Is it ever okay to tell, instead of showing?

Of course it works, but it has to be right for the moment.

Something like (but hopefully better than) this:

It was raining the day I was born. Of course, I only know that because someone told me.

Certain things it's not possible for your POV character to see, therefore the information must be told.

Lots of conflicting opinions from authors on this subject, but there's a bit of a concensus that you should never always show nor always tell.

So - there's that.

Just like adverbs, telling is a tool in your writing arsenal.
When you want to quickly get something out of the way or if your POV character isn't there, there is nothing wrong with telling what needs to be told and move on. I'm sure there are more valid uses.

Besides, it all lies in the execution. If you tell 100% of your novel but still catch an agent's attention (in a good way), the "rule" really doesn't matter.

They're more like guidelines anyway.

I've come to view showing and telling in two different ways from hearing people talk about it.

Way #1: Its like the zoom on a camera. When you are showing me what happened we are in the scene. There is dialog and action and all that good stuff. When you tell me we are seeing a sweeping shot of a town, or a car pulling into a driveway; it's generally a transition tool for something that we do not want to dramatize.

Way #2: This one has more to do with dialog structure and attributives. If you are using stuff like "He shouted angrily" or "She whimpered feebly" instead of showing me what he is actually doing it can get very old very fast. There are books that will tell you never to do this and I do not necessarily agree with that either. It's about balance. If you can either tell me what he is actually doing or saying that is making him angry that is the better choice.

"I don't get what you see in him." His coffee mug hit the table with a distinct thud and the legs of his chair scraped the floor as he got up from the table. "Not that it matters. I doubt I'll be seeing you again."

She rose from her chair. One hand stretched out as if she could pull him back. As if with a wave of her palm she could undo what had happened between them. Her throat tightened and she blinked back tears. "Don't go."

It was too late. The door to the cafe closed behind him. A quiet finality tinged the air, stripping it of the aroma of coffee beans and cinnamon. She got up and went to the door. This was now the last place she wanted to be.

"Hey, miss?" She stopped and reached into her purse, mumbling under her breath. How had it slipped her mind that the jerk had left her with the bill?

^^^I just wrote that randomly sitting here, but hopefully it helps.

Sure when a situation is better fit to be told than shown and you briefly "tell" to move things along. Like for example a character recounts an incident to another character -- it could possibly slow things down in the story -- so they tell them instead of you having to "show" it in your writing.

"She was pushed into a pool so that's why she won't go to the swim party, it was tragic." Said so-and-so character.

vs.

the showing of the scene when it would slow the pace and distract from the main drama.

You can't show everything. That would be almost as bad as too much "tell". It's all about balance. (Something I'm sure I haven't mastered.)

Insight here:

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=213219

Just like someone above said, telling is a tool. You can overdo it or balance it. If there is a situation that you can describe without telling, it's best to do it. But it depends

Just like with a healthy diet, everything in moderation!!

One of my pet peeves is endless catalogues of physical complaints to show emotion. It's more awkward to go on and on about hearts pounding than to simply tell us the character is scared. I'm trying to work on this myself, find the balance, and not resort to cliches even when I'm "showing."

Write what you want.

Tell as much as is necessary. No more, no less. Sometimes 'necessary' is a judgement call or a personal preference. I like descriptions of mountains, seasons, towns, etc., as a momentary relief from tension and as long as it doesn't take pages and pages to tell me the trees are in bloom and the meadow larks are singing.

The show-don't-tell mantra seems to be driven by commercial genre fiction writers, agents and editors. Literary fiction and non-fiction are not so-constrained by such strict rules and regulations.

I'm going to be flamed for this, but I don't believe there are any rules for writing besides use proper punctuation, spelling, and grammar (unless it's intentional not to do so).

There's only one correct way to write: to entertain your audience. If you're doing so, then congrats, you're writing the correct way. I've read some poorly written, shoddy, published novels that are completey incredible and are some of my favorite books ever (The Southern Vampire Mysteries, Dresden Files, Harry Potter, & everything by Stephen King spring to mind) and I've read some well-written, A+ grade, literary critic's award of the year novels that were so dull that I wanted to rip my hair out of my skull. *cough*thekiterunner*cough*

I am taking this telling-riddled passage from page 149 of the Chamber of Secrets. I pretty much just randomly grabbed it off my shelf and opened up to a random page.

Dead Thomas, who had been sitting with his mouth hanging open, gazing out of the window, jerked out of his trance; Lavender Brown's head came up off her arms and Neville Longbottom's elbow slipped off his desk.
Proffessor Binns blinked.
"..." he said in a dry, wheezy voice.
[...]
Proffessor Binns was looking at her in such amazement that Harry was sure no student had ever interrupted him before, dead or alive. [...] he looked dimly at them all, every face turned to his.

Click to expand...

Rowling tells and tells and tells. But you know what? It doesn't matter because her world-building and character development are so great that she doesn't need to show anything. She shows it through her words. I'm not saying you should write like this: "The cat leap off the bed. The cat then sat down. The cat ate food." but you also don't have to rip your hair out because you can't write a specific way. It's like a band having a great sound, and then someone critizing them for the brand of instruments they are playing with.

It's been my experience that if you show everything it takes 10x longer to describe. I don't think there's anything wrong with getting to the point, if you have to.

Write whatever the hell you want. Screw the rules!

The only rules for writing are guidelines that help you appeal to a lower-class of animal that just so happens to have some manner of control on how your writing is distributed.

Tell if you want to, or show it all. Doesn't matter. Write the way you want and if it's worth being read it'll find a way into the wild. And the beautiful thing about these oh-so-modern times is writers are finding their way into the wild in more and more different ways.

Chazemataz said:

Dead Thomas, who had been sitting with his mouth hanging open, gazing out of the window, jerked out of his trance; Lavender Brown's head came up off her arms and Neville Longbottom's elbow slipped off his desk.
Proffessor Binns blinked.

Click to expand...

Assuming 'Dead' was a mistake, there's nothing tell about this. It's a perfect example of showing the student's boredom. Tell would be...

Thomas was bored out of his mind. Lavender was so bored she had fallen asleep. Neville was bored too and kept being clumsy.

JK showed us them being bored, with Thomas gaping and staring out of the window and Lavender laying on her arms. We see that they are bored, without being told what we're shown.

Chazemataz said:

Proffessor Binns was looking at her in such amazement that Harry was sure no student had ever interrupted him before, dead or alive.

Click to expand...

This on the other hand is tell. We're not shown Binn's amazement etched on his face, but instead we're told so by the Omni narrator. But it's not bad, because we're inside Harry's head and that will usually be tell. Interior monologue = tell.

That's not really that true though. It's best to think of Interior Monologue as being exempt from the rules of show and tell. At least that's what I do...

Though the danger with Interior Monologue are possible info-dumps...

But that's off-topic, so anyway...

Showing, in the show and tell sense, does not mean you can't mention what is happening or that you have to use flowery language. It means that instead of simply describing what's happening in bland factual statements, you show them.

Tell:

John bullied the kid in front of him.

Showing:

John tore off tiny bits of paper and chewed them up until they had just the right consistency. Then he flicked it at the boy's head in front of him.

Bored, Angry, Tired, etc. These are all words that can either be used to tell (John was angry), or you can expand on them to show your characters going through those emotions (John threw his book at the wall).

If your MC's dad is angry at her, he's going to show it through his actions and dialogue. He's not just going to say I'm angry. He may stomp and shout and snatch the MC's phone away.

But even then, there's no problem with telling in itself. If for instance your characters habits and personalities have already been established, then there may be nothing wrong with simply saying "John was bored".

This is something you're going to have to judge on your own when writing. There are no rules, but there are techniques which work and don't work.

If John just crashed into a mailbox, you might want to show the anger of his parents as opposed to simply telling us they were angry. The morning after, you may get away with John thinking to himself or having him tell a friend that they are still angry with him.

It's all about proportion.

Thanks for the post, Cuppa. I always get hung up on telling vs. showing because now matter what, I'm always telling SOMETHING. Ex: I'm telling that the father is stomping his feet, but by telling that, I'm showing his anger.

Still getting used to it.