Show Don't Tell

[Wormtongue]

I did a search and found the last discussion of this was two years ago. I decided not to open that crypt but start a fresh discussion.

In my feedback I have been told I'm not showing, I'm telling. So I went searching for some examples of how to show don't tell. I came across this example by Dawn Copeman

Tell: The ground floor, rented room was tiny, damp and obviously uncared for.

Show: "As he entered the room from the hallway the first thing he noticed was the fusty smell: a combination of mold, damp and stale cigarette smoke. There were snail trails across the worn, brown, cord carpet that covered what little floor space there was. Opposite the doorway, pushed up against the wall, was a single bed, covered with a duvet but no duvet cover and a flat, tobacco-stained pillow.

Squeezed into the corner of the room at the foot of the bed was a chest of drawers. On top of the drawers was a single electric hotplate. Opposite this was a sink piled high with dirty pots with a toothbrush just visible, peeking out through the handle of a mug. Facing the bed was a small table with a fold up-chair. On top of the table was an overflowing ashtray and yesterday's newspaper. Behind the door stood a mouldy wicker waste bin full of ash and cigarette ends."

Two weighty paragraphs and absolutely nothing happens. I find that level of description frustrating. It is exactly the sort of thing I skip when I'm reading.

Given the ubiquity of the advice show don't tell, do I assume I'm in the minority?

 

[Julian S Bartz]

If you look for examples of show don't tell, 95% of the time you will find that that 'show' is at least twice as long as the 'tell'. Therefore if you are trying to simply point out something's existence or describe something that isn't crucial to the story I think telling can be fine. As you mentioned, over description turns a lot of people away from reading something.

Personally I try to make sure that if I am talking about something that my prose is evoking the right feelings and imagery in the reader. This can be done with both show and tell. Don't get too caught up in it. It is such a commonly used phrase in people looking to provide feedback that I think we get caught up with it. Does your sentence sound good? Does it serve its purpose? Good! Then leave it be! However if people read it and think its a bit plain, then look at describing in a more vivid or unusual way. E.G Holding a guitar vs Cradling a guitar.

Work ordinary lines into dialogue. Utilise out of the ordinary ways to describe something. And be aware of when you are simply stating a fact. You'll be halfway to winning the battle.

 

[wordwalker]

You're talking about pace.

The more important parts get more Showing, knowing it takes more space. The lesser moments go by faster, and those do get some Telling, though there's still room for efficient touches like "cradling" that guitar.

But if pace calls for it, by all means stick to Telling.

 

[Penpilot]

Generally showing takes up more space. But showing is not always dramatically longer.

For example.

Tell: Bob was angry.
Show: Bob punched the wall.

Tell: Bob hated Frank.
Show: Bob spat in Frank's soup.

Tell: Bob was tired.
Show" Bob gasped for breath.

Tell: The ground floor, rented room was tiny, damp and obviously uncared for.

Show: Bob stooped as he stepped inside the motel room, only large enough for a bed and a night-stand. People walked by the window just a few feet away. The smell of wet socks lingered and stale potato chips crunched underfoot.

 

[Ankari]

Hello Wormtongue,

First, I'd like to take a moment and applaud you for taking the advice given to you in the Showcase forum with a professional's thick skin. Most people would be turned off by the pushback, but you persevered.

Now, onto showing Vs. telling.

Rules are not written in stone, but the are presented in that manner for aspiring authors to take them seriously. This is a serious guideline that all writers must understand. The professional author will know when to apply these guidelines, and when to ignore them.

The point of showing is:

1. To utilize the five senses. This creates immersion. Immersion creates a heightened level of satisfaction.
2. To highlight something of significance. Instead of telling us "Her clothing was finely made and of exquisite material" for your MC's gown as she attends a ball that decides her fate at marriage, show it to us. This is a pivotal moment in the story, right? By describing it, maybe the reader will better understand why the duke didn't dance with her. Maybe the duke did dance with her, but he's angered by the feel of a fox pelt against his skin. A fox killed his favorite rooster as a kid, and the pelt brought back memories.
3. To create tension. This is done when the reader isn't able to piece together what he's reading. Why is that man refusing all invitations to a dance? Why is he edging closer to the woman from point two? Is that a knife in his hand? A wand? What's that odd look on his face?

The exercise is in the understanding of when to show and when to tell. I didn't read your second entry in the Showcase, but I will try to do so in the near future. Take a look at it yourself, as you're the only one who knows what is important and what's not. Whatever is significant, add weight to it. Describe it, even if the reader doesn't understand it immediately, he will know it's important because you devoted so much space to it.

 

[Svrtnsse]

This came up in the chat a while back and there was a bit of an argument back and forth about how the advice (show, don't tell) is worded and what it really means. Another way of thinking about is "doing is more interesting than being". That's still a bit abstract and still leaves room for exceptions and interpretations, so it's not a replacement advice, but rather a way of homing in on the meaning of it.

 

[Chilari]

Quite a lot of "writers' rules" seem to be worded in a manner which is quick and snappy and easy to remember, but lacks finesse. Show Don't Tell, except for when Telling is better, isn't as easy to remember or digest as just Show Don't Tell. As with any writers' rule, there are exceptions and there is nuance in when it should be applied. No rule is set in stone, unbreakable.

 

[BWFoster78]

Wormtongue,

When to show, when to tell, what to show, and how to show it are all difficult decisions that lay at the heart of how to craft your story. There is no easy, simple answer. It's just something you have to play with.

One of my engineering professors in college told me that intuition is something that you develop with experience. As a EIT right out of college, I had to do calculations for the simplest of things. A guy who has been in the industry for twenty years, however, could just look at something much more complicated and come up with a pretty spot on estimate. That intuition came from doing calculations for a long, long time.

Writing, I think, is the same way. The more experience you get, the easier it is to figure out exactly what you need to do. For the moment, however, most of us are stuck with experimenting and asking for specific feedback.

Back to your original question, though:

I, too, prefer lean prose. The passage that you quoted would be unlikely to make it into anything that I wrote, yet I preach the importance of showing. Showing does not have to slow pace.

The point, again, is that you have to put some serious thought into what to show, when to show, and how to show it.

The first step, however, (imo) is to gain a thorough understanding of what showing is and how to do it. Otherwise, how can you possibly ever get to the point of figuring out the what, when, and how?

 

[Grandeur]

Wonderful topic, and even a little enlightening for myself.
I am often trying to find that warm perfection between showing and telling, constantly wondering whether or not I am being too verbose in the descriptions. Ever since I started the novel I am currently still working on, my goal was to write something that even I would want to read, to tell the story I wanted to tell the way I wanted to tell it. Now, this can come often as both arrogant and ignorant in the same breath, but half the reason I even wanted to write (and i assume as much for many writers) was because there wasn't a story out there that quite measured up to what I wanted to read. Namely, what turned me off with a lot of fantasy books was the insistence on paragraphs of detail for trivial things, long dry histories and anecdotes that often derailed my focus on the important stuff in the story. A lot of showing to make the telling that much more engaging.

So I offer this insight: showing and telling are two sides of the same coin, and a good read spins the symmetry so interchangeably that they become indistinguishable from each other. This all comes down to your tone and pace, which I understand is different for every author and the balance between them is an integral part of the writing process. So try these tactics:
-if your characters can talk about it instead of you, create/use dialogue to tell it (I've found dialog to be much more engaging)
-if your characters can't tell it (it being either too clunky or expositional for dialog), have them experience/interact with it
-and if your characters can't talk about or interact with it, why does it need to be shown/told at all?

Usually the last point is countered by the necessity for setting description (immersing the reader's senses into the environment prior to the action) and this usually requires ubiquitous paragraphs (especially in fantasy writing), but I still go back to getting the character to interact with it, because 99% of the time the reader finds themselves synonymous with the POV, which is often that of a character currently in the action of the story. So use your characters to define it as the character themselves would define it (i.e. panoramic descriptions of setting are good only when the character is taking in the setting panoramically).

 

[BWFoster78]

Grandeur,

-if your characters can talk about it instead of you, create/use dialogue to tell it (I've found dialog to be much more engaging)
-if your characters can't tell it (it being either too clunky or expositional for dialog), have them experience/interact with it
-and if your characters can't talk about or interact with it, why does it need to be shown/told at all?

I disagree with your order. If your character can do something instead of talking about something, use action to show (I've found action to be even more engaging than dialogue).

I had a lot of scenes where I my characters argued about plot points. My editor tore me up over it. She had me change it to having the characters DO something instead that demonstrated the conflict that they previously just argued about. The revisions made for much, much (not even just a single much!) better scenes.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Wormtongue,
The examples your research yielded are extremes of the "Show don't tell" principle. As such, they're not doing you much good. That is understandable. Penpilot's examples are much easier to understand, and illustrate the point.

Generally showing takes up more space. But showing is not always dramatically longer.

For example.

Tell: Bob was angry.
Show: Bob punched the wall.

Tell: Bob hated Frank.
Show: Bob spat in Frank's soup.

Tell: Bob was tired.
Show" Bob gasped for breath.

Tell: The ground floor, rented room was tiny, damp and obviously uncared for.

Show: Bob stooped as he stepped inside the motel room, only large enough for a bed and a night-stand. People walked by the window just a few feet away. The smell of wet socks lingered and stale potato chips crunched underfoot.

Personally, I think it's always better to lean towards showing over telling. The main reason being that showing takes practice and a concentrated effort is needed before it becomes second nature. Telling, on the other hand, is what we're naturally used to. It's the way we verbally communicate stories. It's the way most of us learn from childhood on. I've found that an emphasis on showing, especially when you're just learning to write is crucial. You will still naturally tell as you write a story. Telling is a necessary element of writing. The key is to pick which details to elaborate on through showing. Those details should offer something to your reader. The details you choose to show should do work by creating emotion, or drawing in a reader's attention for a purpose, or make a concept or image crystal clear, or hinting at aspects of character, or move the plot by dropping a subtle clue, etc. There are lots of different ways to employ showing. It's your job as a writer to do so effectively.

If you can practice this skill, it will pay dividends. Eventually, as you find your style and voice, this will all become natural for you. Now though, in the beginning stages, it takes practice and study. Experiment in your writing. You must try to improve your writing by trying out different techniques. You'll know what works and what doesn't as your skills grow.

 

[Caged Maiden]

My first drafts are largely "tell". I wish it weren't the truth, but there it is. However, in revision, I find those points I want to expound on and honestly, after doing so many crits for others, they stick out in my own writing as annoying little details I'd point out to someone else.

IN one novel, I needed a character to learn that undead creatures were spotted near a village. That's it. So, in the first draft, I literally wrote, "Cedrick was thirsty so went looking for a tavern." inside the tavern, he noticed every single person who dined and drank. Then some peasants came in and ordered way too little food, counting out coins out of their empty pockets. So Cedrick bought them dinner and they invited him to sit and eat with them, thanking him for his generosity. Over the meal, they revealed how they ran from their homes and the undead.

BOOOOORING!!!!

When revising the first draft, I thought of a second option, that Cedrick could enter the tavern and overhear their discussion, without noticing everything in the place, and mostly focusing on the conversation.

I skipped right over writing that scene and ramped it up before ever wasting my time.

In the current draft, Cedrick counts out his coins and decided begging for a free bed and meal in the temple is a smart way to save his little money, so he ends up having a pleasant (and non-detail-heavy) dinner with some priests, interrupted when a group of peasants enter, carying a woman stricken with some sort of wasting disease, looking very much a zombie herself. Cedrick and the other priests do what they can to heal her and learn about the undead first-hand from the woman's companions.

My point is, it's not simply about showing and telling... but it sort of is. You have to show the details that matter most, btu you also have to concentrate on forming the best possible chain of events. Rather than having people tell him the information in some convenient, contrived way, or even having him overhear the information... I went full throttle, introducing him to the situation, thereby SHOWING both Cedrick and the reader the effects the undead have upon people and the imminent danger of the situation.

I could have written the original first draft version all "showy" and no "telly" but it was still a weak scene. The scene itself was a "tell".

So.. I hope this gives you a little more to think about as you work on revising. Never be afraid to look at a scene, analyze the goals of said scene, and start over, with those goals in mind first and foremost... to create a scene with more tension and more weight for the reader, the character, and the story as a whole.

 

[BWFoster78]

Caged Maiden,

That is exactly the point I was trying to get to in one of my earlier posts. Great illustration!

Thanks.

Brian

 

[Devor]

I don't generally like to use the words "Show, Don't tell," because of the way the advice is overused and is now a loaded phrase with lots of connotations. But to enter that terminology for a moment, I would say:

You want to Show if you need to deliver on the emotion of the scene. You want to Tell for purposes of pacing and clarity.

It's not a strong rule, but a guideline. Typically you would want some combination of both, unless dictated otherwise by your personal style or the needs of the scene.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Yeah, as I was writing it, I almost said, "This is what Brian was trying to say..." but I didn't want to speak for you. Glad I could be of service.

 

[Julian S Bartz]

I don't generally like to use the words "Show, Don't tell," because of the way the advice is overused and is now a loaded phrase with lots of connotations. But to enter that terminology for a moment, I would say:

You want to Show if you need to deliver on the emotion of the scene. You want to Tell for purposes of pacing and clarity.

It's not a strong rule, but a guideline. Typically you would want some combination of both, unless dictated otherwise by your personal style or the needs of the scene.

Eloquently put. That's what I was originally trying to say. I waffled on a bit though.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I could have written the original first draft version all "showy" and no "telly" but it was still a weak scene. The scene itself was a "tell".

Great point! Part of learning when to show & when to tell comes in deciding how best to convey information to the reader. That can be on the word level, the sentence, or even the scene.

You want to Show if you need to deliver on the emotion of the scene. You want to Tell for purposes of pacing and clarity.

I agree for the most part, although there are instances where showing enhances clarity.

 

[Devor]

I agree for the most part, although there are instances where showing enhances clarity.

I'm sure you're probably right - and as I mentioned, I don't usually like to think in these terms myself - but I can't think of a case where it would be more clear to show than to tell.

. . . . .

Or was I just tricked into asking you to show me an example to clarify the thing you told me? Well played, sir.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I'm sure you're probably right - and as I mentioned, I don't usually like to think in these terms myself - but I can't think of a case where it would be more clear to show than to tell.

. . . . .

Or was I just tricked into asking you to show me an example to clarify the thing you told me? Well played, sir.

LOL, no trick intended. I'll try to whip up an example....

Suppose you have a character named Devor who is an expert warrior. He's thin and lanky, not like the brawny, muscled men on this land. Devor though is trained in a fighting style vastly different than the bashing and hacking styles of local warriors, and the larger men are unprepared for Devor's assault.

You could just come out and tell that information to the reader (though that would be a bit info-dumpish), or you could show Devor jumping through combatants, spinning and swinging his sword with fluid grace, the townsfolk staring in awe and screaming each time a head rolls to the ground. You'd never have to tell the reader plainly that Devor is different, they get to see it.

I don't have the time right now to take a shot at genuine prose so I hope the above illustration works and we can envision what I'm getting at. The first option, telling, gives us some information... how Devor is different. The second, showing, conveys more precisely just how Devor fights, how drastically different his style is, and the effects on enemies and onlookers. It has greater clarity and greater power through imagery.

 

[Wormtongue]

I'm re-writing my opening scene. Again. I think from now on instead of saying I'm a writer I'll say I'm a re-writer. Wormtongue the Fantasy Re-writer.

Anyway, changing every line of tell into show is hard work.

In my defense, I'm an engineer and a tech writer and I'm well trained to write sentences that tell.

To paraphrase Master Yoda, "I must unlearn what I have learned."