^ Honestly, its not that big of a deal. Readers aren't going to go "ooh, she used an emotion, lazy lazy writer". The problem only arises when you do all the work for the reader, giving them everything all the time. Showing, in this sense, makes your reader do some work themselves, asking them to think about why a character is doing a certain thing, how an object became a certain way, things like that. Which, obviously, isn't always preferable - sometimes the subtext leaves a little too much room for interpretation, or the emotion/idea you're trying to communicate is so vital to the story that it needs to be stated definitively, in which case the better idea is to tell readers exactly what you want/need to.
Adverbs can be very lazy words to use in that context. I don't see a problem with them if they're used sparcely, but over use of them can just seem clumsy, childish, and unprofessional, purely because they're quick and easy choices - they don't require much tact. It can actually come across as being patronising to the reader, if you ask me.
one movie does not a standard make!... and was it a good, well-written/directed movie, or a piece of 'blank'?
Oh the movie I watched was most likely a cheap budget film, poorly written. But as a child I didn't notice and ate up every word. I guess, when you are 11 years old, telling is a bit more relevant because you aren't quite thinking for yourself yet and sometimes ambiguous concepts need to be explained. Then it makes me wonder, would fiction written for people under 12 years old have more telling than showing?
Agreed. There's no way you can tell a story by JUST telling, or JUST showing. You have to do a little of both, or the story becomes flat and boring. That being said, I do notice more showing than telling in modern times, perhaps because of the trend society has taken with TV/technology, and not wanting to wait for anything. Everything has to be instantaneous, and we have to be constantly entertained. I think this might be why, in some cases, authors tend to show TOO much, throwing more and more action to try and keep readers engaged, and thereby taking away from the story itself. Some of the older authors that come to mind that have significantly less showing are JRR Tolkien, Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens. Part of me thinks their kind of writing would not be tolerated, if it were written today.
For me it depends on what exactly I want to convey in a particular paragraph. "He rolled his eyes and huffed a sigh." - Obviously conveys irritation or exasperation "'blah blah blah' he said in an irritated tone." Or maybe I don't understand the difference yet...
For some reason writers of things for children (the early readers and independent readers -- not as much for YA) tend to like to tell rather than show, or do more telling than showing. While some telling is necessary here and there, the books I find the best to read out loud to my kids at bedtime are the ones with more showing. I'm reading a book called Magyc to my kids at bedtime right now. While it's not difficult to read, I find myself leaving out useless dialog tags and sometimes even rewording stuff that is awkward to read aloud. I find myself getting bored with paragraphs of telling and sometimes shorten them up. I'm not sure what the mindset is for writers of children's material (books, movies, or tv.) I don't know why they feel it necessary to tell things rather than show them, but it is annoying to read.
An example of lots of telling: Anime. Because of all the dialogue to fill time slots. And anime is great.
I tried to search the forum for some help for this, but didn't find anything that satisfied me (or then I just don't know how to use the advanced search properly), so I decided to make my own thread. So my problem is - how does one go about developing the necessary skills that are needed to effective, and vivid "showing"? I've been reading the story reviews for a day now and one thing I've learned about myself when reading other people's stories (and the reviews of them) that I really do suck at "showing". So far I've been concentrating almost exclusively in "telling" and now that I've begun to open my eyes a bit, I realize that that may not be a very good practice after all. So how does one go about learning how to "show" effectively? Do I just need to read houndred books from the "classic" authors and hope that my skills would become better over time, or is there a more effective way of teaching myself that? Are there any books that concentrate on the subject? How does one go about with this problem. Because I do think that is one of my problem areas that I need to be focusing on from the very beginning... How did you develop these kind of skills? I know that this must sound like such a "beginners' question" but I don't care. I know my weaknesses and I want to start working on them, so any kind of advice is highly appreciated. Thank you, Fable
The method I found that worked best for me when I was trying to tackle this issue was to first write the story out and not worry about showing vs telling. Next, as you edit the story, see how many "telling" lines can be included in the dialogue and how much is honestly unnecessary to the plot. Eventually, your subconscious will begin to make the transition from telling to showing for you.
I think one can develop the skill without having read too much. “Showing” is the skeleton of a story. It’s essential. Example: I found the bully with the squirt gun. He stood below me, smoking a cigarette. He coughed and threw the half burned smoke into dry bushes. I shifted the brick, and it scraped. Trying to be quiet, I lifted the brick and dropped it. With a splat, the brick struck. “Telling” can make a story more interesting. Example: I found the bully with the squirt gun. Yesterday he’d beat me up in front of everybody. He stood below me, smoking a cigarette as if it made him cool. He coughed and threw the half burned smoke into dry bushes. What a thoughtless bastard. I shifted the brick, and it scraped. I don’t want to make too much noise. Trying to be quiet, I lifted the brick and dropped it. With a splat, the brick struck. There wouldn’t be no more trouble with that one. Now for the others… No one wants to read too much telling. I noticed a lot of unpublished fantasy novels start out with long histories. Sure, some readers might won’t to sit through a fake history class, but not many. Telling can sound preachy too. Don’t tell the reader how bad the cops are to your pot-smoking teenager and expect the reader to side with the teenager because you said so. Example: Telling Billy stuffed his pipe in his sock. Damn, I smell like weed, he thought. There’re those caps that always mess with me. The big one’s really a prick. They’d given him plenty of trouble, even broke his nose and said he resisted arrest. Showing Billy stuffed his pipe in his sock. Damn, I smell like weed, he thought. He walked faster, but the cops’ eyes found him. The big cop can over and spoke. “I remember you. Little Billy Bitch.” The cop put a flashlight in his eyes, and told him to open them wide. He slammed the flashlight into Billy’s nose, causing blood to shoot down his shirt.
Probably the best way to understand the difference is to reads lots of novice stories. Wherever you feel like "Hey, I already know this," or "So why do I have to know this anyway?" that's a big clue that some subtly or overtly more elaborate way of showing the reader what's going on would be helpful. There is no dramatic line between "showing" and "telling," so much as a matter of HOW you "tell" your story and why (and how interestingly) you include certain details (rather than others), and what any particular detail adds to your story, its atmosphere, or your character's persona. Every tidbit should have some reason for being other than summarizing something for a reader just because you're not sure he could figure it out for himself. I don't ascribe to the theory that details should simply be moved into dialogue, because there's a very big danger that doing so will be perfectly obvious to the reader. The difference between showing and telling is a lot more like the difference between having someone phone you up and describe the story they're writing and allowing you to "experience" the story by what happens to your imagination when you actually read it. That's my two.
other than taking a creative writing course, the only way to 'learn' how is to read lots of writing by the best writers and 'absorb' how it's done... and, if still necessary, study and even analyze the ways our finest writers do it... imo, that's the best of all 'courses'...
IMO all dedicated writers would have such worry some time in their career. I think reading other works do help, but the more effective method is to get on the writing and edit later, which would likely require massive amount of work. Best of all, have some dedicated editor together in the boat (friends, family with high mastery in the language). You'll grow with your work. Last word; writing should be fun, editing too. Scan it, hammer it, burn it, hack it all and plant it back. Have fun with language. Just an opinion. I'll be back! Hey, I did this too.
A large part of showing vs. telling takes place in connection with emotional states. Telling about a character's emotional state tends to be a bit thin, because emotions and sensation are both subtle and complex. Pinning them down with an adhective or two doesn't do them justice. The first instinct may be to say that Zack was angry. You can refine it more by deciding whether he was mildly annoyed, offended, seriously pissed off, enraged, or murderously out of his flippin' skull. But assume for a moment you;re not inside Zack's head. He's right in front of you, and you just felt a need to step back from him. Why? What did you see that told you what was going on in Zack's brain? Showing is conveying these cues to te reader instead of telling the reader the conclusion you came to. Zack's jaw tightened, and his eyes narrowed. Zack leaned forward, and his hands clenched into fists. Zack stopped talking, and is glaring at you. Or he is talking in a low, tight tone and choosing. His. Words. Carefully. And he is turning red, and his shoulders a scrunching up. Or maybe you're picking yourself off the floor, wondering what hit you. The thing about showing is that it doesn't nail it down to a single conclusion. If Zack is turning red, is he irate, embarassed, or just overheated? The cues let the reader draw the conclusion, and therefore you restore the subtlety that is lost by telling. Even if Zack decks you, is he furious, or is he terrified and desperate? A misture of feelings probably led to the attack. By not nailing it down, you let in the possibility that it could be several feelings all whirled together.
Thank you all for your answers. I am sorry that it took a while to answer back, but I've had a long and busy day. So, I guess I should start reading other writers' works/books and analyze them as best as I can (yeah, I still suck at analyzing other people's writings - but hey, got to start form somewhere, right?). Do you have any suggestions where to begin. I'd be especially interested of Science Fiction (I don't know why, but lately I've been very fond of Sci-Fi stuff - even though I've very much disliked Sci Fi my entire life), Horror and Humour. What books have you found to be especially rich and vibrant in the way of "showing"? I was looking through the local bookstore and came up with Neil Gaiman's Sci-Fi book that looked interesting enough. I just don't remember its' name...
for the best of sci-fi, read the classic novels and short stories of the acknowledged 'greatest of the greats': poul anderson isasc asimov ben bova ray bradbury robert heinlein jules verne h. g. welles
The McSweeney's collections of stories have a really broad range of genre stories, from well-known authors to first-timers. You can probably get a real good picture of what works better and less well to your read. I still think a great place to begin to hone your critical skills is by reading novice writers where you will see pretty easily where you feel they need more "showing" than "telling," and you can begin to think about what you would do to make that difference. Others' comments will give you some clues, too. That'll give you some ways of comparing published stories where there may be fewer show vs. tell deficiencies. You don't have to review stories in order to learn from them, either, so you needn't feel intimidated by letting yourself make your own private decisions. Just get a feel for what works and what doesn't work, and why that's so for your own reader's ear. Published works tend to make you feel as a reader that if something's not to your liking, it might be because you just haven't read it well enough. I think it's important to learn both what does work as well as what doesn't, and published works will have less of what doesn't than unpublished work where the writer is still trying to learn the very same things that you are. Reading those stories will exercise the critical reader inside you, and that goes a long way toward recognizing what a really good writer has done to make it all work.
To begin with, try to write exclusively through telling - I mean, absolutely everything that is not physically showable, cut it. The writing will suck, obviously, but that's not the point. The exercise will hopefully let you pick up on ways that you can show the reader something where you might be used to telling them. Almost as importantly, it will show you where showing fails, and where you need (or it is better to) tell a reader something in a more obvious way.
I might just try that. Sounds like just the kind of "reverse-engineering" thing that I like So I went to bookstore today and there were a few books by Isaac Asimov on the desk. "The Complete Robot" seemed great, so I picked it. Robots and androids are the main reason why I've got interested of SciFi so suddenly. And I read a few short stories from it and I was blown away. I loved the stories, and if the rest of the book is anything like that, I can't wait to read it through. And I did manage to pick out some parts here and there, where the narrator was showing something instead of telling. I do realize that most of the time I have troubles figuring out wether something is being told or shown. But I guess that comes with time and experience. So I'll be extra careful when I'm reading, and hopefully by the time I've read 10 000 pages of text I will be able to start seeing patterns and understand the logic behind how it all works. Well, here's to hoping at least...
Remember too that there's no ideal, and it is primarily a stylistic choice as to how much showing and telling you do. You might find some convergance among some writers, but in general it varies as much between person to person as any other aspect of writing.
