Show v Tell

I don't think it's a matter of trust -- you do need to provide that trust unless your narrator is unreliable (first person). To me, if you're reading 3rd person, you pretty much have to assume that the narrator is reliable. So judgment or no judgment, trust shouldn't be an issue (if the narrator tells you Helen of Troy is the most beautiful woman on Earth, you will trust him).

To me, Show is better than Tell is because it provides vivid details and takes you places and puts you inside that road and lets your experience the sights, sounds, smells, etc. and use your own brain and imagination to get the story, instead of the author/narrator telling you what to perceive.

Telling someone is beautiful is NEVER going to be more exciting and personal and direct than seeing it for yourself. "Show" is basically helping the readers to see, hear, smell, etc. for themselves. And it makes for a much better reading experience, IMO.


Show vs. tell also became the de facto approach in modern literature because of movies and TV. Even back in the radio days, you can get away with a lot of tell. People do sit there and "TELL" a story. Older books were the only entertainment many people had back then -- except maybe staged plays. The closest they got to "show" was probably plays.

But in the 20th century, we were introduced to movies and TV. Suddenly, it's all about show. No one is just sitting there telling you a story anymore. Everything is being shown to you. And I think literature followed the same path and evolved, because that's what the audience want now. They want adventures -- ACTUAL adventures to be experienced, and not just told. Is it more exciting to go along on the ride and see things, or is it more exciting to hear Bob tell it, "and then we went to the museum and saw some big fish"?

Once I heard about Show not Tell and I changed the stories I'd previously written, I saw how much better the story sounded. It's possible to get more power in showing than telling.

A couple of simple examples:

a) Karen was a tall, slim woman with blue eyes and long blonde hair.

V

b) Karen swished blonde hair over her shoulder, and her blue eyes twinkled as she sat and stretched out long, slim legs.

The latter works for me because I get more of a picture of Karen as she carries out those movements than I do from simply being told what she looks like.

Instead of being told that a character is very nervous, I prefer to see it through dialogue and actions as I would in real life.

Methinks it depends where you are on the learning curve. Suggesting to aspiring writers that they try to "show" over "telling" is good advice, I reckon. If you're in the advanced class and can twiddle the dial settings to make "tell" work for you, then more power to your typing finger. But it isn't really a case of use one or the other -- it's not show vs. tell, it's show and tell, finding that smooth blend between the two.

-Derek

Stunted said:

This is sort of a vague thread. I just wanted everyone's opinion on show v tell. The sort of accepted wisdom nowadays seems to be "Show is better than tell except for sometimes", but I can't help but feel like this is just a current style. As far as I can tell, older books like The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Count of Monte Cristo are basically all (really gorgeously written) Tell. (Actually, there's a good example of this from the latter in my sig)

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I didn't see a link in your sig for some reason.

I haven't read either of those, but let me offer the following quotation from Jeremy Hawthorn's book Studying The Novel:

Showing and Telling. A term used to distinguish two ways of providing the reader with relevant information. Telling is seen as the cruder technique, involving overt statement on the part of the narrator or character. Showing is more subtle and indirect, presenting scenes of dialogue, thought or action and allowing the reader to draw certain conclusions him- or herself.

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The emphasis in the last sentence is mine. It's not always appreciated, therefore show is not always recognised.

Many discussions on show and tell operate at the sentence level. For example, instead of a sentence stating that a character is nervous we're advised to have them biting their nails, or instead of saying they're impatient they'd be tapping their fingers on the desk. That's all fine.

You can have writing at the sentence level that looks like tell, but is actually show, as the reader understands something far greater than the words directly convey, the author writing in such a way as to allow the reader to draw conclusions for themselves. I think this is what people sometimes miss.

Whether the above is true for the stories you mention I don't know, maybe they're all tell or maybe they're working at a higher level than the sentence.

Cheers,
Rob

I find showing puts me in the moment, so I feel as if I'm experiencing the story with the characters. Telling distances me from the story and makes me feel like I'm standing in the sidelines watching it all happen.

Showing is the current style, and it hasn't always been. Telling used to be the way stories were told. That's why the classics sound and read the way they do. Storytelling has changed over the years, same as any other art form. I'm sure it'll change again as communication and culture evolves.

Storytelling evolved from people sitting around fires telling, well, stories. Stories to teach, stories to educate, stories to entertain. That lead to plays, as "show don't tell" took off even then People wanted to see the stories acted out. Even those started out with telling, then evolved to scenes showed and acted out for the audience. Look at movies. A documentary is very told. A feature film is shown. Compare March of the Penguins with Happy Feet.

Let me add that there is actually nothing wrong with telling. Chances are most every book out there has some telling in it. Sometimes all that is really necessary is "He woke up the next day and went to work", we don't need to be shown all that. It's simply that telling tends to be what the newer writer falls back on. They need to learn how to show. And yes, showing can be much more powerful because it draws a reader in, allows him to draw his own conclusions (though if you have done it well, those are conclusions you expected him to draw). Showing is also simply harder to write, and harder to write well, because you need to understand how people think, how they put actions together to create an emotion.

But there is nothing wrong with telling at all. In fact sometimes I say to people that they need more telling in their work because they've been a little obsessed with staying "true" to show don't tell.

If telling is a modern invention, then showing is a relic. I'm sure a talented scribe could make use of the old form, bend it in interesting ways, but given readers today have an expectation of participation in ways telling doesn't allow, why would you foist telling on them? Telling also does you no favors as a writer in that it's the shortest route to story. How can you grow if you're planting words on the page in a way that doesn't challenge/engage/involve you or your audience?

Looking over the responses, and recognizing what's happening with my own writing, I'd say I'm for a blend of showing and telling weighted toward showing.

*editor's hat on*

You should always strive to show instead of tell. The reader doesn't want the narrator's relation of events; they want to draw their own conclusions from the descriptions you give.

*editor's hat off, writer's hat on*

But then again, there are occasions where telling is appropriate. It's up to you as a writer to determine when those occasions are. There is a definite skill involved with learning the balance necessary between the two in crafting a good story.

I think there has been some good discussions on this topic.

My thoughts are that it is about STORYTELLING. In my mind, storytelling has two components, Show and Tell.

The artistry comes in when you figure out what to show and what to tell. My personal rule of thumb is to show things of importance and show as much as possible while not impeding the flow and pace of the story.

I like to think of a story as a rollercoaster. A rollercoaster has ups and downs, slow parts and fast parts and Oh-please-god-save-me parts. There should be some bouts of telling and different types of showing. Action sequences should be hard hitting fast paced bare bones descriptions with great action words. Emotional sequences should have action words that are as sharp and precise as a scapel that conjure up the perfect image (i guess you could argue this point for everything )

And there are some rare occasions when the 'Tell' does work better than show.

Personally, i've found that you can hid quite a bit of tell in dialogue and sneaking it in with the action sequences. The best method I find is to throw in a dash of tell in an action sequence, but that 'tell' MUST be germaine to the sequence at hand.

Not that there is a magic formula but i've noticed that you can get away with one or two lines of tell buried within a paragraph or two of show. Just enough to add detail or history but not so much as to break the flow.

The biggest problem I find with newbies is that they start to rely on "tell" as a crutch. Truth be told, it is easier. Instead of showing the inner turmoil of my MC as he kills his nemisis all I need is one line of tell ..."He was conflicted abouve killing his nemisis"... See? Easy? Done?

But the consequence is that the reader does not 'feel' that turmoil.

Anyways, i'm starting to ramble.

In summary, it is about storytelling and the artistry is learning the perfect mix to serve the scene at hand IMHO

Mel...

Oh, thought I'd add one more point about Tell.

One of the biggest problems I've noticed with Newbie "Tell" is that it is boring. If you read the 'older' stories that had more tell, even that tell was written with beautiful prose, great imagery, incredible turns of phrase.

A lot of the "Tell" I see on here could be written by 8th graders. I know that sounds condescending, but one of my main complaints about newbie Tell is that it is incredibly unremarkable.

So, on those rare occasions where you feel you must tell, that does not absolve you from trying to be creative and interesting with your tell, to find the perfect action word/verb, to think of a unique turn of phrase, to weave the words together so they flow like a river through a desert.

But I will agree with most above, Show usually is better. And by usually, I mean 90% of the time you are better off showing than telling. ANd this goes double for anything of importance.

Mel...

I think you need a combination of both to create a truly deep piece of work. I'm an old hack at the "show don't tell" and I've found that it creates some confusion in readers if it's just too subtle. You need some underlying narrative sometimes to reemphasis a character's development. You can "show" that they're nervous or tired or angry by their behavior, but if everything they've ever believed in has been turned on its head, you need a bit more than them standing there with their mouths guppying. At some point, you need to tell the reader what the character is going through, even if you plan some kind of complete change in behavior as a result of their upside down world. Especially if it's an important part of the plot.

Showing and telling are both part of the writer's toolbox. Learn them, and learn to use them well. The bottom line of storytelling is: put your readers in that world, keep them there.

If you can do that, then who really cares if you're showing or telling? Because your readers wouldn't even notice. They won't be reading. They're THERE!


One thing though: if an agent or editor asks for something written "cinematically," it often means they want show, not tell. They want to be able to "see" the movie when they read it, and not some guy sitting there telling them what happened.

Toothpaste said:

In fact sometimes I say to people that they need more telling in their work because they've been a little obsessed with staying "true" to show don't tell.

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Hmmmm. Tangentially, I think I just realized something about why I stall out for days in first drafts, sometimes. I get so caught up in making sure I'm showing instead of telling, getting those details just right, that I lose the flow of the story.

Huh.

*ponders*

*makes note to tell in first drafts, show in rewrite!*

I still see a lot of tell in some romance novels. Even those written by the bigger, well known names in romance. It's funny I would never have picked these things out before prior to coming to AW

These are all just general concepts and best practices, etc. Like I said before, they're tools. And writers should choose their tools wisely. And sometimes it depends on the genres and stories you're writing.

The same ingredients and techniques that go into a hamburger won't work in a Beurre Blanc. And some people prefers a burger over French food, or vice versa.

Still, a burger lover would know a good burger vs. a bad one. No? There are stills standards.

I shoot for showing, as opposed to telling, but I do find myself telling occasionally in my story.

I think the "show" style helps the reader place themselves into the story, whereas the "tell" style makes the reader feel they are simply being spoken to. I read an article (can't recall which one ... I believe it was from Writer's Digest) and it mentioned the audience preferring to live the story and not being "lectured" by the author.

I think the best is a combination of both show and tell. Showing gets boring fast, especially if it's written in poorly. I've been drilled with the whole Show, don't tell thing basically since I've started writing, and it's probably a good thing for beginning writers, but it's not (or shouldn't be) the universal rule. You need both to tell a good story.

d&f.