Hey there, y'all. I'm just curious as to what everyone thinks on this whole show vs tell business.
I'm no stranger to writing or to the concept, but screenplays are new to me. I know SVT still applies, but it seems to work differently in this form.
Now, I've read a bunch of script that will describe the MC as "defeated" or having "lost hope" or whatever the case may be. In my brain, that's telling. Sure, you can show it later, but you still told me. I've also read this is the thing to do.
On the other hand, I've read and seen the opposite. Don't tell the reader the MC is defeated, show them through his actions.
Any thoughts on this? Is it just a matter of preference?
I posted this awhile ago as a response to another member who also raised this question.
I hope you might also find it helpful.
I think that there's a lot of misunderstanding about what is meant by "show, don't tell" -- especially as it relates to movies because (as people always mistakenly declare) movies are a "visual medium" -- thus, presumably, we're supposed to be "showing things."
"Show, don't tell" has nothing to do with depicting things visually as opposed to conveying them through words.
A concept can be "shown" or "told" visually or it can be "shown" or "told" through characters conversing.
That's because the idea of "show, don't tell" refers to the "dramatic content" of a scene, not its visual content.
The question is always, what is it that the "scene" needs to convey -- what dramatic information -- what is supposed to happen in the scene? Someone learns something. Someone needs something. Someone tries to gain some advantage over somebody. Somebody wins. Somebody loses. Somebody learns something. Something is set up.
There's a particular *dramatic* reason for every scene to be there. The question is, are *you,* the storyteller, showing the audience what that reason for the scene is, are you merely *telling* them what the reason for the scene is.
In the examples you site, characters may very well be talking about all sorts of different things -- their past, things that happened to them, or whatever.
But one ought not think that simply because characters are talking about something, that that "something" is necessarily what the "scene" is about -- and thus, what ought to be "shown" on screen.
A great example of this is that great scene from Silence of the Lambs when Clarice recounts the story of the killing of the spring lambs to Hannibal Lechter.
Why do we stay with Clarice and Lechter during this long, extended story? Why not flash back and show her as a little girl with the sheep? Wouldn't that be much more visual, much more dramatic? Wouldn't that be "showing" rather than "telling?"
No. Because "show, don't tell" has nothing to do with whether we "visualize" particular incidents -- whether the incident of the sheep are visualized in a flashback or described by Clarice.
The question is -- where is the *dramatic content* of the scene. Where is the actual "scene" happening? Back with Clarice as a little girl with the sheep? No. The scene is about Lechter forcing the adult Clarice to reveal the deepest emotional secret about herself in exchange for life and death information - and she has to do it.
The "story" is happening in the present, with the adult Clarice -- and that's where the camera needs to be pointed -- not at the past at the little girl Clarice and the sheep.
And so always, when it comes to this question of, "Show, don't tell" -- you have to ask the question - where is the story happening, and it isn't necessarily "happening" in the same place that people in a scene are talking about.
Sometimes you want to show something that happened in the past because that *is* where the story is happening, and a past event is advancing or illuminating something that's happening in the present day of the story.
But other times, even when the past is being referenced in a contemporary scene, the dramatic action of the scene is not really what's being referenced in the dialogue. It has a purpose, but it's being used, within the present-tense scene, in a different way,(whether it's comedic or dramatic) for a different reason.
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In respect to the particular question that you raise -- you're talking about what amounts to the "attitude" of a particular character.
This is my opinion on that. When we write, we're trying, using the tools of prose, to approximate to the extent that we can, the experience of watching a movie.
So when an actor comes on screen and he looks like he's been beaten down by life -- there are countless ways that an actor might play that. Through his expression, his posture, the way he responds to others in the tone of his voice, or fails to respond. Through any number of little bits of stage business that he might work out.
Obviously, when you write this character's particular dialogue, the fact that he is that way -- beaten by life -- is going to be part of the way he speaks and the way acts and the way he interacts.
But when you see this character on screen, an audience isn't going to have to wait for him to speak or for him to do something in particular to get that first impression of somebody that's beaten down by life -- because that's the sort of thing that hits you about a person the minute you see him.
And that's generally true about people who have strongly defined personalities (and those are the kinds of people that we all want to write about) -- when you first meet them, those personalities immediately impress themselves upon you in countless little ways that are quite difficult to express in terms of literal description.
That is why our wonderful language has given us the means of encapsulating those kinds of expressions through terms like, "beaten down by life."
You write it and the reader gets it -- in exactly the same way that when the actor steps on screen, presuming that he's delivering the performance appropriately, the audience gets it immediately through various subtleties of performance -- here's some guy who's been beaten down by life.
Now, it's important to understand that if that's all you do - just write that and play that, that the results are not going to add up to a satisfactory character.
What you are doing is giving a "first impression" of a character -- in essence, a place for an audience to hang its hat in reference to a character.
For a character to have any depth or definition, they have to be more than simply a "this" - for instance to simply be "beaten down by life" (that's what we mean by a one-dimensional character) -- but to be a "this but that" -- to be embodied or defined by aspects or qualities in conflict or in tension.
That is where the "showing" comes in. "Oh," the audience thinks, "-- he's merely this." Then, "Oh no -- he's also that."
And what will be the consequence of him being not only this -- but also that?
NMS
