Show me, don't tell me!

I have found this book super helpful when it comes to showing emotions instead of telling readers what the character feels:

https://www.amazon.com/Emotion-Thesaurus-Writers-Character-Expression-ebook/dp/B07MTQ7W6Q/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA65iBBhB-EiwAW253W483acb1GZaLcoIChD5t1Ku_pGFaKwwnMumEBRruJBxkN6H5tlYjDhoC8_4QAvD_BwE&hvadid=241899962101&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1026424&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=14279732215478494191&hvtargid=kwd-38152069101&hydadcr=8481_10382987&keywords=the+emotion+thesaurus&qid=1613148718&sr=8-1&tag=googhydr-20

 

Actually this sentence is two layers of tell*, one nested inside the other. In the first part the subject is It and the verb Occurred. In other words, it happened or a thing occurred. It being a thought, something inside his head. And happening is just as much of a weasel verb as is, was, were, be, exist etc. Just another slippery form of to be or to exist. The most passive verb imaginable.

Then in the second part the subject is The Feeling and the verb is Stopped. To stop being a nullification of movement, total non-action. But it's pushed farther from immediacy by the Had, making it past perfect, dropping another filter between any action and the reader's experi4ence of it.

So that part is super passive mega-telling, but it's hard to see any way to express any of that stuff through direct physical showing, and it is a horror story where the creepy feelings people experience inside are a big part of the action. I'd say that part is deep telling, but that it's fine because it helps set the creepy mood of inner dread. Telling isn't always bad.

* D'oh! It's actually 3 layers of tell! The third part being "he could no longer see". Weasel verb alert! And even the extremely passive act of seeing is negated by the 'no longer'. But again, it all sets up an atmosphere of inactivity where no action is possible. In a world where the undead walk the Earth this seems extremely appropriate. Direct action becomes impossible, and that's where a lot of the horror comes from. You can't fight the creeping undeath.

 

Anyone have some ideas on the best way to write say a scene similar to this with limited telling (beginning at 1:39, and especially around 2:33)? What the character sees, does, etc. is obvious to write. But I think there is a lot going on in his mind that can't be fully expressed with regular showing. Of course this could be because my talent is limited:

 

I wish I did! I come from a background of filmmaking/animation, and much of this comes from silent movies or movies with long wordless segments. I could think of a few good examples of that, but I don't know of any written examples unfortunately. I'll see if I can come up with anything.

Silent filmmakers who switched over to making talkies say something beautiful was lost from movies when they became mostly about people yakking it up and doing everything through dialogue or explanation, but they also say there's no way they'd go back because doing it without words (including the title cards they used to show on camera for far too long explaining things) takes too much work.

I know, as writers words are all we have to work with. But it just means avoiding narration, dialogue and inner monologue. Instead work only with description and action. And it just occurred to me, this probably means writing in 3rd person Objective. Weird, I never made the connection before! Now I think I understand why I tend toward that in my own work.

 

But you agree with me that it works, don't you?

The immediacy is brought right back when he goes back to the grave and the feeling of being watched hits him again.

I think the mental image he gets in the second sentence is a pretty jarring contrast to the passivity of the sentence - he's just imagined the dead little boy lying there with his eyes open. *shudder*

I think when there's no way to show the feelings and thoughts in a character's head, telling counts as showing. As you said - it's what works that counts (insert vampire-related pun here).

 

This segment of Breaking Bad is from very near the series finale, if not the final episode itself, and you've got Walt/Heisenberg now in full Heisenberg mode walking through his former house, the very symbol of his former life as a weak man with a loving family that he would do anything for. The house, like his life, is now destroyed, a gutted shell of that happy life. And of course now we have the entire rest of the show behind us, we've experienced the change along with him, the growth into a strong fearless man and then into a monster (much like Jeff Goldblum's transformation in The Fly). Every room is charged with memories for us now as well as for him, so we relive those memories even as he does while he strolls through the debris and ponders what's happened to him, to his life, and the lives of his family and loved ones. It's basically a big silent looking back moment, and designed to be exactly that. Much of what happened before happened through telling, with dialogue and explanation etc all along the way, but it's happened now, and it can be recapped through this stunning purely audio-visual experience (silent film stuff).

It occurs to me that pure showing is in many ways similar to meditation, where you begin by shutting off the stream of endless words that flow through our minds and obscure pure direct experience. Important to note that, if you were writing that Breaking B?ad scene for a book, you would want to avoid saying "He saw" or "He remembered" and remove the filters. Instead describe what he saw and what he remembered directly.

'He saw the bedroom walls, cracked and riddles with bullet holes now, and he remembered the gunfight when it had happened.' This comes across as an outline for the story you eventually want to write when you get around to it, and that story would be more like: 'Bullet holes riddled the walls. The walls he and his son had painted years ago. The bullets had destroyed not only the walls but his life, and the lives of his family as well.' I'm sure given some time I could make that far better, it's off the top of my head. I'm not sure about the last sentence really. It's reminiscence. That takes place inside the head. Is it showing or telling? It might be borderline enough to not matter, and I tried to avoid all the weasel words and filters.

 

Oh yeah, it definitely works! It sets up the creepy atmosphere and the sense of dread perfectly. As for whether it's telling or showing, it feels pretty telly to me, just as my last sentence in the above post does. But maybe it's grey-zone enough to not matter? Or maybe I'm being too much of a show purist lol? But my aim in this thread is to try to separate pure showing and pure telling and find the zones in between.

 

Yes, technically it's about 8 episodes from the finale, but it's a flash forward to the final episode, but all of the back story is already known by both episodes.

 

Does anyone care to write a more showy version of this?


As they were driving home later that night, Jack tried to joke with Nicole in the hope of having a night of passion with her. "I gotta tell you, I think your attractiveness is a reflection of your mom's. She's hot!" he said.

"You think my mom is hot?", she scolded. "That is super weird."

Realizing the gaffe he'd just made, Jack went into damage control mode. His eyes were moving fast between her furrowed brows and the road. A cold sweat began to trickle down his face. "No, I mean she is hot because she looks young just like you," he stuttered. A red light began to flash in his mind. When you are in a hole, stop digging, said his inner voice.

Uncomfortable, Nicole shrunk back in her seat. An awkward silence descended.

 

This is directed @Bruce Johnson concerning his last post.

That's actually an important thing I learned from Breaking Bad. It's peripherally important to this thread I think, enough to justify posting this here, because as I said, it's the history the viewer shares with Walt that allows all this showing to work with no telling.

I came to realize Vince Gilligan and his writers kept doing this thing that made certain scenes and episodes unforgettable. They've led up slowly and inexorably to a huge showdown or fight or encounter of some kind, and skip no opportunity to let the viewer know how powerful it was going to be. Like the fight between Jessie and Tucco out in the desert. It had been brewing for several episodes in a row. Jessie was unable to control himself when he should have kept his mouth shut. He and Walt were Tucco's prisoners and it had already been demonstrated many times that Tucco is an impulsive and maniacal monster who will kill for the sheer joy of it if somebody gets on his nerves. He's also unpredictable, and can be strangely magnanimous at times for no apparent reason. So here's the unstoppable force and the immovable object, or some variation of that conundrum.

And of course finally Tucco reaches his limit and begins the beatdown. And it was spectacular! On that show they took no halfway measures—if there's going to be a fight it isn't a few quick punches and somebody lying on the ground, it's gonna be epic! They stretched it out, Tucco always in absolute control, Jessie barely able to survive those death-dealing punches that we've already seen demolish the face of one of his own henchmen. And Walt watching helplessly, wincing at the obvious pain his friend and ally is suffering and pleading for his life.

Then after the fight I noticed the camera lingered in the area where it happened, so for a good long time afterwards we see Walt sobbing and moaning in despair, Jessie covered in blood, beaten to an unknown degree, possibly dying, and Tucco exultant and filled with manic excitement—the post-battle frenzy of a berserker. And everything in the area, all of which was neatly ordered at the beginning of the scene, is in tumult now. Flowerpots and bird baths broken and knocked on their sides, big blood splatters all over everything that was formerly clean, etc. All of it—the facial expressions, the breathing, the moaning and sobbing, the excited exultation of the bloodthirsty victor, displaying to us all over again the visual record of the battle. The camera dwells on these kind of scenes for a good long time, letting the viewer soak it all in.

it's exactly what was done in that video you posted above. Just swap out the setting from Tucco's desert hideaway to Walt's family domicile, and bulletholes in walls etc for all the tumult we just witnessed. It's the visual reminders of all that intense violence, and the fact that the violence itself wasn't gratuitous but viscerally moved the story to its next stage and toward its extremely emotional denouement.

 

How about you start?

 

I wrote another piece. Where do I need to change to make it more showy?

He strode down the stairs and opened the door. The rain was lashing down in the unseasonably cold spring night. He handed the delivery boy a $100 bill. "Keep the change," he said, enjoying the look of delight on the drenched boy's face.
The cheesy pizza was dotted with green bell pepper and salami. It looked fresh and hot, wisps of steam rising from it. He couldn't help but think about the contrast between the staleness of his life and the freshness of his meal. Seven months ago, he could have enjoyed this pizza. He would have. But now, with everything going on in his life, nothing gave him joy. Not even a mozzarella-drenched, gorgeous pizza.

 

Generally, "being showy" and "brevity" sometimes become mutually exclusive. I guess it's a delicate balancing act.

 

I just saw the other thread, that got shut down. You said it's important to use the senses, like seeing, hearing, smell etc. This is true, but it's also important not to just use the words saw, felt, heard, smelled etc. That makes it telling. Instead you need to directly make the reader see what he sees, hear what he hears etc.

In other words, don't just tell us he saw something, describe what he saw so the reader sees it. Don't tell us he smelled bad milk, describe what it smelled like (or as Naomasa said on that thread just describe his facial expression on smelling it).

 

Really liked your informative post and its accompanying examples @Xoic - clear thinking and expressed well. Ought to be sticky. Kudos

 

How much telling do you try and eliminate during the first draft? I've found out that trying to eliminate telling and replace it with showing slows things down so much it can really be demotivating on a longer piece.

I do like that with tools like Scrivener you can post in the side of the editor notes about problem areas and also highlight words that you know will need to be revised later.

 

Currently I sometimes use telling (or just write vague nonsense to get the basic idea across) but when possible—if it occurs to me this way, I'll try to show right from the beginning. But for my latest I'm composing it in Google Docs and wherever I know I'm throwing down a placeholder that needs work I'll mark it somehow, by changing the color or using the Suggest function which puts a green strike-through line through the original (leaving it still there to be read) and you can also write in a suggestion beside it, which shows up in green. Then later you can go through all these and make decisions about them. Google Docs makes it easy to find them all quickly.

But as you get better at showing, you start to write that way right off the bat. The parts where I don't are parts I'm struggling with, or where I'm just writing like an outline, knowing I need to re-do it later. Those parts I write in blue.

 

What alternatives are there for those verbs? I mean a way of writing about those that is not telly. We already talked about smell and how we can show facial expression in reaction to a smell.

 

It's not a simple matter of replacing a word. I mean, instead of He looked you could change it to peered, gazed, stared, or any number of alternatives, but they're just fancier ways of telling the reader he looked at something.

You have to drop the whole sentence and instead find a way to describe what he saw (felt, heard etc). And that's going to be completely different depending on the situation. See, this is a large part of what makes it more powerful than telling. Telling is very generic. Showing is specific.

He might see:

A sexy girl bending down to tie her shoe
An 18-wheel truck bearing down on him
A man with a gun running at him
A beautiful sunset
An orangutan in the town square juggling milk jugs

And these are still pretty basic, almost generic ways of describing these things. For each situation you need to find how to describe it to include a sense of his reaction. Because really, each of these phrases would just follow "he saw".

So, if for instance he sees a big truck bearing down on him, let's say it's moving into his lane and the driver isn't aware he's there, how would you write that so it's exciting and powerful?

Maybe—
Suddenly the 18 wheeler next to him started angling into his lane. Shit, there was a car right behind him, he can't just drop back and give it room! Desperately he hit the brakes and leaned on the horn, hoping one or both drivers would notice, but the truck kept right on sliding over, and the car behind wasn't slowing down.

"Hey!" He shouted, "Hello!! I'm here!! Stop! Stooooooooop!!!!!"

But nobody was stopping.

He pressed harder on the brakes. Better to collide with the car behind—he at least has a chance of surviving that. The bumpers tapped, and suddenly the driver behind leaned on his horn. Shit, he has no idea what's happening! Jack pressed harder on the brakes. Now the asshole was pushing him angrily forward, screaming obscenities out the window as rubber screeched and burned on the asphalt.

You can't just replace the tell words, you just need to figure out how to write the scene in a way that's powerful and engaging.