Ok, this must be a me thing, because I can't seem to break the curse of 'too much telling' no matter how much I try. I have read many articles on the matter and a few of them are very good, even saying what words are showing and what words are telling. It certainly doesn't help that when people say 'there's too much telling' when giving feedback, they often neglect to give examples of the paragraph in question in showing format. I even "get" that famous quote "Don't tell me about the moonlight, show me the lucent beams dancing through the glass" but I still, STILL persist with telling instead of showing. I know what words to use, but I also know it's not as simple as simply plugging the right words in (otherwise everyone would "understand" it and it wouldn't be such a common topic). There are many guides online about show VS tell, but very few of them (even the excellent one written by a user here) give you exercises and the like to help you practice. I recently lost my cool (briefly, and apologized right after, but still) in another thread. I have to apologize for that but I don't think people understand. I've been told 'there's too much telling' for YEARS, and every single time there's no example given on how to convert a given paragraph to showing. Usually the comment is very blunt (typically little more than 'there's too much telling' ) and it reads as being a little robotic, feels like a school teacher slapping me on the wrist with a ruler. What I'm asking for isn't advice on showing vs telling (There's a pretty good article by a user here that I like) I'm more looking for writing exorcises that I can do to break the curse of always telling and showing instead.
I'm not aware of any exercises for that, aside from just gradually learning to recognize it and how to change it, and when each is appropriate. I'm working on that myself, including how to tell artfully like so many classic authors could. What makes it so insidious is the fact that as you said, you can't just swap out words, it requires an understanding of what's going on at a deep level in sentences, or maybe even deeper—at the conceptual level. It's one of those things like POV—a primary lens we view everything else through—so it requires re-thinking the way you've been thinking. You need to step outside of your normal way of thinking and be able to examine it and fine tune it. That takes a sustained effort over time. The best thing I can think of if you're having trouble is to post some work that you think is too telly in the workshop and ask for help fixing it. But ultimately the only way to learn something tricky, once you've studied as much material as you can find on it, is to just wade in and start doing the work, however badly you may do it in the beginning. And realize that it's going to take some time.
I asked you this in the other thread - do you understand what the difference between showing and telling is?
Posted in the other thread, with the way my brain functions, I kind of get it but I kind of don't at the same time. Like in the other thread I posted an example of what might be showing, but I also know it's a bit more complicated converting my own writing into showing. It's easy enough to see the telling, and to read examples of what showing might be. It's still kind of convoluted to convert my own writing into showing on a second attempt though.
Exercise: start with an object either outside or in your house. For example, there is a vase of dead flowers on my dining room table (telling). instead of saying the underlined.... describe it. the dull color of the brittle petals stood out against the bright red of the vase. Remnants of the beauty it had once been lay cracked and shriveled on the cluttered table, the brown stems leaning in the stagnant water, desperately reaching toward the ray of sun that crept across the table. (showing) It can be over the top, it can be wordy, it can be poetic, it can be anything you want it to be. The purpose of the exercise is to show the scene/object without telling the readers what it is. from my description, a reader can piece together that i'm talking about dead flowers. Exercise 2: pick an action scene. maybe you're at a mall. describe what's going on instead of saying "people are walking around, shopping, looking at things, etc. Maybe you're sitting on your porch watching the birds. try to describe it without saying the word "bird." again, the description of the actions can be wordy or ridiculous or poetic... the purpose of the exercise is to describe the actions. once you get the "showing" down, you can add things like: she panned over the melancholy room. The dull color of the brittle petals against the bright red of the vase, drew her eye. It saddened her; Remnants of the beauty it had once been lay cracked and shriveled on the cluttered table, the brown stems leaning in the stagnant water, desperately reaching toward the ray of sun that crept across the table. She moved it into the sun, hoping its stems would straighten and the petals would soften to its original beauty. She knew, however, that would never be. Dead is dead. There's no coming back.
I read your post in the other thread. I can see where the confusion is. It sounds to me like you think showing means telling, but just in a more descriptive way. It isn't. Telling is where you simply give information to the reader. Showing is where you actually expose the information to the reader through what is happening in the scene. Let me give you an example. Telling: Jezry and Rinna lived on the planet Talos, which was many light years away from Earth. Showing: Jezry looked up at the twinkles of stars in the night sky. "I wonder which one of those is Earth?" he asked Rinna. Do you see the difference? I haven't just told you that they live on a planet far from Earth, but it is immediately apparent. They're obviously on another planet, because they're wondering which star is the Earth. And the sentence acts as a hook into a scene which allows the two characters to be developed. You could tell the reader that they are lovers. Or you could show them interacting with one another in a way that lovers would.
That makes a bit more sense, I can see the difference a little more clearly with this example. Still gonna be tricky converting my telling into showing, but I kinda get it a little more. Probably going to wait until I finish writing the whole story before I go back and edit. I think with previous examples the showing was a few descriptive words mixed around and phrasing changes. This example is a tad more clear.
When people put in time and effort to try to help on your thread, the polite thing to do is respond to them. Say something, maybe thank them, or at the very least click the Like button. If you ignore them they're likely to remember and stop helping you in the future. The internet works like real life does, you're still supposed to show some common courtesy.
Telling for me is a mind set where I distance myself from the scene and rather than go through it organically (in the mc's shoes) I've stepped outside and am watching them behave like when I'm either watching a movie or explaining a movie. Kinda like a deconstructive mode stripping illusion for the core motivations. I take for granted everything mood, objects, and jump ahead not allowing the reader to pick up the implication of gestures - I've explained all that to them. I've thwarted the scene. For instance in my novella Not Pink - here's the opening - Now if I was in tell mode - I would've wrote something like - That's not to say that I can't do this but I'm sure as hell going to have my work cut out for me continuing to milk suspense in a scene where I just told my reader what to think and feel rather than letting them decipher that for themselves.
I actually liked the two recent posts in the other thread (literally and figuratively) and reading them actually gave me an idea for a prologue (kind of, but not really as it's only the night before) to show Meiji sneaking about a place. I do think I'll make a habit of tossing likes to posts that I end up liking after reading them. Not many forums I go to actually have a like/dislike function so I was perplexed by it being there at first. Also liked @peachalulu 's post too
? I literally just said I'd be giving more likes out and replying to feedback more positively? I don't get this reaction at all...
naruzeldamaster - what Xoic is saying is that thanking people who try to help wouldn't go amiss. Not just through likes, but expressing the word "thanks" in a post.
Actually you said you'd start giving likes to posts that you like. I scrolled up, and there are several posts you haven't addressed at all. If you plan to address them now, you didn't mention that fact. And yes, as @Naomasa298 said, actually speaking to people like they're human beings is far better than just clicking the Like button. Clicking the Like button or just saying thank you is decent, but extremely minimal. It's far more considerate to just say something to someone. I mean, this is a message board, not a 'let's just Like each other's posts' board. It's here for communication. What if all the people who posted above had instead just clicked the Like button, and there were no actual responses to your question, how would that make you feel?
So I'm being called out because I'm not replying to every post immediately as I see them? Sometimes I can't think of a response right away and if I can I'd often like to say a little more than 'thanks I'll consider it' Sometimes I literally just forget to reply too until I make the time to post. I've already said I'll be communicating more often to more people, but I won't be able to change my posting habits overnight. (the intent was never to be rude, but I am kind of selective of who I reply to and why) Also I have gotten a few notifications of just getting a post liked and it didn't bother me that much. I don't expect every person ever to reply to something I post.
I'd like to say that can't believe that we've reached that point in the arc of the human condition where grown adults are arguing about whether someone gave someone else a like... sadly I can, but enough is enough... knock it off the pair of you, this here is a writers forum not a kindergarten Xoic - you're not the forum police, if you don't like how someone is or isn't responding to posts either ignore it or report it to us Naruze - when someone who's not a moderator tells you how to behave don't squabble with them either ignore it or report it to us For the record there is no requirement for anyone to like or respond to any post if they don't want to, however common courtesy does tend to dictate that people who are polite and courteous tend to be the people that others want to help... ergo if you are courteous to other posters they are more likely to help you again in the future (which isnt to say that you need to bloat your threads thanking every single poster... that just gets tedious for all concerned) now lets all go back to post #9 and pretend we're sensible sober citizens
hat off - be aware that you don't need to convert all your telling into showing, a story that is all showing will be deeply tedious... sometimes its fine to tell.... a good rule of thumb is to show the important stuff, tell the moderately important stuff , and leave the minutiae up to the readers imagination. (important in this context = advances plot, character or setting)
Yeah, I think as long as I have a few good examples of the same thing (that is the same details) in both formats I think I could eventually learn it, it's gonna take time though. Particularly learning when showing is best vs telling. I can remember the couple that were posted in this thread for now (I have to look through the posts and find them again though, I do like Xoic's original example still for example.) and compile the examples as I come across more of them. I do actually learn better through examples, which is why I ask for them more frequently than asking if something is telling or showing. I even like that one quote by an author (the 'show me the light shimmering through the glass' one I always mess up when remembering the exact thing) but it's a bit hard to parse in my own writing.
*Sigh* I am chronically unable to write a succinct answer to anything, but hope this is helpful. One trick you might find useful is, imagine if you put a movie camera in the scene. (A special movie camera that can capture all the senses and your pov character's thoughts). What does your camera see? ‘She hated the Duke.’ Could a movie camera capture that? No, it could capture her facial expressions, her tone of voice, her actions, possibly her thoughts (although 'I hate him' is going to be a bit unnatural sounding, remembering a specific thing about him or thing that he's done that she hates is a possibility) ‘The men joked around, swapping stories about their families back home.’ What would a movie camera capture? It would capture specific lines of dialogue, specific stories about their families, and the other men’s reactions to them. Here I’ve summarized what’s actually happening. ‘He was handsome’ I’m imagining his appearance, then telling you my opinion, the movie camera shows you what he actually looks like and lets you decide for yourself. Indeed, if you read a lot of older books, you’ll notice a lot more telling than in modern books, and the advent of movies, where telling is extremely rare, is in part responsible for that. *** I would like to note though, this is not an infallible trick. Take the following example: Take: 'Forty-three beers and two hours later, the party had gone completely wild.' and compare it to: ‘Forty-three beers and two hours later, the cops had been called three times and John was hosting a just-dance battle to the death.’ ‘the cops had been called three times and John was hosting a just-dance battle to the death’ is summary, like the joking men, not scene, yet the reader can use these details to infer that the party is wild. Meanwhile the second just says so outright, not allowing the reader to come to their own conclusions. Both are telling, but one is more telling than the other, and since I presumably did not want to write out a full scene-length party, that first example might be a perfectly good transition sentence while the second starts to become too vague and abstract to actually ground me in what’s happening. On a fundamental level, showing readers is giving readers the information they need to determine what's going on themselves. *** As another side note (because clearly, this post is not long enough.) the reason people often don't give examples of how to fix telling is there are a million different ways to do it, none of them are best, and many won't fit your story or your style. How do you show 'Her husband was a cold, abusive man'? Do you include a scene in which he is directly abusing her, do you make a note of the hand-shaped bruises on her wrists, do you create a pattern of behavior in which she doesn't want to go home at the end of the night, do you have her casually drop comments about normal things her husband won't let her do, do you include a phone call that the pov character overhears where the husband belittles her. Do you add little details about him and their relationship that build over time so it's not obvious at first but becomes clear over multiple scenes? If you want an exercise, find some sentences that are telling and brainstorm as many different ways to show as possible. Finally, as I've read your other posted work, one thing I think might help you is, once you’ve recognized something as telling (the camera is a great tool for that), and want to change to showing, start by deciding how relevant it is to what’s happening in the scene it's placed in, and how important it is that we know this information right this second. If it’s not relevant to the scene, either change elements of the scene to make it relevant or wait to introduce it (or cut it entirely, if it's not vital, I know all sorts of things that don't end up on the page). You’ll find it much easier to show information when there is something in the scene for you to work with. For example, in the opening paragraph, you tell us about how your character works for a famous thieves guild and is herself a well-known thief. However, at that point the scene is her waking up. Since the two aren’t related, you’re forced to tell. You could either start the story elsewhere where her theif-ness is more relevant or wait until you find a place where it fits more naturally to help avoid telling. Also note that when you transition from telling to showing, you might not always use the same information. For example, you might find it's easy to work in that she's a world-famous thief, but not that she's a member of a nameless thieves guild (at least not yet).
You might be overthinking this a bit. The Show don't Tell thing isn't necessarily about the description of things and objects. For example: "There was a dead dog on the side of the road." Is that a tell? Sure. Should you show it? Maybe. Or you can let the reader use their imagination to fill in the picture, which is the only reason people read books in the first place. You could spend a paragraph "showing" the dead dog. Or you could let the reader wonder what kind of dog it was? How did it die? Why hasn't anyone come to remove it yet? Etc. That all depends on context and the words around it. To use @J.T. Woody's example of vase of dead flowers, it might warrant a flowery description depending on the vibe of the story. Or it might just be vase of dead flowers. What's the rest of the story look like? Is this an important symbol sitting among a bunch of simple declarative sentences? Or are we in store for a flowery description of the table, the chair, and the curtains sitting next to it? Where you get into trouble is telling things that the reader should be figuring out for themselves. The quickest way to get a reader to close a book is by eliminating their imagination from the experience by telling them the kind of things they like to figure out on their own. Things like emotions, backstories, a character's values or moral compass, etc.
looking at the other thread the other thing is that you suffer from over telling in the sense of imparting information is a enormous dump... that's not so much about show vs tell as about constructing the story... you could just cut a lot of the telling entirely instead of replacing it with showing... and feed the essential bits in little bites here and there. which goes to what i was saying about the readers imagination if a scene ends with john storming out of his flat after a row with his partner, the next scene can open on him angrily shooting back jack at his local bar... there's no need to show or tell him descending the stairs, getting in the car, driving across town, parking , getting out the car, walking to the bar etc
Stuart Macbride has a great line where his detective is interviewing a plumber and asking him to account for his whereabouts "sure i was there, number thirty four blocked shower, buncha girls living together. It was like they drowned a womble"
Yeah kinda, it helped me grasp the concept a touch better, I take baby steps when learning new stuff and that example is a good first step. (I had always confused showing as just fancier telling with flowery words) Between the exorcise posted earlier in the thread and your example I think I can learn it with time, is gonna take a long ass time though, especially breaking the habit of excessive telling/info dump. @Idiosyncratic I agree that is a long post, but sometimes it's needed to make a point. (believe it or not, I've seen longer posts heh) I think I can understand what you're saying better with the example and explanations. Some of the other comments in the other thread did give me an idea for a sort of prologue scene, showing her actually doing her thievery shinanigans. @Homer Potvin I think my problem is that I'm overthinking it, although it took someone else mentioning it for me to realize it. that's a pretty decent bit of advice. @big soft moose I had a feeling that it may have been too much info dump, as mentioned above I think I'll go with a showing scene instead, could be a pretty good excuse to show her being a fox too.
Showing means abstraction to me. Like in the example that @Naomasa298 gives, it's about taking an element in the story and filtering it through the strainer that is the narrative so that it's being presented in a way the reader can recognise as interesting or unique or different. The element has to be plucked out so that it can be truly seen. That's what I got from the planet example. Saying it's far away is obviously telling, but having the character look at the distant starlight is showing. It's about inference and connectedness to the narrative. It needs to be integrated. Right?
