Fun fact, amateur comes from the Latin amare meaning to love. So literally, an amateur is someone who does something for love, not money. sounds like you’re an amateur! -MC
show the important stuff, tell the medium important stuff, don't mention the unimportant stuff at all
Telling is good for details, exposition, inner speculation, or the telling of someone's history (which can greatly orient the character in the reader's mind.) I think it starts to lose its oomph when details aren't needed or wanted or interesting, if it's gumming up the action, if the history goes too far back, or if it becomes a big wall of text. Women writers can tend to go on and on about emotions and guys can tend to go on and on about some scientific theory or some electrically dohickey both have the reader going okay, okay, sheesh I got it already. Good ways of doing it - use lots of good clear verbs as a lot of was's will drag it down. And avoid huge paragraphs.
It's an ongoing saga, and probably different for each writer. I struggle with show vs. tell all the time, in various ways. I almost NEVER get the proper "show" right in first drafts, which is equally understandable and frustrating. Generally, I screw up show vs. tell in one of three ways: - I show too much, which leads to long ramblings of often unnecessary exposition. (Only Tolkien truly mastered this.) - I think I'm showing when I'm really telling. This was embarrassingly pointed out to me by my editor when refining my manuscript. - I don't show in the right places. It's always a challenge, at least for me, as my fiction writing is primarily short stories right now. But I agree with the OP...I'm not upset at being "told" things in a story, especially if it moves it along. Sometimes not being shown more and trying to imagine how things are is very appetizing.
IIRC, I criticised one of your short stories (Red Light Russel) for this. However - your style is actually very similar to Stephen King, which is not a bad thing. He does a very similar thing. The difference is that he mostly does it to the extent that you did in his novels, rather than short stories. He does do it to a lesser degree in short stories, just enough to add some colour and not bore the reader. Keep doing what you do. If you get the right balance, it'll work really well.
Yes, I believe you did critique that and your feedback about my over-telling was mentioned by another reader I had on that one too, so it was an obvious goof I was making. I omitted that story from my published collection because I never came up with an ending that I liked. It's slated to be in my follow-up book, but, I still do not have a proper ending yet. That story, looking back, is an embarrassment. I flew through it without much care. I suppose that's a sign of growth and improvement when past mistakes are now glaring and humiliating I am getting better with it though, and more comfortable with where and how to show vs. tell, especially in revisions. My first drafts always suck, but I can see and FEEL them get better with each round thereafter. I appreciate the Stephen King comp. While I don't try to write like him, he is clearly an inspiration since he's one of my favorite writers. My published collection has been described as very "Twilight Zone," so I take that as a compliment as well. I appreciate your kind words!
I have an allergy to J. K. Rowling, but there's no denying that they are both very successful writers, so they're obviously doing something right.
How funny that you mention JK Rowling haha. I believe King once said that she was setting up an entire generation of readers to move onto his own books when they grew up. NB, it doesn't require much scrutiny to work out what King and Rowling are 'doing right'. You might well ask why McDonald's food is so popular.
The "Show, don't tell" rule is a good one, but you're right, it doesn't always apply. I, personally, don't listen to strict rules for writing anyway unless it deals with grammar and punctuation. The only absolute rule of fiction is that we can't please everyone as writers, so there's no point in trying. There are people, for example, who hate the Lord of The Rings books for various reasons. However, this does not negate the reality that they are masterpieces in fantasy fiction, even if there are those who don't like them. Philip Pullman had almost nothing positive to say about the Chronicles of Narnia, and yet they are fantastic fantasy books in their own right. I suppose my position would be that every author should write how they think is best for their current projects. If we decide to take the advice of others, that's fine. If not, that is also fine; since there's a fan for every story, who may never have been a fan if we had taken advice, then the story counts, whether changed, or not.
There's a lot of eye of the beholder viewpoints on this too. There aren't many absolutes. Sure, there are people who despise Lord of the Rings. But even if they hate the books they cannot deny their influence or success. Regarding the popularity of McDonald's, it's the same thing: I personally think it's pure garbage but they still sell billions. Popularity or monetary success doesn't always mean it's a good product for everyone. The same can be said about all music, movies, books, art, etc. It's all in how you view it and feel about it. Show and tell where appropriate, but don't exclusively do one or the other. There's room for both.
I came to the conclusion that the "show, don't tell" mantra is a reaction to the fact that school kids are mostly taught to concisely summarize to be able to explain and make an (logical) argument afterwards--all of which is mostly telling-based writing. I always thought that the average word count for a single page is 250 to 300 words, which that would make 3k equivalent to at least 10 pages . . . 25 is just too long (to me). Is my word average count wrong?
^ Of course it depends what kind of book you're talking about, paperback or hardback, what size, how much white margin around the text, how big is the lettering. Or maybe you're talking about the original manuscript, in virtual text on your computer? That uses probably bigger pages and smaller typeface than many books would.
As Xoic said, the WC in final, printed book form is different than the page count in the manuscript/word doc. It also depends largely on spacing and paperback size. I was obsessing over it with my small collection because I knew the book would be short (only 9 chapters) but didn't want it to be too thin. My final (before formatting for upload) manuscript in MS-Word was 153 double-spaced pages, at 34K words. The printed paperback was 6x9, also double-spaced, and ended up at 253 pages. Obviously would've been much thinner had the printed book been single-spaced.
I would say your average word count is off. If you read the literary journals and magazines publishing short stories, you'll see that they are this long, 3k words being on the short side and 4k to 5k seeming to be the length of most stories. The short stories I've sold are all in this range, too. Short stories are pretty much my main focus and have been for a long time. Yes, there are places that publish shorter works, but there are also places that publish longer works, all still short stories. I trained myself to write to this word count, knowing it's what typically gets published. Also, when I did an MFA program, our stories needed to be between 20 and 30 pages. Again, trained to write to a word count, but this is the word count places I publish and want to publish expect, many even stating so in their submission guidelines. Personally, I don't think I could write a good short story that was only 10 pages. I mean I probably could, but then I believe it would be harder to sell.
As you know.... (come on, someone had to say it!) Sometimes telling is necessary to get a lump of exposition out of the way. It's certainly superior to not telling and leaving the audience confused. But I think it's important to try and make the telling feel like part of the story. Consider the character who's doing the telling--what are their biases? How would they tell it? I've read some books where it feels like characters are quoting directly from Wikipedia when they're talking about a certain subject, and it does feel jarring (I remember a book where a rough and no-nonsense fighter referred to a bruise as a "haematoma" and it knocked me right out of the mood). Exposition can also reveal character (a petrolhead talking about the workings of a car will do so with lots of unnecessary details and a clear love of the subject), expand on the setting beyond the facts (a propaganda broadcast can reveal the biases of the country, as well as conveying historical facts) or build tension (if a group of spies are briefed on the security system of the building they're breaking into, the reader knows what they're up against, and what could go wrong with the mission).
I thought that "page count" was based on a standard manuscript format (what you submit to an agent or publisher, not published in book format which is just too variable), hence the 250 to 300 words per page, which is what fits into a letter-size or A4 page double spaced with at least 1 inch margin on all sides and standard size font (courier 11 or times new roman 12). In the end it is a tool for comparison, just as much as word count. I wish publishers would include word count in the published books . . . or is there a place where to find that out online?
The fact that my current story is written in first person does indeed give me ways to try to make the "telling" parts more excuseable - especially when taking into consideration the main character's voice, biases, etc. I think the only part so far of my story where it may come off as the MC "quoting directly from Wikipedia" is when she summarizes what she learned about a historical figure in a lecture. I only did that because I had enough classroom scenes where I had legitimate conversations, use of "she said", dialogue in quotations, etc, that I didn't want to have to "show" another lecture that could just easily be summed up by the MC afterwards. It's moments like that where I start to wonder if I shouldn't be "telling" in the first place. Very conflicted feelings about the whole subject, as you can tell by the fact I made this thread at all.
Unclear why you have to tell instead of show. A narrator is just an easy way to tell without doing the work of showing which might need a flashback that some folks have trouble doing; but is it necessary?
