Show don't Tell?

[Russ]

Beside PP's excellent points on the subject, showing has another value.

It gives your reader the sense that they have figured something out for themselves rather than having been spoonfed the point.

People don't like being spoonfed, they get a sense of satisfaction from figuring things out for themselves.

It also helps maintain tight 3rd person POV which is very popular these days.

 

[kennyc]

It's not about showing or telling. It's about knowing when to show and when to tell. And how the two work together to convey the story in a compelling manner. (What ever the hell that means)

.....

Narration.

 

[Heliotrope]

PenPilot that was amazing. I have always played around with having scene goals for myself (not just the character). I usually start with a list just like you showed, especially for the beginning when I need to develop a sympathetic yet interesting character asap.

I guess what I am struggling with is what you said about "He punched the wall" and what Foster said about 'showing' her shoving away rats to get to food. If I showed every single detail my 6000 word short would be 10,000 words of boring showing scenes, but I will write "He punched the wall" and I feel 'guilty' about it, like I'm cheating. I'm not allowing myself to just tell sometimes.

But I'm finding that in intro's particularly, telling achieves a lot in a short amount of time.

It's finding that balance between what the reader needs to know now and info dumping.

I'm also finding, though that in the contemporary fiction that I'm reading, writers are doing more and more telling, not just at the beginning of the story... So, here is the Crazy Horse story again. This is a few paragraphs from the middle of the story:

"Wallace spent the next three days alone in his condo, sitting in the dark and feeling sorry for himself. He let his cell phone ring until it died and then made a point of not plugging it in. He watched whatever was on TV. He made a couple attempts at getting drunk, but it wouldn’t take. He iced his head until the swelling started going down, leaving behind a darkening triangle of tissue along his temple. It looked like he’d had an accident while ironing.

After three days he’d had enough. He had to do something, get outside, take a walk. Look, he told himself while standing at the sliding glass door to his deck. It’s a beautiful ****ing day.

He put on his shoes and rolled a joint to keep him company. He didn’t want to risk it on the beach, where there might be people, so instead he headed off into the estuary that started in back of the condos and ran all the way down to Mexico like one long green finger pointing the way out.

There was a dirt path that dead-ended in about a dozen places, depending on the water level, before eventually snaking its way to the big houses with ocean views on the other side. People didn’t go back in the estuary often. The people in the condos looked out on it every day and the people in the big houses on the other side probably never did. They hadn’t paid all that money to be close to a salt-water swamp."

And it goes on and on and on like that, until we do get to a showing scene, but I would say 'most' of the story is in narrative/telling voice, and yet it works.

What is going on here? Is it just the writers style? I like it though. That's what bothers me. It is so simple and clear and easy to read.

PenPilot, I'm starting to wonder if perhaps the author is 'showing' just in the 'he punched the wall' sort of way instead of the "he lifted his arm and rammed it directly into the drywall. Dust swirled around the room... blah blah blah".

Russ... your point about close 3rd person hit a nerve with me. lol. I absolutely hate writing in first person and I changed my entire narrative to close third last night because I just couldn't stand it.

 

[Penpilot]

PenPilot, I'm starting to wonder if perhaps the author is 'showing' just in the 'he punched the wall' sort of way instead of the "he lifted his arm and rammed it directly into the drywall. Dust swirled around the room... blah blah blah".

This scene is definitely showing.

"Wallace spent the next three days alone in his condo, sitting in the dark and feeling sorry for himself. He let his cell phone ring until it died and then made a point of not plugging it in. He watched whatever was on TV. He made a couple attempts at getting drunk, but it wouldn’t take. He iced his head until the swelling started going down, leaving behind a darkening triangle of tissue along his temple. It looked like he’d had an accident while ironing.

Let's look at this section. First it tells us how he felt, then it shows us how that emotion is played out. If you wanted, you could remove the tell part ("and feeling sorry for himself") and you'd still get the feeling sorry for himself feel from the description.

This is a gray area in show and tell. By removing the tell part, things become a little more unclear. So do you err on the side of clarity or on the side of letting the showing do all the work?

Neither answer is right, it's an authorial choice.

After three days he’d had enough. He had to do something, get outside, take a walk. Look, he told himself while standing at the sliding glass door to his deck. It’s a beautiful ****ing day.

He put on his shoes and rolled a joint to keep him company. He didn’t want to risk it on the beach, where there might be people, so instead he headed off into the estuary that started in back of the condos and ran all the way down to Mexico like one long green finger pointing the way out.

Notice in this section the same pattern is executed. The emotion is told to us and then how it's played out is described.

There was a dirt path that dead-ended in about a dozen places, depending on the water level, before eventually snaking its way to the big houses with ocean views on the other side. People didn’t go back in the estuary often. The people in the condos looked out on it every day and the people in the big houses on the other side probably never did. They hadn’t paid all that money to be close to a salt-water swamp."

On the surface here, there's a lot of telling. But on a higher level, it's showing us a lot. It shows us the class division between the condo people and the big house people, and that's shown by how they view the estuary. The big house people have a choice. They can look at the ocean or the estuary, and they choose the ocean. The people in the condos don't have a choice. They can only look at the estuary.

In a subtle way this is showing us that people with money have choices and people who don't have to take what they got. And those who've moved away from the condos to the big houses don't want to return.

I may be reading a lot into a small section, but hopefully this helps.

 

[FifthView]

On the surface here, there's a lot of telling. But on a higher level, it's showing us a lot.

This is similar to the first two examples in the OP. I think that on some levels telling shows and showing tells. Even if the authors are telling us about Shadow and Wallace, we are also being shown their predicaments, their attitudes, and what draws their attention. I think that a close third-person approach will often show us something about the characters when that writing tells. (I suppose first-person will do this also.) I also think that telling can be just as descriptive as showing; i.e., not merely abstract telling.

An example Brian used: A girl digging in a trash bin for food, out of hunger. We might use an active showing to draw that activity, or we might use a descriptive telling. In other words, "She was hungry" is not the only way to tell about it.

 

[Heliotrope]

Thanks again pen pilot, that was exactly the analysis I was looking for. You weren't reading into it too much, you were exactly right. Right from the beginning of the story with "that's what it had come to" we see that Wallace has very little choice in what is going on in his own life.

Ok. You have been (you have all been) terribly helpful. So basically I'm taking away "show when you can, tell when it's meaningful." And hoping for the best that eventually it will all come more naturally.

 

[kennyc]

Two books that address this (and that I highly recommend):

Reading like a Writer by Francine Prose

The Making of a Story by Alice LaPlante

The key to writing is narration, telling the story, engaging the reader.

There is ton of confusion and bad advice about Showing vs Telling it had me confused for a very long time and I still have plenty to learn.

And BTW there is an excellent discussion of Showing vs Telling in Chapter 5 of the LaPlante book!