showing/telling...help?

GuatDad · Jul 28, 2006

I posted this in the newbie forum but figured i would get more help with it here...

Can someone just give me some examples of both of these? I get a lot of comments about me telling too much and not showing. I really want to get better at this and I want to learn. Can someone help me out here with this concept so I can improve my work?

reph · Jul 28, 2006

Two suggestions. (1) Try "showing telling" or "show tell" in an archive search. The search box for this forum is near the bottom of its main page. There are many old threads on the subject, including this one: http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25640 . (2) Post a sample of your writing in Share Your Work and ask specifically for help identifying the "show" parts and the "tell" parts.

CaroGirl · Jul 28, 2006

Telling:
"Laurie was a shy girl, especially at school."

Showing:
"Laurie let the swaths of her dark hair cover her face. She navigated the school halls with her head down, her eyes on her shoes, willing herself invisible. She wished she were a chameleon and could change her skin and clothes into drab locker-gray."

I hope that helps. Keep in mind, it's a balance. Some things you can tell, some should really be shown.

emeraldcite · Jul 28, 2006

Check out the Writing Novels FAQ. Specifically, check out this post from the FAQ.

There is also a great thread on this in Writing Short Fiction.

maestrowork · Jul 28, 2006

GuatDad said:
I posted this in the newbie forum but figured i would get more help with it here...

Can someone just give me some examples of both of these? I get a lot of comments about me telling too much and not showing. I really want to get better at this and I want to learn. Can someone help me out here with this concept so I can improve my work?

Post something in Share Your Work and we might be able to tell you why you're "telling" too much and not showing enough.

But basically, it's all about levels of detail and how well you can pull your readers into your world. The more telling you are, the less involved your readers are with your story and characters.

There are a lot of great discussions on the topic here. However, I think the best way for you to learn actually is to have your work critiqued.

GuatDad · Jul 28, 2006

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36525

I posted that a few days ago and got some good constructive criticism on it. That is what got me to thinking about the "show dont tell" thing.

Feel free to critique it there or here, either way I will learn from it.

maestrowork · Jul 28, 2006

I have some time so I will go over there specifically for "show vs. tell."

cwfgal · Jul 28, 2006

Think of it this way. You wake up one morning on a strange world with no idea where you are or how you got there. The creatures living there are not human and they speak in a language you can't understand. How are you going to figure out where you are, what you should do, what you can eat, what the customs are, what the laws are, what the inhabitants do, etc? You don't have someone at your side to interpret, translate, and explain things (which would be telling) so you will have to figure it out by observing. What can you learn from your observations?

Describe something as you (the character above) would see it, with the limited knowledge you (the character) would have, and try to make it obvious what's going on. That's showing.

I can tell you someone robbed the bank I was at today. Or I can show you by describing: the setting, the sound of the robber charging in with a gun in hand, the way the robber looked with his rubber mask, the palpable fear that hung in the air, the smell of the robber's sweaty body as he rushed by me, the trembling of my body, the action that took place, some of the other people who were in the bank at the time and what their reactions were.

Basically, telling is stating what happens. Showing is painting a picture and letting the reader experience what is happening through various senses by describing action, appearances, smells, sounds, tastes, touch, emotions, etc.

Hope that helps.

Beth

Kristen King · Jul 28, 2006

I wrote about this on my blog the other day, strangely enough. Click here to read about it. The comments are really good, as well, so be sure to check those.

Hope it helps!

Kristen

Bufty · Jul 28, 2006

I think a firm grasp of POV and the narrator/reader relationship helps in understanding the difference between showing and telling.

blacbird · Jul 28, 2006

If you're doing a lot of attributing emotions to characters, e.g., stating that they are angry or sad or anxious, etc., you're doing a lot of "telling". It's a form of stage-direction. It essentially means you're trying to tell the reader how he or she should interpret things, rather than describing how things happen and allowing the reader to participate in the interpretation experience. The result is writing that doesn't engage or involve the reader, and cheats the reader out of the most valuable part of the reading experience.

caw.

Bayou Bill · Jul 28, 2006

It may just be fate, or the moon's alignment with Mars, but recently I've seen a fair number of writers both tell and show the same thing. For example:

She stared in horror, bloodshot eyes bulging, mouth gaping so wide a fly buzzed in and then quickly out while a thick glob of tobacco juice oozed down the pasty skin of her quivering chin.

Bayou Bill

Kristen King · Jul 28, 2006

Bayou Bill said:
It may just be fate, or the moon's alignment with Mars, but recently I've seen a fair number of writers both tell and show the same thing. For example:

She stared in horror, bloodshot eyes bulging, mouth gaping so wide a fly buzzed in and then quickly out while a thick glob of tobacco juice oozed down the pasty skin of her quivering chin.

Gag. Telling and showing should certainly be complementary, but definitely not redundant. Great example!

Kristen

scribbler1382 · Jul 29, 2006

An example that's always helped me better understand this:

Tell: "He was tall."

Show: "She looked up at him."

Bayou Bill · Jul 29, 2006

scribbler1382 said:
An example that's always helped me better understand this:

Tell: "He was tall."

Show: "She looked up at him."

Great example.

Bayou Bill

Starbrazer · Jul 29, 2006

show and tell

I am reading a book and its first chapter is devoted to Show and Tell. The book is called Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Brown and Dave King and it has been quite informative so far. Many writers in the past have implemented tell in the their novels and a certain amount of well placed narrative summaries are fine in novels today, it's just that people are looking for more scene driven prose, instead of pages of summary. So the biggest difference I can see is writing more scenes, dialogue, etc, and use narrative summary sparingly and where it will complement two sections of "show". Also, if you say he was angry, or she was a very beautiful woman that is tell and a lot of writers do just this after their dialogues. They suggested removing these "telling tags" if you will and see how the dialogue sounds without it. In short, a lot of instances of tell in your manuscript may be tags after dialogue or simply too much narrative summary.

Norman D Gutter · Jul 29, 2006

CaroGirl said:
Telling:
"Laurie was a shy girl, especially at school." 8 words

Showing:
"Laurie let the swaths of her dark hair cover her face. She navigated the school halls with her head down, her eyes on her shoes, willing herself invisible. She wished she were a chameleon and could change her skin and clothes into drab locker-gray." 45 words

You just changed a 60,000 word novel into a 337,500 word novel.

OK, that's an exaggeration, but my point is that almost every example I've seen of "showing" is much, much longer than the equivalent "telling". It seems to be not a matter of a craft technique, but rather how much detail the writer choses to provide. I'm just not getting it. How do you do it without turning the book into something so long that no one will take it from the shelf?

Maybe I'm the one odd reader who somewhat enjoys being told something; maybe it's my engineering background in technical reading/writing. Why should I have to go through all that work to interpret facial expressions, described body language, etc., when the interpretation is a word away? Maybe I'm a lazy ready, but sometimes I just want to be told, not have to figure out the show.

NDG

davidthompson · Jul 29, 2006

Norman D Gutter said:
I'm just not getting it. How do you do it without turning the book into something so long that no one will take it from the shelf?

By picking only the important scenes to include, with brief transitions from one to the next.

Also, showing can actually make a passage shorter, by conveying more information per word. "He was tall" conveys only one thing, that he was, well, tall.

"She looked up at him" is two thirds longer, but it not only tells us he's tall, it also tells us there's a man and a woman, she's shorter than him, they're standing reasonably close to each other (else the height difference wouldn't be noticeable), and she's decided to focus on him. So you've saved all the words it would take to convey those facts after telling, "he was tall."

Why should I have to go through all that work to interpret facial expressions, described body language, etc., when the interpretation is a word away?

Do you think movies would be better if there were a narrator expanding on what's happening on the screen? Serious question. Good showing should illuminate character, motivation, etc. as well as the uninterpreted action in a movie scene. Not that good showing is easy to write! But it may be that your personal taste really does lean more toward detailed exposition.

Norman D Gutter · Jul 29, 2006

davidthompson said:
By picking only the important scenes to include, with brief transitions from one to the next.

Also, showing can actually make a passage shorter, by conveying more information per word. "He was tall" conveys only one thing, that he was, well, tall.

"She looked up at him" is two thirds longer, but it not only tells us he's tall, it also tells us there's a man and a woman, she's shorter than him, they're standing reasonably close to each other (else the height difference wouldn't be noticeable), and she's decided to focus on him. So you've saved all the words it would take to convey those facts after telling, "he was tall."

Yes, that works fine, as long as there is a "he" and a "she" in the scene. No question here.

Do you think movies would be better if there were a narrator expanding on what's happening on the screen? Serious question...

Of course not, but that's two different mediums.

Good showing should illuminate character, motivation, etc. as well as the uninterpreted action in a movie scene. Not that good showing is easy to write! But it may be that your personal taste really does lean more toward detailed exposition.

Ok, let me give this a whirl.

Showing:
Norman’s cubicle was so messy he had trouble concentrating on his work.

Telling:
Every time Norman tried to type the words of the Traffic Control Plan that had to be finished by 8:00AM Monday, his eyes were distracted by rolls of construction drawings leaning against the every inch of the walls of his cubicle. His feet messed a stack of papers on the floor under his desk. He kept clicking over to a writing message board when he should have been concentrating on the construction specification. The grey walls of his 8 by 8 matched his Saturday mood. “I should be home working on my W.I.P,” he said aloud, unaware that the cleaning babe was 10 feet away.

Bayou Bill · Jul 29, 2006

"Tell" isn't a dirty word. There's a time and place for everything, including "telling" in a novel. The problem, especially for beginning writers, is a tendency to overuse "tell" which can make their prose sound a bit like a police report and distance the reader from the action.

There is no formula, no right or wrong way to handle "show & tell." Writing is a craft, an art, not a science. IMHO, the only unbreakable rule for writing successful commercial fiction is, don't bore the reader.

Bayou Bill

scribbler1382 · Jul 29, 2006

What Bill said. Being a writer is about making choices, both about what to include and what to exclude. Choices about what rules to adhere to, which ones to bend and which ones to break unabashedly.

Soccer Mom · Jul 29, 2006

What they said. There is a place for both show and tell! (See, kindergarten had it right.) Big lumps of tell (the dreaded info dump. Fear it.) stop the flow of action and take the reader out of the story. Think back to a book that took too long to get going, the one you read and kept thinking "any minute now something is going to happen." Interspersing show and tell keeps it interesting. (Yes, sometimes show can get to be too much. The reader needs a chance to catch his breath.

maestrowork · Jul 29, 2006

Norman D Gutter said:
How do you do it without turning the book into something so long that no one will take it from the shelf?

There are many levels of details. And telling is not forbidden; it can be very useful and even preferred. However, showing is always more vivid and exciting. A writer needs to balance show and tell to tell a gripping story.

Obviously, if you describe every facial expression, every gesture, every hand movement, every action to the most minute detail, you may be making your ms. tedious, not to mention 450,000-word long. Then again, if your story is all tell and no show, it's boring and not engaging, not to mention of you have 100,000-word of telling, your plot is probably way too complicated.

Show the important scenes, and summarize the rest. If a guy comes in angry and does something, show me, don't just tell me "oh, he was angry and he killed a bunch of people." Can we say "ho-hum"? However, don't detail something that is rather irrelevant to the plot or with what hand the character draws a picture -- just say he draws a picture; describe the picture, not how he draws it, unless how he draws it is important.

Same with dialogue. Use them for a relevant scene, and make it real, but don't give me dialogue of every "Hi, how are you?" and "Fine, and you? Have you eaten today?"

A writer is like a painter. You need to choose the details to paint. You have all the tools and all the colors at your disposal. The real artistry is in the details and what kind of details.

LeeFlower · Jul 29, 2006

Showing usually does make things longer, but there are times it makes things a lot shorter, too. Especially when scenebreaks get involved. I always try to 'show' rather than 'tell' location/time changes specifically because it takes fewer words.

I'm digging through my 'my documents' folder for a good example, but it seems I'll have to settle for a mediocre one because that's all I've got at the moment:

“I’ll be careful!”

“No you won’t,” he answered, holding his hand out for a letter Mr. Kindrake had just taken from the mail bag. “You’ll be here.”

“Magus, I passed my civics test months ago. Card-carrying full citizen and all that. You can’t ground me.”

Magus Penn shrugged. "My roof; my boats; my rules. You'll have to swim there."

*****

“You swam here?” Faith asked, leaning out of her window.

“Wasn’t hard,” Indan said, treading water four feet or so below the window ledge. “Magic’s useful that way.”

This isn't really the best example because it's technically still someone 'telling us' she swam, but the characters' actions have shown in two lines what it would have taken me two paragraphs of narrative to tell.

Kristen King · Jul 29, 2006

maestrowork said:
There are many levels of details. And telling is not forbidden; it can be very useful and even preferred. However, showing is always more vivid and exciting. A writer needs to balance show and tell to tell a gripping story.

Obviously, if you describe every facial expression, every gesture, every hand movement, every action to the most minute detail, you may be making your ms. tedious, not to mention 450,000-word long. Then again, if your story is all tell and no show, it's boring and not engaging, not to mention of you have 100,000-word of telling, your plot is probably way too complicated.

Very well said. What it comes down to is that the balance of showing and telling can mean the difference between overwriting or underwriting and a damn good story.

Kristen

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