I am currently writing a scene and I have been trying to work on the whole "Show don't tell" thing, but I've come to learn there's many different depths that phrase can take. For instance in the current scene I am writing and the first thing to happen in chapter 1 of the book I am writing I have the following problem. If it's needed to be said I'll say it here, there is a like one page prologue that at this point I think I may throw out and use as material for later on parts and flash backs and start with the following situation. We have two characters, they are small and insignificant to the world, but integral to the plot, eventually. This scene is a "ten years ago" style where I show this scene then I show them all grown up. They being two runaway children, forced to face a middle earth style world. Sisters, one older and one younger, neither of them old enough to do anything (8 and 10), they were run out of their own homes because of a mystical deformity of one. Now, they aren't here for long, but I want to get this scene right because this scene sets up a lot for the rest of the book. I looked at it from many angles and I ended up deciding that of the many ways I could start the scene I wanted to highlight the fact I previously made about them being small and insignificant to the world. However, as I started to write I had to stop myself each time I took a stab at this beast. A breakdown of shows I recently watched highlighted a similar instance in the TV show "Avatar the last air-bender" In the scene in question, the cast of the show is lost in the desert and their flying pet has been kidnapped. The scene did a beautiful job at this aspect. In the shots the characters were smaller compared to the vast desert that encompassed them. They were the focal point, but the focal point in shots showing that no matter which way you looked at it, the desert was much bigger than them and they didn't have their trusty mount to fast travel them out of there. It's well done as is the show. I face the problem of writing this scene as a narrative though, and wondering how to confront this problem when I can't simply show screen shots of two kids that are tiny compared to everything else. If anyone has any tips or has written a scene such as this I would appreciate any advice or tips. How do you describe a scene in which the characters are rather minor, not in their status as characters, but in their status of the world itself. These are two children who have been walking and traveling for a while now, whom have no sense of direction, only a held up destination which they have no clear indication of going to other than what could easily be rewritten as "Follow the yellow brick rode to the emerald castle" I'm at a loss as to how to show them being small insignificant and worthless overall rather than simply saying lines like "If the two died it would make no impact on anything." How would you even start it? I'm mainly interested to see how others would do it I don't have a clue really.
I would stop looking at TV shows and movies as your examples and start looking at books. There are just too many differences between film and the written word. The strength of writing tends to be more internal than external. Like, your TV example used a distant viewpoint to give perspective on the characters - that's external. When you're writing, you may find it more useful to focus on the internal - what the characters are feeling. That doesn't mean you have to be blunt and "tell" the point you're trying to make - you don't have to say "She felt very small and alone." You can still show her isolation, but do it from her perspective, if that makes sense? Like, as I understand the scene you're using as a model, you could say something like: "She stared straight ahead, squinted against the glare of the sun, and searched the horizon. There was nothing but endless sand. She turned slowly to her right, kept staring, kept searching. The sand was so endless, so featureless, that she couldn't even tell when she'd come back around to the starting point of her circle, so she kept going. Surely there'd be something, somewhere, if she just looked hard enough..." etc. You may also want to look at how you're using the show/tell idea. If you're thinking of "show" as "paint a vivid graphic image" you're probably going to have a rough time. I think it's a more useful rule if you think of it as "give your readers the evidence they need to reach their own conclusions rather than explaining everything to them".
Yeah I'm only just starting to learn that. I understand what you mean at the end "give your readers the evidence they need to reach their own conclusions rather than explaining everything to them." It's more so the execution that I'm having trouble with. And I know that there's a difference between a video/picture having display of a scene from a written one. I meant to draw it as a parallel which you showed quite nicely thank you.
You seem to be going immediately to metaphor, where “unimportant” is communicated as “physically small.” But physically small things can be terribly important. In fact, a tiny living thing in a desert seems terribly important, by virtue of being alive. The desert would, to me, emphasize their importance. Why not go back to “unimportant” without so much focus on physical size? My first though was to show them in a city, being buffeted by the crowd, each one just one more person, totally disregarded.
