I, first, need to premise this post by saying that I don't read a lot of epic/action fantasy or sword and sorcery. I had no idea who Lovecraft was before I started reading this forum. I barely finished Lord of the Rings, and have never read it again since. (Sheepish face)
I LOVE books with fantastical elements, or supernatural elements. I love sic-fi, dystopian and speculative fiction. I love magical realism. I can enjoy George RR Martin's low fantasy. High fantasy is just not really my thing, though I have started reading it to broaden my horizons.
So, with that said, I feel like in the realm of the books and shorts I have been reading recently I have seen a shift away from the old adage "show, don't' tell."
Correct me if I'm wrong. Please. Perhaps these authors are 'showing'… just not in the way I'm thinking.
I have just started reading American God's again. I love Gaiman, personally. But this is the beginning of the book:
" Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough and looked don't-****-with me enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and thought a lot about how much he loved his wife.
The best thing - in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing - about being in prison was a feeling of relief."
Ok, so to me, while I love it and it pulls me right in, it seems like telling? Am I wrong? And I feel like if he had started it with 'showing': "Shadow lay across his thin prison cot expertly passing a coin through his thick fingers…" would not have been as strong of a beginning.
I recently read a short story on Crazy Horse with a similar intro:
"Wallace went all the way to Florida to fight a Brazilian middleweight he’d never heard of for ten thousand dollars. That’s what it had come to.
The Brazilian’s name was Thiago something, but everyone called him Cavalo. From what Wallace had gathered, it had something to do with a movie or a TV show that only Brazilian people knew about. No one cared enough to explain it any more than that and anyway Wallace wasn’t overly interested. Everything he needed to know about the guy’s game he could tell just from looking at him. He had shoulders that looked welded on, a neck that existed mostly in theory. The kind of guy who’d be hell on wheels in a street fight." (Fowlkes, Ben. You'll apologize if you have to. Crazy Horse issue 85).
Again, telling? Maybe am I confused about what telling vs. showing is?
One of my favourite books From the Corner of His Eye by supernatural author Dean Koontz starts out like:
"Bartholemew Lampion was blinded at the age of three, when surgeons reluctantly removed his eyes to save him from a fast-spreading cancer, but although eyeless, Barty regained his sight when he was thirteen."
Again, this does not start out with anyone 'doing anything'.
I feel like I'm trying to push myself to do more 'showing' in my stories, but I find that sometimes it does not have the impact of simply 'telling'.
Am I confused about the difference?
I LOVE books with fantastical elements, or supernatural elements. I love sic-fi, dystopian and speculative fiction. I love magical realism. I can enjoy George RR Martin's low fantasy. High fantasy is just not really my thing, though I have started reading it to broaden my horizons.
So, with that said, I feel like in the realm of the books and shorts I have been reading recently I have seen a shift away from the old adage "show, don't' tell."
Correct me if I'm wrong. Please. Perhaps these authors are 'showing'… just not in the way I'm thinking.
I have just started reading American God's again. I love Gaiman, personally. But this is the beginning of the book:
" Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough and looked don't-****-with me enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and thought a lot about how much he loved his wife.
The best thing - in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing - about being in prison was a feeling of relief."
Ok, so to me, while I love it and it pulls me right in, it seems like telling? Am I wrong? And I feel like if he had started it with 'showing': "Shadow lay across his thin prison cot expertly passing a coin through his thick fingers…" would not have been as strong of a beginning.
I recently read a short story on Crazy Horse with a similar intro:
"Wallace went all the way to Florida to fight a Brazilian middleweight he’d never heard of for ten thousand dollars. That’s what it had come to.
The Brazilian’s name was Thiago something, but everyone called him Cavalo. From what Wallace had gathered, it had something to do with a movie or a TV show that only Brazilian people knew about. No one cared enough to explain it any more than that and anyway Wallace wasn’t overly interested. Everything he needed to know about the guy’s game he could tell just from looking at him. He had shoulders that looked welded on, a neck that existed mostly in theory. The kind of guy who’d be hell on wheels in a street fight." (Fowlkes, Ben. You'll apologize if you have to. Crazy Horse issue 85).
Again, telling? Maybe am I confused about what telling vs. showing is?
One of my favourite books From the Corner of His Eye by supernatural author Dean Koontz starts out like:
"Bartholemew Lampion was blinded at the age of three, when surgeons reluctantly removed his eyes to save him from a fast-spreading cancer, but although eyeless, Barty regained his sight when he was thirteen."
Again, this does not start out with anyone 'doing anything'.
I feel like I'm trying to push myself to do more 'showing' in my stories, but I find that sometimes it does not have the impact of simply 'telling'.
Am I confused about the difference?
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