so in other words: history books are told, novels are shown? that means that, in certain cases, telling and showing are mixed as necessary. For instance, you're writing scene about an argument between two people, you'd start by telling the reader why the characters are arguing with some historical paragraphs, then showing the reader the argument between the characters. Is that right?
Yes, in certain cases, maybe almost all cases, telling and showing will be mixed. But using entire paragraphs of telling is probably too much telling. It has to be blended better than that.
I agree that every story will have some telling and some showing, but I find myself disagreeing with your example. An argument could be entirely handled by "tell", as in, "Her day continued to get worse--first an argument with her mother about Christmas dinner plans, then another with the doorman over a misplaced package." But if an argument is important enough to show, then I'd rather not precede the dialogue with a lot of background explanation--I'm not saying that it would never be OK, but I'd like to avoid it. I'd prefer that the dialogue be clear enough to give the reader what he needs to know. Alternatively, if I must provide some background, I'd like to tuck that into earlier action, rather than provide obvious background immediately before the dialogue. ChickenFreak
I try to keep "telling" to a minimum. To denote the passage of time, for instance. ("Three days later, they arrived at the gates of Haven.") Or drops bits of background information. ("The Red Guard had been disbanded long ago so Tysen thought it odd to see a man clad in that uniform sitting at the back of the tavern, watching everyone.") Mostly, I go with showing. As someone brought up earlier, showing pulls the reader deep into the story and into the minds of the characters in a scene.
Sometimes when I'm reading a book where the Author is just laying metaphor on top of metaphor on top of metaphor, and the scene they are describing just sort of drags out a little too long, I find myself just skimming that part or even skipping certain bits because it gets a bit too much and boring. I still love where the Author uses some amazing imagery technique to describe something wonderful and I'm left pondering over that scene in my dreams, but if they pile too much into it I tend to get a bit confused sometimes at what I'm reading, and just want the author to get on with it. It's also I find, a little bit annoying when there has been some massive climatic, suspenseful action scene or something and then I turn the page and there is a half a page description of the terrain or the buildings that the protagonist has just moved to, where I really just want the story to progress. I understand that showing and not telling makes the scenes and emotions much stronger, but there are times where I don't mind a little bit of telling if it speeds up the story a bit. So I agree that a great story should show the reader each scene, but a little bit of telling wouldn't hurt either.
Personally when writing history I use a mix as well - writing anything whether it is fiction or non fiction for me is about telling an engaging story.
A dozen ceiling fans slashed inefficiently thru the syrupy air. above with the use of the word inefficiently the reader is told Ceiling fans slashes at the syrupy air but barely create a whisper of draft Above the reader is shown
The original rule was that fiction should be more showing than telling, not don't tell. Generally the stuff that really matters to the story should be shown, but the necessary scaffolding holding those bits together should be told. If you tell too much then it starts to read like a textbook. If you show too much then it starts to read like an unstructured mush.
Honestly, this whole issue is really tiresome and so, so overthought. For reference, I just opened 6 books that happen to be sitting on the table beside me. A quick scan of the first page of each reveals virtually nothing but telling. I'd include specific quotes but none of them are public domain and the mods are touchy about that sort of thing; suffice it to say that concerning yourself with showing and telling like they're some polar opposite concepts is just ridiculous. You cannot tell a story without telling, and some of that telling will be in the form of showing. If you wanted to show everything that happened in your story, you would miss virtually everything. I'm all for subtlety, but sometimes you just need to come right out and tell the reader something. Besides which, I can't think of a single book in which the narrative has continuously been nothing but action and dialogue for the whole book. Passages of exposition, or internal monologue, or whatever else you want to include are by definition telling, and they're perfectly fine. Why waste paragraphs showing what could easily be explained in a sentence? Why elaborate on how the pulse quickens and adrenaline pumps and sweat beads on the brow, when you can just say "she was scared." Admittedly, there's a time for elaboration, but most of the time is not that time. We know what it is to be scared, or embarrassed, or angry. By expanding on your characters behaviours in response to these emotions, you are not giving the reader anything they don't already know. You are wasting words. You are probably using cliches (like all 3 of the examples from above). You are probably writing poorly. It's easy to create a distinctive and interesting writing voice in exposition, dialogue, etc, but not so much in action. There are only so many ways to describe how a character reacts when they're scared, and they've all been done, and most of them are (statistically at least) better than yours. As with anything in writing/reading, this is a largely subjective issue, but cmon guys. You're getting ridiculous.
Don't be so scared of telling. It's the one thing books have over movies, which are limited to showing. Writing scripts for graphic novels without using a 3rd person narrator, I often envy the power telling has in a novel. There's so many things you just can't show. You can show a house on a street corner, but you can't show who built it and why and when, and what happened in that house three decades ago -- atleast not without making a huge detour from your storyline. With telling, a single or half a paragraph can do this, and the house is no longer just a house, but has a whole history.
i recently received advice on telling from someone, and it prompted me to go back and have a look at some of my work. if my understanding of the concept is right, then there is a LOT of telling in my current work. But when I say there's a lot, its only because a lot of that telling is describing a great deal of history in the context of which a particular scene takes place. and not just history as in "what she had for breakfast while talking to her ex-boyfriend," i mean history as in "the legislature she was submitting to the government's scrutiny was her life's work." sometimes, in very complex works, there's going to be a lot of telling. having said that, however, i realise there's a lot of places in my work where i've told things to the reader that the characters don't know, which i could probably save for the reader so that they may find out as the character does. for instance: a guy reckons a girl is laughing at his clumsiness because she's a vindictive b***h, and as a result he scowls and silently begrudges her. really the girl is not a meanie, and is in fact totally into the guy, who is totally oblivious because he's a moron. you could SHOW this by saying: He glared at the girl with a sneer, as if non-verbally demanding her silence. His skin broke out into goosebumps at the sensation of embarrassment caused by her hysterics, and he could not help but feel resentment for the woman. And yet the girl laughed, however guarding her mouth with her hand so as to stifle her snickering. She gazed at him, giving him a shy smile in reply to his scowl. But his expression of antipathy did not waver, and she gauchely sandwiched her hands in between her knees, and broke eye contact. From this, the reader could get an idea of the girl's feelings, as well as the guy's very low IQ. Then later the author could reveal the girl's feelings by having her verbalise them to the guy. A way you'd tell this same scene is this: When the girl started laughing at him, the man gritted his teeth and glared at the girl. Her laughter made him feel ashamed at his clumsiness and he considered the girl nothing but a cruel hag. The girl on the other hand, was entertained by his antics and found them quite endearing. She was smitten with him, and therefore tried to explain later that she liked him. Or something like that. Am I getting this right? I'd like to know.
