Is it really? Because I think showing would be the example I wrote. When you're in the character's head, you can be closer to the character and feel for them which is good. I like to write that way but I've given my story to people and they say it's leaning towards telling as opposed to showing. It's hard not to cross the line because that line is very thin.
Well, the "in great pain" is handing the reader a conclusion rather than letting them come to it themselves, so that has a "telling" feel. I think that that--Are you telling the reader what to think, or are you giving them the information and letting them decide?--is a more useful test than whether you're inside or outside the character's head. But in this case, handing them the conclusion may be just fine; remember that there will always be both, in any story.
Alex, it's really not about recording emotions or displaying things visually. It's about this: Option A: Lots of people like to hear Mr. Hetfield sing. In this version, the writer simply instructs you that a thing is true. Readers don't usually find this particularly convincing. They will tend to take an authorial voice at its word, sure, but it's just not impactful--it doesn't let the reader experience this fact on a visceral level. It's almost more like the reader sees, "Well, the author wants people to like what this guy does." Option B: "Lots of people like to hear Mr. Hetfield sing," said Mr. Patterson. In this version, the writer lets another character say something about Mr. Hetfield. The reader is often more impressed by this; it's like when infomercials have someone on to do a testimonial. It's not that they trust this character more than the author, but just that it's good to have a second opinion, so to speak. Now it's not just the author that feels this way; it's this other character, too. Option C: As Mr. Hetfield and the band took the stage, a crowd of forty-thousand people exploded into a torrent of screaming cheers, and their reaction shook the very foundations of the stadium. In this version, the reader gets the opinion of a huge crowd, and they aren't just giving their testimonial (which, you know, they could just be lying about, right?); they are a living testimonial. Actions always speak louder than words, even if saying some words is itself an action. As you can see, the last option is hugely more expensive, not just in terms of word count, but in terms of narrative structure--which has an exponential impact on word count. It's necessary for you to actually move the entire story to a stadium, for instance, in order to show something like this, where just saying, "Yeah, he's ok," or having another character say, "Yeah, he's ok," is much, much cheaper.
This is the best example thus far in this thread of the difference between the two phenomena, show and tell. It takes into account that things are not as cut and dry, black and white, as we would sometimes like them to be. @ChickenFreak perfectly hits the deeper, underlying provenance of intent of the words, not just the words themselves. I've seen "how to" articles that granulate the concept down to such minute groupings of words that the explanation no longer makes any sense and is more a display of someone's obsessive need for things to fit into little circles that never, ever overlap. Neither. I would say that what you describe is a completely different phenomenon and concept. Both showing and telling can happen in either of the two different choices you present here. This is a different thing altogether. Seriously, if you want to understand what show means in the context of Show vs. Tell, you have to let go of its ordinary, pedestrian, man-on-the-street meaning. It has a completely different meaning in the context of this conversation.
Can you give me an example paragraph of showing and the same paragraph but with telling? Because it seems that people on here all have different definitions of what showing means.
Well, no. You can't judge showing versus telling without context, and context usually requires more than one paragraph.
Well then in that case, people who say "Don't tell! Show the reader what's going on instead!" are wrong because in certain contexts both are okay to use.
Telling is just saying directly what something is. Showing is implying things indirectly. Explicit vs Implicit.
I have no idea what's the confusion between those two terms. They should be pretty self-explanatory. Tell-and-show are just tools for a writer. It isn't anything taboo or forbidden. Some people prefer more direct storytelling over having to piece things together.
Show and Tell has nothing to do with the perspectives. Rather it is the way you present information. Take the Inside-Head case. If I said that I hate so-and-so, that's telling. If instead I said felt discomfort seeing so-and-so, I'm showing. The Camera-View case is the same. If the narrator said Person 1 distrusts Person 2, that's telling. If the narrator says Person 1's face turned sour upon Person 2's appearance, that's showing.
I disagree. Hence, there is definitely confusion. What you describe is not my definition of telling/showing.
The complication is in the fact that we're talking about whether we're communicating the message of the text implicitly or explicitly. that means (complication one) that we have to decide what that message is. Then (complication two) we have to decide whether the message is important enough for the investment of showing it, or if it's fine to go with the lower investment of telling it. An example. Let's say that I write: Henry put on his best suit. What's the message? Is there a message? Why did I mention the best suit? Maybe I mentioned it because Henry is going to be splashed with mud a little later. Maybe that mud-splashing of his best suit is going to be just one of several unpleasant things that will happen to Henry. So the suit is part of a message of "Henry had a really bad day." So that line about the suit is part of a "showing" narrative that's going to be a thread through the next few pages. It doesn't "show" anything about the suit--we don't get a paragraph about its wooly elegance and its silk lining and its padstitched lapels. Because the suit itself isn't the message. If the suit is the message, or at least is very important as an object, then we might indeed put in a lot more details about the suit. For example, maybe the protagonist's grandfather was a master tailor and he made this suit for the protagonist or something. We could "tell" that with: Henry put on his best suit. His grandfather had made it for him. It was a precious possession. Or we might have a scene where Henry gets a little over-upset when he spills a drop of something on the suit, or where someone compliments him and asks where he got it, or, contrarily, criticizes it as being out of fashion and suggests that Henry get a modern suit. The message is about the suit and the suit's history, so we want to show more. Or maybe a suit is just a suit.
Every single story will have both showing and telling. "Show, don't tell" was never the right way to put the advice, even if we accept show/tell (as opposed to my preferred alternative of demonstrate/explain) as the words to use. Better advice might be, "When the message is important, that makes it increasingly likely that demonstrating that message, rather than telling it outright, is worth the extra trouble."
This is all telling, not showing. It's practically spoon-feeding information to the reader instead of allowing the reader to piece things together by themselves. It explains why the suit might be his best, but doesn't realize the full potential. Instead it is written off as a "precious possession." Nothing is left for the reader to interpret. It's his best suit because his grandfather made it for him. Nothing else http://www.wright.edu/~david.wilson/eng3830/creativewriting101.pdf
Erm...since I said is the above supposed to be disagreeing with me? I said it was telling. Right up there. See?
@ChickenFreak It was more on the idea of the show-and-tell complication. Generally, you tell whenever it's extraneous information. Nothing that the reader should ardently invest in, but good enough to keep note of. The "best suit" had a lot of potential, for instance. It could show the man's close bond with his grandfather. It could show his caring attitude by how well he had maintained it, and his longing for the past. It could do many great things, but instead the suit was left as little more than a reminder of his grandfather. There'd be little reason for the reader to care about the suit later on as there's no investment to be had. What could've been used as a character growing point is put aside as an extraneous object. Wherever you wish to make a point on, don't hesitate to capitalize on its potential. Otherwise you lose out on enhancing your story and building immersion and investment with the reader.
Again, is there some area where you think that you're disagreeing with me in this post? I'm not suggesting the use of the "telling" line in blue. Did you think that I was?
More of an aside than an argument, to be fair. The examples on telling and how it is implemented is on point. I do caution, however, that if people want to emphasize things, showing is generally the better way to go. Unless there is a very good reason why you are telling instead of showing for a significant point, always default to show if one can.
Yes. I'm not recommending telling for important things. I'm using telling as a contrast to showing. I feel as if perhaps you only read the examples in blue and not the rest of my post? Not that it really matters, I suppose. (Edited to add: Is anybody else reading my post as advocating the use of telling, in preference to showing, for the communication of important things? Arr?)
I think both are important. There are several ways telling could strengthen the story. I do agree that it's better to show important details, scenes and information but unless you want to take pages trying to hint at something when you can just insert a nice narrative telling it, you should tell it. I still think a mixture of it in a story is nice.
Not at all. Telling gets a bad rap because novice (or shitty) writers tell everything. That's why show vs tell is an early chapter in most editing books. Over-telling is the first mistake new writers make. That's why there's a pogrom against it.
Well, it's good to see the whole 'telling vs showing' definition has finally been cleared up once and for all
