Telling/showing in UF: how do you do it?

My UF protagonist, her typical internal narrative (and internal dialogue):

One more piece of dirty laundry on the floor made no difference at this point. The pants would help to keep the other clothes company. The rest of the laundry had been on the floor for long enough to gain sentience and begin the planning stages of a coup – they would welcome fresh blood, new ideas, or at least another piece of cannon fodder in the soap wars that were to come.

The stench of her stained shirt was inexplicably bad as she pulled it over her head. She gave it a suspicious glance, and wondered if it was a sign of a gas leak. There was no reason for it to smell so badly, no reason at all, after all-

I showered on Tuesday...

It’s Tuesday again, Spyder.

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And a typical info-dump conversation to explain a bit of magic:

‘That- That thing you did with the water last night.’

‘Requiring?’

‘You call your conjuring power “requiring”?’

He nodded.

‘But that’s so plain and- I like it,’ she said. ‘It’s like a word that people actually use, it’s not all Expecto Illiad Hydro! Or whatever,’ she said, giving a magic wand flourish. ‘Anyway. Um. Is it like an elemental power?’

There was a slight smile on his face. ‘Do you think it is?’

For a brief second, it seemed to be a condescending question, putting her in her place for being stupid, but the expectant look said otherwise. She knelt on the bed and stared down at her hands for a second. ‘Well, I’m sure I could make some argument about some state change that could make water mimic glass, but I don’t think so. And you teleported us, so if I can make an assumption, I’d assume matter creation is just as easy as bringing us halfway across the city in a few seconds. Well, I guess it was a few seconds.’

He gave her a nod. ‘It was only a few seconds. And your clothes aren’t made of water.’

Huh?

She looked down at herself, and saw the unfamiliar grey t-shirt and pants. ‘Oh. Ooooh.’ She looked back at him, a sheepish look on her face. ‘I had completely forgotten about that.’

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I think it really depends on POV as well, as far frequency of those appearing.

Truthfully, I think it really depends and varies. If the character is very dependent on her weapon, then it would probably help to say how it makes her feel.

If she is very vain or cares a lot about her appearance, then she'll probably mention how she looks.

At same time, I think you should be careful not to go overboard. I, personally, have issues with the "I'm (enter name here)" or "I had on (long list of clothing and accessories)". There not my most favorite type of prose, but to each their own.

There is an argument that this is not 'telling' per se.... it is a character saying something they would naturally talk about (in some cases, if they do it too much then its bad...) rather than an omniscient narrator telling the reader something they don't need to know.

I think the issue with showing/telling is that there is a very fine line between the two in some cases and there are cases where it is fine to tell. As I have said before, I often use the 'history text book' benchmark. If a passage reads too much like a history text book then it is likely to be too much telling. If you can show something in action or dialogue its better or, at least, split up long pieces of exposition with 'stuff happening' in between to prevent large blocks of text containing pointless information.

There is no hard or fast rule, just what seems to work in your style of writing. Some styles, like the first person POV above, support telling better than others.

And it is not just UF which uses first person. Technically this should be a question about use of telling in first person as it applies to all (including the 50s detective genre UF takes a lot of its tropes from).

areteus said:

There is an argument that this is not 'telling' per se.... it is a character saying something they would naturally talk about (in some cases, if they do it too much then its bad...) rather than an omniscient narrator telling the reader something they don't need to know.

I think the issue with showing/telling is that there is a very fine line between the two in some cases and there are cases where it is fine to tell. As I have said before, I often use the 'history text book' benchmark. If a passage reads too much like a history text book then it is likely to be too much telling. If you can show something in action or dialogue its better or, at least, split up long pieces of exposition with 'stuff happening' in between to prevent large blocks of text containing pointless information.

There is no hard or fast rule, just what seems to work in your style of writing. Some styles, like the first person POV above, support telling better than others.

And it is not just UF which uses first person. Technically this should be a question about use of telling in first person as it applies to all (including the 50s detective genre UF takes a lot of its tropes from).

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^That.

Shouldn't be any different in UF than in any other genre.

caw

I read something recently, following a link on a post here, that set up showing vs. telling on a continuum. It makes sense to me.

What it said was to grade a scene on its emotion. If it's from 6-10, show, if from 1-5 then a tell is ok. The point was that showing everything would double the length of the story.

But in your first example, it would be easy to do a show. Just have her grab the gun and blender and send her out for the evening stating where she was going.

Yāoguài;7222231 said:

But why?

That's what I already do, and I'm trying to get past it. The internal monologue is enjoyable to me as a reader. I was hoping to hear other writers describe their approaches.

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This is a really good question. I get the feeling that a lot of interior monologue in UF would be seen as unnecessary or bad form in other genres.

Personally, I think you should use interior monologue when a) your MC has something insightful to add which will flavour a scene or setting or b) when there's something you want to tell your reader succinctly, and you don't have the room (or would rather not expend the words necessary) to show it in full, due to word count, pacing, etc.

It can also be a good way of quickly cluing in your reader about certain things (your MC's abilities, what they've got on them), so later events make sense and/or don't seem like major asspulls. Sometimes it's absolutely necessary, too, because explaining that why your MC's bullets can harm a bullet-proof monster ("...the bullets were actually made of a special mix of rare herbs collected under a fool moon, and ancient metal scraps from some ancient Mayan ruins, capable of negating the Monsterface's anti-bullet magic...") in the middle of a life-or-death fight can throw off the pacing. Better to add two or three lines of monologue beforehand. Monologues can also add tension by alerting the reader to things that could be potential problems, like the habits of other factions/characters and so on. This can be done with normal prose but I guess it's just another style of doing it.

Going back to "a)" -- insightful things are inherently interesting so it's fine to slip them in here and there. The aim of a book is to entertain the reader, after all. If the monologue is interesting then I really think it should be included. That's provided it isn't too long. Such passages should be used sparingly, for the same reason people keep quiet during a film. If someone (your MC in this case) keeps interrupting the flow of the story to say, "Oh, by the way..." it will begin to grate.

So those are the things I take into consideration when I'm thinking about writing UF monologue.

EDIT: Ah, by the way, it really helps if the monologue is funny, because then it's even more entertaining. But obviously that's not a requirement and you really shouldn't feel pressured to do this if it doesn't fit the tone of your story.

There's a question in the main SFF with shades of this too. Telling is fine. Really it is. "Show don't tell" isn't meant to mean you can never ever tell. It means you need to show the fun stuff, but tell things that'd be boring and convoluted if you tried to show them.