On Writing Advice

AW Admin said:

So while it's "telling" us about the car, it's "showing" us the Deliverator.

Click to expand...

I think this is an important issue... sometimes a passage is both telling and showing, because it's about more than one thing at once.
I think of it as sort of parallel to primary vs secondary sources in history. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a secondary or even tertiary source if you're reading it to learn about Rome, but it's a primary source if you're reading it to understand scholarship and ways of thinking in the Enlightenment.

In fiction, we can see the same thing. In order to distinguish between telling and showing, we have to decide what role the passage is playing. At least according to my definition of show/tell.

ETA: So for the passsage from Huck Finn, it's telling if we think the passage is designed to give us the backstory of the previous novel, but showing if we think it's designed to illustrate Huck's character, his relationships, etc.

Ari Meermans said:

So, for those intrepid souls who truly do wish to be great novelists, I propose an exercise:

• Take down your favorite novel, the novel that once you’d finished reading it you clasped to your chest almost prayerfully and thought, “Why oh why can’t I write like that?”
• Go through it and mark pages with post-it notes. It’s better if you also have a pen and notebook for note taking.
• Come back here and post a passage. Tell us how that passage made you feel, how it helped you to see the action and the world of the book, and how it helped you to know the character. Use the most descriptive language you can bring to bear to show how that novel affected you.

Click to expand...

• My chosen passage is a long one, and there are a couple of subplots that get forwarded in it but are unimportant here, so I'll ellipse those out for your convenience.

The book is Lavinia, by Ursula K. Le Guin. It's an exploration of the life of the wife of Aeneas, named in the Aeneid but never given a word to say. (Very cool side note, Le Guin taught herself Latin in order to be able to translate the poem directly, as part of her research!)

The scene is of a sacrifice and augury made just before an important battle, and I chose it because it epitomizes what the book means most to me - it sings alive what it might have FELT like to live the ancient Roman religion, which as a modern pagan with ancient roots, I find myself always thirsty for.

* * * * *
He nodded to the men who held the animals. They brought them forward, with the long sacrificial knives, and Latinus cut the sheep's throat while Aeneas cut the boar's, each with one quick experienced stroke. And at that the people, soldiers standing by and citizens up on the walls, broke the silence with a long, soft, quavering aaahh of release, relief, fulfillment.

Now an Etruscan haruspex came forward to look at the entrails of the sacrifice, a matter the Etruscans consider very important; and the animals had to be cut up and the meat spitted and cooked over the fire. This all took a good deal of time.
...
The haruspex took forever poking about in the livers and hearts and kidneys, the attendants put too much meat on the fire at once and nearly put it out so that it had to be rebuilt to burn high, the murmur and mutter of talking grew louder through the ranks of the Italians. The sacred moment was lost, past. The sun was getting higher, the day was beginning to be hot.

People looked up and pointed to a faint clamor in the sky. A great flight of swans was coming from the river, heading south past us and the city; flying lazily, left to right. The Greek and Trojan troops followed the birds' flight as we Italians and Etruscans did. And so all saw the sudden eagle, arrow-fast from the east, seize the lead swan in its talons in a shower of feathers and shoot on in a wide curve over us, heavily carrying its prey. Then, most strangely, the whole flight of swans turned as one, flying low and fast, the shadow of their wings passing over us, chasing and driving and harrying the eagle, crowding it till it dropped the dead swan and flew up and off over the western hills. A hesitant cheer went up from some of the watchers, but most were silent, wondering at the meaning of the sign.

What a lovely thread topic. I find myself contemplating why I'm sucked in or not sucked in with everything I'm reading these days.

Why did Girl on the Train suck me in? The character was someone who should have disgusted me. I've known drunks before and the memory is cringeworthy. Yet here was a character who couldn't pay rent to the roommate and threw up on the stairs and left it there. And yet, I never even disliked this character. How that worked I don't know. Little bits of reason for empathy for the character leaked out in the writing despite all the things her awful actions should have triggered. You can easily list the things that should disgust the reader. It's so much harder to list the reasons you hold on to empathy.


And then there is Code Name Verity. That book will be in my head for years. I may have to read it again to understand why.

edutton said:

The scene is of a sacrifice and augury made just before an important battle, and I chose it because it epitomizes what the book means most to me - it sings alive what it might have FELT like to live the ancient Roman religion, which as a modern pagan with ancient roots, I find myself always thirsty for.

* * * * *
He nodded to the men who held the animals. They brought them forward, with the long sacrificial knives, and Latinus cut the sheep's throat while Aeneas cut the boar's, each with one quick experienced stroke. And at that the people, soldiers standing by and citizens up on the walls, broke the silence with a long, soft, quavering aaahh of release, relief, fulfillment.

Now an Etruscan haruspex came forward to look at the entrails of the sacrifice, a matter the Etruscans consider very important; and the animals had to be cut up and the meat spitted and cooked over the fire. This all took a good deal of time.
...
The haruspex took forever poking about in the livers and hearts and kidneys, the attendants put too much meat on the fire at once and nearly put it out so that it had to be rebuilt to burn high, the murmur and mutter of talking grew louder through the ranks of the Italians. The sacred moment was lost, past. The sun was getting higher, the day was beginning to be hot.

People looked up and pointed to a faint clamor in the sky. A great flight of swans was coming from the river, heading south past us and the city; flying lazily, left to right. The Greek and Trojan troops followed the birds' flight as we Italians and Etruscans did. And so all saw the sudden eagle, arrow-fast from the east, seize the lead swan in its talons in a shower of feathers and shoot on in a wide curve over us, heavily carrying its prey. Then, most strangely, the whole flight of swans turned as one, flying low and fast, the shadow of their wings passing over us, chasing and driving and harrying the eagle, crowding it till it dropped the dead swan and flew up and off over the western hills. A hesitant cheer went up from some of the watchers, but most were silent, wondering at the meaning of the sign.

Click to expand...

That really is a potent passage: so much conveyed in just a few words. Loved the image of the eagle being pursued by swans, and the whole passage is heavy with portent. There's a tiny bit of "telling," or summary, mixed in with a lot of vivid showing: "a matter the Etruscans consider very important." But there's nothing wrong with mixing a bit of narrative summary into a scene if it's well done. This reminds me once again that I need to reread LeGuin.

Barbara R. said:

There's a tiny bit of "telling," or summary, mixed in with a lot of vivid showing: "a matter the Etruscans consider very important." But there's nothing wrong with mixing a bit of narrative summary into a scene if it's well done.

Click to expand...

But it's actually both, is the beautiful thing. That clause tells us about the Etruscans, but it also shows us that Lavinia (and by extension, her tribe) doesn't value augury. And in context, this illustrates a point of significant difference, and potential conflict, between her people and her husband's tribe. There's just so much here, and the whole book is this densely packed.

And yeah, everyone should read more Le Guin.

To the OP question --

The only writing advice I use is reader feedback and my own reading. Maybe it's because I have enough confidence in my ability to write? Reader feedback has been the biggest help for me.

Interesting thread, Ari.

For me, the following is the best writing I've ever encountered, and it's a bit 'telly'. It's from Martin Amis's London Fields, and I have it pinned above my desk.

In the concordance of Nicola Six’s kisses there were many subheads and subsections, many genres and phyla — chapter and verse, cross-references, multiple citations. The lips were broad and malleably tremulous, the tongue was long and powerful and as sharp-pronged as a sting. The mouth was a source, a deep source of lies and kisses. Some of the kisses the mouth dispensed were evanescent, unrecallable, the waft or the echo of a passing butterfly (or its ghost, hovering in the wrong dimension). Others were as searching and detailed as a periodontal review: you came out of them entirely plaque-free. The Rosebud, the Dry Application, Anybody’s, Clash of the Incisors, Repulsion, the Turning Diesel, Mouthwash, the Tonsillectomy, Lady Macbeth, the Readied Pussy, the Needer, the Deliquescent Virgin. Named like a new line of cocktails or the transient brands of Keith’s perfumes: Scandal, Outrage… Named like the dolls and toys — the rumour and voodoo — of an only child.

Edzz

Ed_in_Bed said:

Interesting thread, Ari.

For me, the following is the best writing I've ever encountered, and it's a bit 'telly'. It's from Martin Amis's London Fields, and I have it pinned above my desk.

In the concordance of Nicola Six’s kisses there were many subheads and subsections, many genres and phyla — chapter and verse, cross-references, multiple citations. The lips were broad and malleably tremulous, the tongue was long and powerful and as sharp-pronged as a sting. The mouth was a source, a deep source of lies and kisses. Some of the kisses the mouth dispensed were evanescent, unrecallable, the waft or the echo of a passing butterfly (or its ghost, hovering in the wrong dimension). Others were as searching and detailed as a periodontal review: you came out of them entirely plaque-free. The Rosebud, the Dry Application, Anybody’s, Clash of the Incisors, Repulsion, the Turning Diesel, Mouthwash, the Tonsillectomy, Lady Macbeth, the Readied Pussy, the Needer, the Deliquescent Virgin. Named like a new line of cocktails or the transient brands of Keith’s perfumes: Scandal, Outrage… Named like the dolls and toys — the rumour and voodoo — of an only child.

Edzz

Click to expand...

I'll admit, that passage does nothing for me after the butterfly metaphor, but I do think this one opens up the discussion some. For me, this is complete telling. Not because it tells in the narrative sense, but its effectiveness (at showing me anything, and I'm only speaking for myself) is so limited as to turn to nothing more significant than words on a page. He's telling me how HE defines Nicola's kisses, and demands that I imagine every one of them his way, too, and I simply am not up to the task. I would rather have been told, "Nicola's kisses left me dizzy. I never quite knew what I was getting, the wafting butterfly or the periodontal exam." and been done with it.

I'm a heathen, I know, but I do feel that a show/tell line is blurred here. I'd love to hear others' interpretation of it, because from the perspective of studying and understanding the show/tell literary device, I think it's a great example.

I'd love to hear others' interpretation of it, because from the perspective of studying and understanding the show/tell literary device, I think it's a great example.

Click to expand...

I would too, Elaine. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea (and Amis does have a habit of throwing curveballs into his writing, like the butterfly metaphor), but I think it's superb. And also (as you point out) very 'telly'. I keep it over my desk because a) it's the quality of writing to which I aspire, and b) it reminds me that the rules aren't set in stone. You can 'tell' and still write well.

Edzz

Ed_in_Bed said:

Interesting thread, Ari.

For me, the following is the best writing I've ever encountered, and it's a bit 'telly'. It's from Martin Amis's London Fields, and I have it pinned above my desk.

In the concordance of Nicola Six’s kisses there were many subheads and subsections, many genres and phyla — chapter and verse, cross-references, multiple citations. The lips were broad and malleably tremulous, the tongue was long and powerful and as sharp-pronged as a sting. The mouth was a source, a deep source of lies and kisses. Some of the kisses the mouth dispensed were evanescent, unrecallable, the waft or the echo of a passing butterfly (or its ghost, hovering in the wrong dimension). Others were as searching and detailed as a periodontal review: you came out of them entirely plaque-free. The Rosebud, the Dry Application, Anybody’s, Clash of the Incisors, Repulsion, the Turning Diesel, Mouthwash, the Tonsillectomy, Lady Macbeth, the Readied Pussy, the Needer, the Deliquescent Virgin. Named like a new line of cocktails or the transient brands of Keith’s perfumes: Scandal, Outrage… Named like the dolls and toys — the rumour and voodoo — of an only child.

Edzz

Click to expand...

It's interesting because it's completely non-evocative, for me, of a kiss, but it's intellectually engaging. My emotions and senses aren't awakened at all, but it's an interesting read.

And it's barely even "tell", to my mind, let alone "show" - it just seems like a flight of fancy. Unless it's "showing" us that the narrator/author is clever and sometimes whimsical...

Ed_in_Bed said:

I would too, Elaine. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea (and Amis does have a habit of throwing curveballs into his writing, like the butterfly metaphor), but I think it's superb. And also (as you point out) very 'telly'. I keep it over my desk because a) it's the quality of writing to which I aspire, and b) it reminds me that the rules aren't set in stone. You can 'tell' and still write well.

Edzz

Click to expand...

All right, I’ll share my inglorious opinion. I liked it. There’s just something about it that appealed to me… A rebelliousness, maybe? A bitch-slapping of the ‘rules’. Typically, when reading, I’m quick to grow impatient with narrative-fluffery. When crashing into an author’s paragraph or so of lavender, it better be good, creative, and thought provoking. I will, however, start skimming—even if it’s primo prose—if lavender fields stretch on to purple plantations. I don’t mind being ‘told’, as long as the telling is organic and clever… and the story has a good plot, of course!

Captcha said:

Narrative voice may be an element of effective telling. Amis and Austen both have strong narrative voices, so even when they're telling, they're engaging.

Click to expand...

There's definitely a lot to this. Probably it's everything.

Captcha said:

And we're all still probably working on different understandings of what "show" vs "tell" really means...

Click to expand...

I interpret that as part of the point of the original post (just my interpretation). I'm not sure there's ever going to be an agreement on it, but I think what you said above plays a huge part. I can't really imagine a book where I'm "shown" everything. That's hard work to read, and I'm not into masochism, but I'm even less tolerant of telling I'm aware of AS telling. Infodumps, "ya know, Bob" dialogue.

So "engaging" is a good baseline, IMO, especially because it allows space for reader interpretation. I wasn't engaged by Amis's pgh, but I can see how and why others are. And I'd rather grit my teeth though some over-difficult metaphors than narrative that reads like a how-to manual--which, for me, is what telling feels like.

ElaineA said:

There's definitely a lot to this. Probably it's everything.


I interpret that as part of the point of the original post (just my interpretation). I'm not sure there's ever going to be an agreement on it, but I think what you said above plays a huge part. I can't really imagine a book where I'm "shown" everything. That's hard work to read, and I'm not into masochism, but I'm even less tolerant of telling I'm aware of AS telling. Infodumps, "ya know, Bob" dialogue.

So "engaging" is a good baseline, IMO, especially because it allows space for reader interpretation. I wasn't engaged by Amis's pgh, but I can see how and why others are. And I'd rather grit my teeth though some over-difficult metaphors than narrative that reads like a how-to manual--which, for me, is what telling feels like.

Click to expand...

I think if we interpret "show" as "engaging writing" and "tell" as "boring writing" we're probably getting closer to the way a lot of people interpret the terms, but I'm not sure it's really all that useful if we're giving advice! Like - "be engaging, not boring". That's a good idea, but I assume everyone is already trying to make it happen. Hopefully....

So far the most useful comments for me were those by or attributed to Chekhov in Lisa's link. I interpret them as "use sensory detail" and "use metaphors."

http://www.lisaspangenberg.com/writing/show-dont-tell/

Showing and telling are areas on a spectrum, it seems to me. The more sensory detail the more we get the feeling that we are in the scene experiencing it as if it were real, that it's happening in the HERE and NOW.

By sensory detail I'd include those of interior senses: hunger and thirst and their opposites, vertigo and its opposite, a full bladder and its emptying. And the feelings inside us which accompany emotions, such as warmth when we (or at least I) feel love, heat when we feel rage.

Though to quote Captcha, we should only include the sensory detail which is "important to the effect we're trying to create." Otherwise we should use telling.

For instance, if a doorbell chimes and our main character comes down stairs and walks to open the front door, we don't need to include every detail of every step, of every breath, of every beat of her heart. UNLESS our MC is seriously ill or wounded, and the sensory details makes us feel her experience, and appreciate that her journey is an epic effort.

Metaphors and similes are not sensory detail. They are even more powerful writing tools, for they evoke whole complexes of them and accompanying ideas and emotions. At least for readers who share the metaphor or simile. References to the Greek and Roman deities only work for those familiar with them. References to Wonder Woman, Superman, and Batman work best for comics fans and those who've consumed movies about them.

Below is my contribution to Ari's request for examples. It's from one of the first books in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga: The Warrior's Apprentice. It is those first two paragraphs which sold me on this book and got me started on reading all of them, several times over. For me it's the perfect balance of showing and telling, and use of simile, including interior sensations. And interior thoughts which Miles uses to protect him from fear and physical discomfort, and hints at the intelligence which we learn later makes him a superb military commander, spy, and detective.

The tall and dour non-com wore Imperial dress greens and carried his communications panel like a field marshall's baton. He slapped it absently against his thigh and raked the group of young men before him with a gaze of dry contempt. Challenging.

All part of the game, Miles told himself. He stood in the crisp autumn breeze and tried not to shiver in his shorts and running shoes. Nothing to put you off balance like being nearly naked when all about you look ready for one of Emperor Gregor's reviews—although, in all fairness, the majority here were dressed the same as himself. The noncom proctoring the tests merely seemed like a one-man crowd. Miles measured him, wondering what conscious or unconscious tricks of body language he used to achieve that air of icy competence. Something to be learned there . . .

Ari Meermans said:

Thank you for bringing Lisa's article, Laer. It's perfect and Chekov's line was on my mind as I started the thread. Here's the thing I was trying to get across in the first post—on the surface a section of prose may seem to be "telling", but if the author has wielded their tools with precision and the reader has become fully immersed because of this skill, there is little to no telling. Every word, every phrase has meaning. The order of those words emphasizes that meaning. The author has not only created a "picture" in the reader's mind, but has also elicited emotion . . . and that can be any emotion.

Click to expand...

Not to be too contrary, but I'm struggling to agree with you here, Ari.

This, I think, was absolutely spot on: 'if the author has wielded their tools with precision and the reader has become fully immersed because of this skill...' IMO, if the quality of writing supports 'telling' then the telling is acceptable. But it's still telling. The writing may totally immerse the reader in the scene, but that doesn't magically transform telling into showing - it's just that the quality of writing allows the author to get away with it. Even with that first paragraph of Hemingway's in Lisa's blog - despite what the blog says - it's all tell.

Edzz

Ari, perhaps I begin to see something of your point. I'll hark back to Lisa's Huckleberry Finn quote. The text is mostly telling, summaries of a lot of material. But the way he spoke, what he spoke of, its overall effect is a vivid picture of the state of mind, the character, of Huckleberry. In that sense Twain was showing us the essential inner nature of his character.

We might generalize this to most dialogue, which the Twain excerpt is despite its lack of quote marks. What a character says and how s/he does it gives us insight into them.

I'll go a bit further on the topic of dialogue. In police procedurals, for example, some scenes begin with the officer of the day, or a lead investigator, delivering a long monologue to a crowd. It may be large, as several dozen beat cops, or small, a crew of just a few detectives. That alone can give us insights into the speaker.

But most dialogues are like ping-pong games. They include body language from members of the crowd, a fidget or a stare, say. Or an occasional request for clarification from them. How the briefer changes her monologue to respond to the audience gives us insight into her, and the further reactions of the audience member informs us about them as well. Not so much the public senses of them: sight, sound, etc. But about the interior experiences each is having. In that sense the author is mostly showing.

Laer Carroll said:

Ari, perhaps I begin to see something of your point. I'll hark back to Lisa's Huckleberry Finn quote. The text is mostly telling, summaries of a lot of material. But the way he spoke, what he spoke of, its overall effect is a vivid picture of the state of mind, the character, of Huckleberry. In that sense Twain was showing us the essential inner nature of his character.

We might generalize this to most dialogue, which the Twain excerpt is despite its lack of quote marks.

Click to expand...

The Twain excerpt is from the opening of Huckleberry Finn. It never has quotation marks because it's narration, not dialog. Huck is writing the story. He's the narrator.

Often the idea of a spectrum may appear valid, in that you can slide up or down on the spectrum between two end-points of Showing and Teling.

There's another possible way to look at this binary of showing and telling, in that it's not a steady state; it flips back and forth, and can do both at once.

A rhetorician named Richard Lanham describes this as looking AT vs looking THROUGH prose.

The surface layer (as Ari notes) is all about looking AT. Looking at the works at the literal level. What they say (or tell us).

So with respect to Twain's passage, what Huck tells us at the literal level is interesting, but it's also showing us.

He's using an authentic but uneducated voice; he uses ain't. It's a pronouncedly Southern dialect. It's not grammatical, he spells "civilize" with an s. The naïvete of the narrator is also apparent, as is his genuine good will towards Widow Douglas. We are meant to like Huck, but on his terms, as he is. There's no glossing over.

Twain doesn't tell us to like Huck, Huck isn't in fact very flattering regarding himself (or Twain, for that matter). But Huck's voice is genuine. And likeable. Apart from his desire to be a robber, of course, but even that is charming, in that it makes it very clear Huck is young, aside from the other clues.

So yes, on the surface, when you look AT it, it's all telling. It's straight narration. But if you flip it and look THROUGH the literal prose to the concepts and suggestions and allusions and subtext, it's using the literal, surface level of the text to show us other things.

Like the class differences with regard to dining, and clothing, and sleeping.

Ed_in_Bed said:

Interesting thread, Ari.

For me, the following is the best writing I've ever encountered, and it's a bit 'telly'. It's from Martin Amis's London Fields, and I have it pinned above my desk.

In the concordance of Nicola Six’s kisses there were many subheads and subsections, many genres and phyla — chapter and verse, cross-references, multiple citations. The lips were broad and malleably tremulous, the tongue was long and powerful and as sharp-pronged as a sting. The mouth was a source, a deep source of lies and kisses. Some of the kisses the mouth dispensed were evanescent, unrecallable, the waft or the echo of a passing butterfly (or its ghost, hovering in the wrong dimension). Others were as searching and detailed as a periodontal review: you came out of them entirely plaque-free. The Rosebud, the Dry Application, Anybody’s, Clash of the Incisors, Repulsion, the Turning Diesel, Mouthwash, the Tonsillectomy, Lady Macbeth, the Readied Pussy, the Needer, the Deliquescent Virgin. Named like a new line of cocktails or the transient brands of Keith’s perfumes: Scandal, Outrage… Named like the dolls and toys — the rumour and voodoo — of an only child.

Edzz

Click to expand...

Oy. Well, that's why they have horse races.

IMO, the passage is all telling, not showing. There's no scene here--there's fancy narrative summary about what Nicola's kisses were like. What's more, we can see the writer behind these words, strutting his literary stuff and claiming, like trump, that he has all the best words.

Ed, what do you love about this passage? I'm guessing it's the very thing I dislike about it: the peacock quality. I do admire Amis's imagination and energy, just not the results in this particular section. But then I lean toward writers who sublimate themselves in the story, who pretty much disappear in the telling of it. To each his own!

/ slight derail /

Were that English lit. classes had been so interesting!

/ slight derail /

Will contribute when I have moment and access to my favourite books.

This is the opening passage from "The Probable Future" by Alice Hoffman.

Anyone born and bred in Massachusetts learns early on to recognize the end of winter. Babies in their cribs point to the brightening of the sky before they can crawl. Level-headed men weep at the first call of the warblers. Upstanding women strip off their clothes and dive into the inlets and ponds before the ice has fully melted, unconcerned if their fingers and toes turn blue. Spring fever affects young and old alike; it spares no one and makes no distinction, striking when happiness is least expected, when joy is only a memory, when the skies are still cloudy and snow is still piled onto the cold, hard ground.

I love this kind of writing it's descriptive and flows. We aren't in the MC head so it's telling not showing. Or maybe its just setting the scene? I don't know, I'm not a pro and can't dissect very well. What I do know is I love this type of writing. She bounces from past to present in the first chapter of her book, however she's really good at it and it's easy to read and you don't get lost when she does it. So in one paragraph she writes in past tense and two paragraph's later we are in the present tense but back in time.

What I have found with her works is there is a fair amount of telling and lot's of description, there isn't a tonne of thrilling action or gimmicks. She is a story teller, one of the best I believe. I'm happy I stumbled upon her work while researching for my own. I've set my own novel aside and I've been reading, reading, reading.

I think the world is made up of a tonne of varying opinions and it's weeding out the good advice with the advice given out of goodness but may not be good. I hope that made sense. I've really struggled with dialogue and once I came across a blog that made sense and I loved the way she writes and shares examples I tossed all the other dialogue advice and I stick with hers only. Alice Hoffman is a pro at dialogue and what I notice about her novels is she doesn't use italics and she has a fair amount of telling with internal dialogue.

What fascinates me reading through this thread is the power of voice. In the extract posted by Ed from London Fields, I’m immediately aware of Martin Amis ‘channeling’ Nabokov as lepidopterist (Amis has acknowledged Nabokov as a major influence) and while I wouldn’t see the passage as derivative or unsuccessful as ‘showing/telling’, it has a lineage some readers will detect almost at once. A voice leaning on another voice, another butterfly collector. There’s a passage in, I think, Speak Memory, where Nabokov musing on minute differences in the genitalia of male butterflies is very similar to Nicola Six musing on different kisses. Sometimes the echo of another major writer in the background – Alan Hollinghurst echoing Henry James, for example – offers a kind of palimpsest or layering.

Whereas Huck Finn’s voice in the extract posted by Lisa comes across as an original. As an adolescent, I was startled when I first read Huckleberry Finn, because it was as if a small grubby boy stepped off the page, challenged and befriended me right away. That is what Mark Twain was aiming for: a character who would break with the more conventional Tom Sawyer, but also with all kinds of conventions about how children should be seen and heard in literature.

If showing is seeing, telling is about hearing. And what we 'hear' in a narrative voice can be as powerful as what we visually ‘see’ in narrative.

M Louise said:

If showing is seeing, telling is about hearing. And what we 'hear' in a narrative voice can be as powerful as what we visually ‘see’ in narrative.

Click to expand...

AH! I love this with a small caveat: telling should be about hearing. All too often, it's not. Which is when writers get in trouble with telling. The Hoffman passage really brings this out, I think, especially

Spring fever affects young and old alike; it spares no one and makes no distinction, striking when happiness is least expected, when joy is only a memory, when the skies are still cloudy and snow is still piled onto the cold, hard ground.

Click to expand...

The combination here, to me, is the perfect balance of show and tell, driven by voice, with imagery intermixed to evoke a visual (for me). It's almost like listening to a painter explain a particular work. She's not a master for nothing.