Show don't Tell?

[Heliotrope]

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?

 

[FifthView]

Well, first things first. The "show, don't tell" adage should never have been considered a rule not meant to be broken. Both showing and telling are important and useful in their own ways.

For instance, telling usually will take up much, much less time than showing, and sometimes you just want to get information out quickly so you can move on to other things. For instance, you don't need to "show" a 3-week journey between cities if you know that not much happens during those three weeks. (If, however, much does happen or drawing it out is important to the story, then maybe you could show a lot.) And in the examples you've given, the authors are starting with a baseline from which they'll build. No need to show all these things happening.

I also think this is interesting in your first two examples: They give, off the bat, a limited 3rd-person P.O.V. What's interesting about them is that they do, in a way, "show" the character of these characters, even if they are telly when considered abstractly. In other words, how people think, the things they think, the way they tell about themselves or think about themselves or tell about others, is a way for the author to show something about them.

Perhaps others will come along and break down a little more re: positives of telling and limits of showing.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I think you're right, and it's pretty much all "telling" here.

It's not wrong to tell though, it's just that in many cases showing is more efficient for connecting with the reader.
What all of your examples above have in common is that they seem to take place over an extended period of time. What exactly happens during this time isn't all that relevant to the story, it's more there to give us a quick rundown of the character's past so that we have a bit of a base to build our impressions on.

I'm pretty sure I'm in a similar situation to you. I'm overdoing the showing and doing nearly no telling. The tricky part is in deciding when to use what.

If connecting with Shadow's three years in prison had been a significant part of the plot and we really needed to identify with that, then the book would probably have been a lot more about it (I don't remember, it's years since I read it), but now it's about different things, and what the description really does is give us an impression of what kind of a person he is.

 

[Russ]

Agreed that is all telling by fine authors.

The interesting feature is that they are all from the beginning of the book/story.

David Morrell, and others, suggest the the place to break from the general rule of tight 3rd person POV and showing not telling is at the very beginning of your novel so that you can quickly set the scene for the reader and give them a little perspective. While it is a good idea to start as close as you can to either the initiating action, or the turning point action, he and others suggest there is value in giving enough background quickly so the writer cares about the character or understands why the scene is important.

I would agree with him (and them) that if you want to break from close 3rd person POV and do some telling, that the very beginning is the logical and optimal place to do that.

The posters above me also make some points I agree with so I won't bother repeating them.

I think the idea that one should "show and not tell" is a good guideline for the vast majority of one's fictional prose.

 

[BWFoster78]

You should Show, not Tell except in those instances where you should Tell, not Show.

As a new writer, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether I should Show or Tell or if I was Showing or Telling or something. Truthfully, I think all that worrying was good for me. I learned a lot about the benefits of each method, and I think that all writers need to understand how to Show (which comes much less naturally than Telling).

So my advice to a new author is:

1. Show. A lot. Learn how to do it instinctively.
2. Once you've got that down, experiment. Does Telling or Showing work better for your scene?
3. Eventually, you'll build up an intuition about what's working best for you, and you'll be able to just write without worrying about it so much.
4. Even when you reach the point of 3 above, pay attention to beta readers when they tell you you're Telling too much.

 

[Incanus]

I'm finding that there is a pretty good sized discrepancy between the 'rules', and what is found in professional novels.

I have no credentials, and no one has any good reason to listen to me very seriously. But, for what it's worth, I think you're going about this the right way. Read, and read more. And pay attention to what you're reading. Ask questions and think things through. Experiment with your own writing. And don't ever become complacent.

 

[Chessie]

Telling=passive voice, which is necessary in your narrative at certain times (you'll learn what those are as you hone your craft). I tell when connecting/transitioning scenes, for example:

Twila went to bed early that night. She tossed and turned on the uncomfortable straw bed, wishing she were back in the palace where she belonged. When morning came, her back couldn't have been any stiffer. (This is mostly telling, right? But for whatever reason, I, the author, believe it needs to be there for now. This can also be turned into a scene during edits, but that's for another discussion.)

Someone rustled in the loft and Twila said, "hello? Who's there?" (here, I would transition into showing since I'm at the right spot)

This is a loose example showing you can work it from whatever angle you believe tells your story the best. Learning how to show rather than tell on instinct is important if you want to improve (ninj'd by Brian). Sometimes you just have to think about the sentence you've just written and ask if whether it's showing or telling, then rewrite it. It's okay to have passive voice more in the first draft but train yourself out of that with practice. That way there's less for you to edit out later.

 

[Steerpike]

There's nothing wrong with telling.

 

[Gospodin]

Whether one shows or tells, whether there is narrative or dialogue, whether the writing is terse or waxes rhapsodic, whatever the mode, manner or method, it should always be done with deliberation and intent. None of the aforementioned is any better or worse or more or less correct than the others. They each have their place in maximizing how and what you want to get across to the reader.

 

[Heliotrope]

Yeah, I think my issue right now is mostly confidence. I can read it from others…

Like Russ, I read your first sentence in the first sentence post… the one about how the third try (or second try at AI) was a disaster. And I felt that it was perfect. It was such a great sentence. Such a great opener. It opened the door to so many questions and made me go "oh… cool… what happens here?"

If I try to write a sentence like that I will really love it, and then I will second guess myself… "Oh, should it be more showy? There isn't any action here. Nobody is doing anything. I'm just telling and that is a big no-no." Etc. I feel, a little bit, the more I have read about craft the more paralyzed I have become. I used to just write, then fix it all in editing. Now I find I can't turn the rational side of my brain off. I sit down to start things and then all the craft books and tips I have learned come flooding into my mind and I find myself too restricted to even start.

 

[BWFoster78]

One additional point:

It is widely thought that a lot of new writers tend to tell when they should be showing. After all, telling is the way we've been taught to write since grade school (what I was taught, at any rate) whereas showing is a whole 'nother thing. Since we don't know any better when we're starting out, we tend to stick with what we know.

That tendency of new authors is part of the reason you see Show, don't Tell bandied about so much. It's not that a seasoned author shouldn't do it; it's that new authors aren't doing it, as Gospodin said, "with deliberation and intent."

Maybe the particular style you eventually develop will end up with telling as a main technique, but I think that any author who doesn't learn to show is going to be working with a severe handicap.

 

[Steerpike]

I'm finding that there is a pretty good sized discrepancy between the 'rules', and what is found in professional novels.

It's a huge discrepancy.

The "rules," including "show don't tell" serve one primary purpose - to stop new writers inadvertently screwing up things new writers commonly screw up.

Once you realize that's what they're for, you can understand why so many professional authors deviate from the so-called rules and are nevertheless successful. As Gospodin noted, above, they're being deliberate about their choices rather than stumbling blindly into that territory because they don't know better.

 

[Heliotrope]

Thanks Brain. Yeah, I get that. I teach writing in a High School, had to do a lot of it in University (both in my BA and Ma) and you are right, it was drilled into us. Show don't tell, Show don't tell. Show don't tell.

For a long time (10 years) I wrote mostly non-fiction, literary criticism and Historical non-fiction. Mostly essays and magazine articles and helped a lot of historians write educational material. Now that I'm focussing more on fiction I am paying more attention to what I'm reading. Doing my degree in English Lit we read a ton of old stuff. The old guys used to tell all the time. They did a lot of lovely description, but it was a lot of telling. I love Hemingway, and even though he was short on description he was pretty long on telling.

Now I'm paying more attention to contemporary authors as well and I'm seeing a lot of what might be considered "literary authors" doing what seems like a lot of telling. It works for them, and they have a good balance of showing and telling.

I'm finding that I'm trying too hard to "show" and it is coming off forced (I think) or I'm adding in paragraphs of material that might just be better suited to a few sentences of telling. Does that make sense? I think I'm too far on the showing spectrum now that it is almost sort of cheapening my writing?

I'm not sure I'm explaining this clearly enough….

 

[FifthView]

What's amazing is this: Those new writers have probably also read a lot, but not read well. They've read for enjoyment but not for learning the tools of writing; so, they've missed all the distinctions, the deliberate use of language.

If you take for example your favorite authors, you can also notice, while reading, when they have and when they have not used telling. Noting the different cases can help as a guide, so that one doesn't fall into the trap of "Always show! Don't tell!" But even so, organizing and categorizing what you see in a published novel may not be an easy task—because we are used to reading for enjoyment but not accustomed to analyzing it. For instance, Chesterama's comment above about using telling for transitions was like a lightbulb going off in my head as I realized that, yes, the start of a novel/story (as in the examples in the OP) is a kind of transition. Also, transitioning between scenes may often naturally occur when a certain length of time has passed. So the "3-week journey between cities" that I mentioned above as an example may relate to this transitioning between, for instance, night and day. And succinctly put, telling puts forward information in order to get it out of the way (whether new information or a touchstone reminder) before the action is taken up with new showing.

So noting where telling is used and what it's doing, making a personal list of different types of use for telling, can help out the new writer far more than merely sticking to "Show, don't tell."

[Edit: Wrote the above before Heliotrope's latest comment. Yes: Paying attention while reading.]

 

[Heliotrope]

Yes. I think that is helpful. Thank you Fifthview. I was also thinking of Chesterama's comment, and how she noted that there was a section she might turn into a scene… and I think I'm having the problem of taking things that really shouldn't be scenes and trying to turn them into incredibly boring, wordy, descriptive scenes just because I think I'm not supposed to 'tell."

Again I was reading Gaiman and one transition was literally:

Time passed.

I'm having trouble being so clear and concise. I appreciate it in other writers, but have a hard time thinking that way myself. How much of that is "show vs. tell" and how much of that is just style? (simplistic/minimalist vs. heavy detail and description? or Cold vs. warm writing?)

 

[Russ]

If I try to write a sentence like that I will really love it, and then I will second guess myself… "Oh, should it be more showy? There isn't any action here. Nobody is doing anything. I'm just telling and that is a big no-no." Etc. I feel, a little bit, the more I have read about craft the more paralyzed I have become. I used to just write, then fix it all in editing. Now I find I can't turn the rational side of my brain off. I sit down to start things and then all the craft books and tips I have learned come flooding into my mind and I find myself too restricted to even start.

Allow me to offer you some unsolicited advice, after I thank you for the very kind words.

There is actually good scientific and anecdotal evidence that the very best creative writing is done immediately after you wake up or just before you go to sleep when you are quite tired, when you brain is in an in between space and your rational mind is not fully running the show yet. I heard several authors talk about that and later say a couple of articles on that. That might be something that works for you. Some people can meditate their way into that state but I am not one of them. Give it a try and see what happens.

Secondly, some writers think of the first draft as the "vommit draft" and the goal is to get is all out and go back and clean it up later. One very successful Canadian spec fic author (Robert J. Sawyer) says that his craft work only begins once the first draft is done and that the first draft serves like an uncut stone for the sculptor. That philosophy might help you as well.

Personally I find what has helped me avoid the paralysis of analysis is developing a sense of humour about my faults. When I write a section and go back to it later and find some piss poor writing instead of kicking myself I now laugh about how funny it is and fix it later. Writing can be torture but you have to have some fun with it as well.

Give some of these a try, write fearlessly and I am sure you will get overcome your current woes.

 

[Heliotrope]

And actually, now thinking about transitions, so could the end of the chapter and start of the chapter count as transitions? Because I'm finding as I read I'm seeing that a lot of my favourite authors use those times to 'set the stage' so to speak. They start with sort of describing the scenery and the backdrop a bit to set the scene before focussing in on the characters. I find I like to do this too when I write, but then I cut it to get right to the nitty gritty right away and then I find my scenes aren't as rich as they could be….

 

[Heliotrope]

Yes, Russ, I have also considered my first draft to be like 'clay'. That's what I always tell myself. Just get the damn clay down onto the page. You can't shape something that doesn't exist. I literally picture myself throwing chunks of sloppy, wet messy clay onto the page, knowing it will dry and I can shape it anyway I like after it is done. Sometimes it is just hard to look at such a slippery mess.

 

[BWFoster78]

I'm finding that I'm trying too hard to "show" and it is coming off forced (I think) or I'm adding in paragraphs of material that might just be better suited to a few sentences of telling. Does that make sense? I think I'm too far on the showing spectrum now that it is almost sort of cheapening my writing?

I'm not sure I'm explaining this clearly enough….

I've been there. Believe me, I've been there.

The only way I know of to get past it is to:

Write
Revise
Write
Revise
Write ...

Eventually, I kinda found what works for me. While I'm still tweaking that style, in general, I don't get caught up in the details any longer. I truly don't know, however, how to skip the step where you do get caught up in the details; that's the step where you develop a true understanding of those very important details.

 

[Chessie]

I'm having trouble being so clear and concise. I appreciate it in other writers, but have a hard time thinking that way myself. How much of that is "show vs. tell" and how much of that is just style? (simplistic/minimalist vs. heavy detail and description? or Cold vs. warm writing?)

Heliotrope, you're experiencing growing pains. I can't think of anyone here who probably hasn't beat themselves up when first learning to write fiction. The stage you're at is natural. You're going to be frustrated. But the only way you'll learn all of this is to just keep writing and studying. One day, you'll realize that now you do understand, it will make sense on its own time.

This isn't information that will switch on in your brain overnight. It takes patience and practice. When you write, be intentional about where the story is going. One thing that I find helpful is to write a short paragraph(s) of the scene I'm about to write before I begin. This way, it's imprinted in my brain and then I can make certain word choices and stylistic influences in the narrative. Telling isn't only nice for transitions, but it can be useful in impacting reader emotions during internal dialogue. Granted, this depends on your story, style, and skill level.

When is it okay to tell? My suggestion is to continue researching this on the internet and comparing that information to fiction books, just like you're doing. Then apply it to your technique when you write.