reader are more often the places you want to ‘tell’ since a short quick reveal often has more impact.

    Example of a great tell: “Luke, I am your Father.”

    There is no fixed rule.
     
  21. captain kate

    captain kate Senior Member

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    Now this is just my style, but I have a rule of trying to have at least on thought, third person wise in a paragraph, so to keep the reader up to date with what she's thinking. Also, a lot of times, when I need to develop a paragraph, I listen to the first person thoughts of the character and switch them into third. The reader will think you're character is a robot otherwise.
     
  22. superpsycho

    superpsycho New Member

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    Exactly, just because it's third person does not mean the narration should come from an emotionless robot god from on high. You want to give a characters perspective whenever possible, otherwise there is no depth or flavor to story or characters.
     
  23. MilesTro

    MilesTro Senior Member

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    Sometimes I feel like being in first person of the character's mind is necessary to read what the character is thinking and feeling. In third person, I think that only the action should be shown.
     
  24. superpsycho

    superpsycho New Member

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    I always become the character the focus is on. It doesn't matter what person the story is in. Third person is just a device to give the story more perspectives.
     
  25. TrinityRevolution

    TrinityRevolution New Member

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    I think a great example of the balance I like is "Samson's Lovely Mortal"

    It's light erotica, and I have no idea why I chose to read it, but it's a great story, and the only vampire book I've read.

    It's just the type of sarcastic story telling I like. It "tells" most of the time, yet it works in the way it's meant to.
     

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