"Show don't tell" and why it annoys me.

[Malik]

That's not showing, that's just telling with style!

When someone says "You're telling, not showing," what they mean is "You're not telling this in a way I find engaging."

That's it. That's all it is.

It's unengaging. Fix it. Don't go to "Deep POV" or whatever the flavor of the month is. If you're telling, not showing, your writing is flat. That's on you. Get better. Read new things. Drink. Read more. Make notes. Then bang your head against your desk until brain make gooder words go.

The taste of rum made Logan remember his Foreign Legion unit and how they'd all nearly been killed in North Africa. He raised his glass to the memory.​

​

^ Actual lines from my sh*tty first draft of Stonelands. "Telling" AF. Flat, unengaging, but gets the point across. Good enough to get the story down. (I have a recurring nightmare that I'll lose my flash drive and someone will release my first drafts and the world will see what a fraud and a crappy writer I really am.)​

4 drafts later, it's become arguably my strongest passage to date, and I've been doing this for almost 40 years, now.

The rum was everything Logan remembered—and many things he’d been working to forget. Tobacco, figs, and oak carried him to a bar in Djibouti City; 13e Demi-Brigade, la Légion Étrangère, Squadron Reconnaissance. The elite of the elite. Heady days of khaki shirts and kepis, of bar fights and beautiful women and rum and cigarillos and holy shit, Algeria: sixteen Legionnaire Commandos Desertiques and a twelve-man American Special Forces team, backs to the wall in a Biblical-era fortress outside Tamanrasset against a battalion-strength horde of jihadis. Screaming for air support into four radios in three languages. The dropping of hearts into guts as ammo belts clinked up their last few links, bolts slamming home dry as anti-aircraft cannons mounted to the beds of Toyota Hiluxes started to light up the walls.​

He raised his cup. “To absent friends.”​

I told you enough details to put the picture together yourself. Now you, the reader, know his background and likely what motivates him. With these two paragraphs--one very short--we can get on with the rest of the novel. And if I did it right, it was engaging to read.

Lots of writing tips on my blog. Enjoy.

 

[Malik]

Heady days of khaki shirts and kepis, of bar fights and beautiful women and rum and cigarillos and holy shit, Algeria:

Just deconstructing this as I'm looking at it for the thousandth time. The language follows the memory itself: the alliteration and parallelism in the phrase of khaki shirts and kepis, of bar fights and beautiful women end with the words holy shit, and the construction morphs into stream-of-consciousness style flashes as the tone shifts from wistful to catastrophic--you can almost hear his thoughts spinning out of control when you read it out loud.

I f*cking love this line, and yes, I'm patting myself on the back. Sue me.

 

[Finchbearer]

I like a good ol’ fashioned descent into madness.

 

[skip.knox]

>When someone says "You're telling, not showing," what they mean is "You're not telling this in a way I find engaging."
Perxactly.

Same goes for other profound observations such as that's an info dump, or purple prose. Do not mistake critical shorthand for useful criticism.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

And don't mistake critical shorthand for being useless.

>When someone says "You're telling, not showing," what they mean is "You're not telling this in a way I find engaging."
Perxactly.

Same goes for other profound observations such as that's an info dump, or purple prose. Do not mistake critical shorthand for useful criticism.

More or less true, in particular for non-pro critics or typical readers. However, I would say that just because it doesn't engage me (or the critic) doesn't mean it's not "showing". Showing is "telling" that paints a physical or emotional picture. That's the crux of the matter, and it's a bit circular, because a well-painted physical or emotional picture is more likely to be engaging. That's what I tend to interpret from profs at the Iowa Writer's Workshop and a few editors.

When someone says "You're telling, not showing," what they mean is "You're not telling this in a way I find engaging."

 

[FifthView]

Showing is "telling" that paints a physical or emotional picture.

I've been wanting to add, but hesitant because I didn't want to muddy the discussion, that telling itself can be showing, it can paint that "physical or emotional picture."

This depends on the narrative POV. Who, exactly, is "telling" us these things.

If the narrator is the author or some disembodied voice not otherwise participating in the story, then the telling usually won't paint a vibrant picture. Reading that, I might want to yell back, Get on with it! Don't just tell me so-and-so was angry or the times were tough. Show me.

But if the narration is in a character's voice, then in a sense we are "seeing" that character by hearing that voice. This is a character that tells us certain things, but not others, because these things are on this character's mind. Or maybe this is a character that tells me everyone is angry. Everyone always seems so angry. But in another scene, from another character's POV, we get another picture of these people. So "Davy was angry with me" and "Liz was always so angry when I brought her groceries" and so forth are pictures of something going on with this POV character, windows if you will onto this character, and in a sense we are being shown this, not merely told that this character's POV is skewed.

Of course, that approach might not aways work well. Execution is king.

 

[Malik]

But if the narration is in a character's voice, then in a sense we are "seeing" that character by hearing that voice.

Third person omniscient objective (narrator is all-knowing; invisible) vs. third person omniscient subjective (narrator knows this amazing story and is sitting in your living room with a drink in their hand telling it to you while doing all the impressions).

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Typically speaking, a great narrator's voice that isn't painting a visual is painting the emotional, which is arguably the more powerful... Dickens, for instance, often paints an emotional picture. Of course, he does both and does them well.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

“Marley was dead: to begin with."

“There once lived, in a sequestered part of the county of Devonshire, one Mr Godfrey Nickleby: a worthy gentleman, who, taking it into his head rather late in life that he must get married, and not being young enough or rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded an old flame out of mere attachment, who in her turn had taken him for the same reason. Thus two people who cannot afford to play cards for money, sometimes sit down to a quiet game for love.”

And of course, he was fully capable of one of my favorite opening lines ever, which does paint a picture while achieving more:

“Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened room in the great arm-chair by the bedside, and Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, and it was essential to toast him brown while he was very new.”

And another picture, from A Christmas Carol:

Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.

Humor is also an exceptional way to take a "Tell" straight into the realm of "Show."

I've been wanting to add, but hesitant because I didn't want to muddy the discussion, that telling itself can be showing, it can paint that "physical or emotional picture."

This depends on the narrative POV. Who, exactly, is "telling" us these things.

If the narrator is the author or some disembodied voice not otherwise participating in the story, then the telling usually won't paint a vibrant picture. Reading that, I might want to yell back, Get on with it! Don't just tell me so-and-so was angry or the times were tough. Show me.

But if the narration is in a character's voice, then in a sense we are "seeing" that character by hearing that voice. This is a character that tells us certain things, but not others, because these things are on this character's mind. Or maybe this is a character that tells me everyone is angry. Everyone always seems so angry. But in another scene, from another character's POV, we get another picture of these people. So "Davy was angry with me" and "Liz was always so angry when I brought her groceries" and so forth are pictures of something going on with this POV character, windows if you will onto this character, and in a sense we are being shown this, not merely told that this character's POV is skewed.

Of course, that approach might not aways work well. Execution is king.

 

[Ned Marcus]

Typically speaking, a great narrator's voice that isn't painting a visual is painting the emotional, which is arguably the more powerful... Dickens, for instance, often paints an emotional picture. Of course, he does both and does them well.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

Good quotes. This one is one of my favourite openings to a novel.

 

[Malik]

Good quotes. This one is one of my favourite openings to a novel.

Understand, too, that these are all in third person omniscient subjective--the stories are filtered through the voice and perspective of a character who's separate from the story. Hardly anything is written this way, today. More's the pity.

(Omniscient arguably died when GRRM announced that it's an antiquated way of writing, and from that moment on, everybody everywhere wrote everything ever in close third, to the point that amateur book reviewers who never took so much as a freshman class in theory and comp will call you out on it if you don't. Ask me how I know.)

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Tis a pity for sure, and likely several reasons for it. But I still think much of it is about what the story needs. Subjective is my natural voice, I really want to be the "storyteller" sitting around the fire with whiskey in hand, but it doesn't fit the tale I'm telling. I do have a couple of projects planned where I'll go full-blown omniscient subjective narrator, and I look forward to switching things up.

Book reviewers... don't get me started, I could have too damned much fun ripping on a few of them, and they aren't even ones who reviewed my books, LOL. "Let's see, should I send my book to this reviewer? Ha ha ha! No." The fact some of these people exist and gain followers is a condemnation of our education system.

Understand, too, that these are all in third person omniscient subjective--the stories are filtered through the voice and perspective of a character who's separate from the story. Hardly anything is written this way, today. More's the pity.

(Omniscient arguably died when GRRM announced that it's an antiquated way of writing, and from that moment on, everybody everywhere wrote everything ever in close third, to the point that amateur book reviewers who never took so much as a freshman class in theory and comp will call you out on it if you don't. Ask me how I know.)

 

[skip.knox]

I'm not sure there was ever a time in which writers had a good opinion of reviewers, both behaving as if the one had no need of the other.

 

[The Dark One]

Without having read back the whole thread... and why would I when this gets discussed so frequently... surely all stories are a combination of showing and telling.

Something that was just show would basically be an incomprehensible poem. Something that was just tell would be a newspaper article.

Most of my books have been 1st person POV so there's a lot of telling but the style of the voice is (hopefully) beguiling enough to immerse the reader and that's the real goal, in my view... sucking the reader so deeply into the story they forget they're reading.

 

[LittleOwlbear]

Alright, that makes some sense then as far as the character is concerned. But how about the setting itself? Sure I might describe the weather as "Rain poured buckets of water over the landscape" or "the roar of thunder echoed reverberating throughout the land" or something along those lines. Show don't tell then seems to imply how a character is reacting, right?
And I see...providing evidence. I realize that's something we have to do a lot in essay writing, but story writing is also different in so many regards. The interactions between the characters should be the evidence right?
So it's not necessarily trying to find a bunch of crazy descriptive words to get your point across?

Sorry, old topic but: I always viewed it the same as you do, and I'm autistic too. Maybe that's why.
Also I think describing people's reaction to events is much closer to real life experience and sometimes the show of emotions becomes needlessly theatrical, from my point of view, and also rarely fitting for the character. Clenching fists and turning red from anger is usually behavior of toddlers or younger children who have no to little control over their emotional response. I haven't seen for years an adult person doing it, aside you want to characterize a very choleric person or a situation of real rage.
Not every anger is fleshed out anger either and most of anger people feel in their daily life is rather slight annoyance. If you are describing every situation where someone could get angry with such strong vocabulary, the situation where it would fit better seems to be unimportant.

And I like to put characterization and "show" through reactions etc. I'd say I'm good at reading people, I think that's a question of life experience and analyzing people around you. I've seen neurotypical people, who can't read subtle body language etc and autistic people, who can.
I just taught it myself like you learn any other subject and I enjoy doing the characterization rather over reactions and dialogue and some subtext, than showing the emotional response everytime.

This "show don't tell" becomes important to me when it comes to characterization. Don't say "Anna was a nice person", show it through action.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I found this an informative presentation on show don't tell, and how to implement it in your writing:

 

[Finchbearer]

The thing is that what I find about the OP, whether they are coming back or not, is that they have explained that their autism is something that doesn’t allow them to relate to nor always understand nuance, and so that more literal way of thinking is a language in itself. And if that is how one person sees things, then chances are there are many others who have a more literal and direct way of seeing the world - so maybe telling and not showing is a style that some readers will relate better to?

There’s a place for everything, and if you think differently, work with that difference. Maybe you’ve done enough bending.

 

[Prince of Spires]

so maybe telling and not showing is a style that some readers will relate better to?

I think I've remarked it in this (or a different) topic before, but if you want me to know that someone is annoyed, then just tell me they're annoyed. There is definitely a place for showing, but sometimes telling is just fine. And sometimes it's a lot more obvious what you mean if you just tell me.

 

[MauEvig]

Sorry, old topic but: I always viewed it the same as you do, and I'm autistic too. Maybe that's why.
Also I think describing people's reaction to events is much closer to real life experience and sometimes the show of emotions becomes needlessly theatrical, from my point of view, and also rarely fitting for the character. Clenching fists and turning red from anger is usually behavior of toddlers or younger children who have no to little control over their emotional response. I haven't seen for years an adult person doing it, aside you want to characterize a very choleric person or a situation of real rage.
Not every anger is fleshed out anger either and most of anger people feel in their daily life is rather slight annoyance. If you are describing every situation where someone could get angry with such strong vocabulary, the situation where it would fit better seems to be unimportant.

And I like to put characterization and "show" through reactions etc. I'd say I'm good at reading people, I think that's a question of life experience and analyzing people around you. I've seen neurotypical people, who can't read subtle body language etc and autistic people, who can.
I just taught it myself like you learn any other subject and I enjoy doing the characterization rather over reactions and dialogue and some subtext, than showing the emotional response everytime.

This "show don't tell" becomes important to me when it comes to characterization. Don't say "Anna was a nice person", show it through action.

I haven't been here in so long that I've forgotten what I posted here. Yes, that was back when I had that diagnosis, but then I found out it was something else completely that LOOKED like autism. Nowadays, I just prefer not to go by any labels. I'm just me, and that's good enough.
I'm learning more about show don't tell by working with an editor. I find that utilizing the 5 senses and putting yourself in your character's shoes, and visualizing how the character feels and reacts is a great way to "show."
I still tell a bit, but I'm told to follow it up with a "show." And showing doesn't have to be over the top descriptive either. It could be, one sentence tell, followed by a show.

 

[LittleOwlbear]

I haven't been here in so long that I've forgotten what I posted here. Yes, that was back when I had that diagnosis, but then I found out it was something else completely that LOOKED like autism. Nowadays, I just prefer not to go by any labels. I'm just me, and that's good enough.
I'm learning more about show don't tell by working with an editor. I find that utilizing the 5 senses and putting yourself in your character's shoes, and visualizing how the character feels and reacts is a great way to "show."
I still tell a bit, but I'm told to follow it up with a "show." And showing doesn't have to be over the top descriptive either. It could be, one sentence tell, followed by a show

Thanks for your answer. ^^

Your post just resonated with me, because lot of people (from what I have seen) seem to associate show with heavy metaphors for example, and those just don't come to my mind naturally most time.

 

[MauEvig]

Once I understood what metaphors were, and realized I used them in my every day language it became easier to understand.
But I can relate and relate to people who are neurodivergent in some ways. I also work with students that are at my day job, which is that of an instructional aide. So, I know quite a bit about the subject.