Show don’t tell. I believe to choose the right words is one part of it. I mean emotional words. Don’t get me wrong! You can choose every word you want. However, some words boost the story and atmosphere in an emotional way. For example, (in my opinion) blah, blah, blah is the emotional synonymous of et cetera. But what are you thinking? And do you know more words of this kind?
-
Basic Writing questions is not a crit forum. All crits belong in Share Your Work
Show don’t tell. Emotional words
- Thread starter Phoenix_Writer
- Start date
- Status
they're not the same, or even close to equivalent imo. you would use them in different situations.
right words is about context. there is no objective, emotional quotient inherently assigned.
The words you use are not the difference between show and tell, really.
Tell: Maryn was furious. Show: Maryn's hands clenched in fists and a vein in her forehead throbbed.
Tell: Maryn cleaned the living room. Show: Maryn hauled out the vacuum, wrenching her shoulder anew, then realized she should dust first. That meant finding a home for the books and pattern pieces, the catalogues Mr. Maryn said to keep because birthdays were coming up, the program from the play, and the letter from an old friend set aside to be sure she had the current address. Maryn put it all in a wicker basket and dusted using the three dryer sheets adrift after folding laundry on the big table. Better already! The vacuuming was a pain, but it went quickly.
Tell: It rained so much Maryn got wet getting her mail. Show: Maryn stepped off the front stoop on her way to the mailbox by the street. The slate paver sank at least an inch and muddy water washed over her shoes. She swore, but she kept going. The leather wasn't going to get any wetter, and at least she'd have the mail. The last paver before the asphalt driveway rotated in place, and the water nearly reached her ankles. Naturally, the mail consisted of a Val-Pack advertising mailer, unwanted catalogues, and requests for money from charities.
Does that make more sense?
Tell: Maryn was furious. Show: Maryn's hands clenched in fists and a vein in her forehead throbbed.
Tell: Maryn cleaned the living room. Show: Maryn hauled out the vacuum, wrenching her shoulder anew, then realized she should dust first. That meant finding a home for the books and pattern pieces, the catalogues Mr. Maryn said to keep because birthdays were coming up, the program from the play, and the letter from an old friend set aside to be sure she had the current address. Maryn put it all in a wicker basket and dusted using the three dryer sheets adrift after folding laundry on the big table. Better already! The vacuuming was a pain, but it went quickly.
Tell: It rained so much Maryn got wet getting her mail. Show: Maryn stepped off the front stoop on her way to the mailbox by the street. The slate paver sank at least an inch and muddy water washed over her shoes. She swore, but she kept going. The leather wasn't going to get any wetter, and at least she'd have the mail. The last paver before the asphalt driveway rotated in place, and the water nearly reached her ankles. Naturally, the mail consisted of a Val-Pack advertising mailer, unwanted catalogues, and requests for money from charities.
Does that make more sense?
Lovely examples because Maryn uses the opportunity to do something everyday (clean, fetch the mail) to reveal character.
Oh, she's quite the character, all right. (Groan.)
Showing can indeed illuminate character, but if we're being truthful, I only imagined cleaning the living room and didn't touch a thing except for taking my apple core into the kitchen. I heard the mail truck a half hour ago but it's still in the box, too. It's fiction!
Showing can indeed illuminate character, but if we're being truthful, I only imagined cleaning the living room and didn't touch a thing except for taking my apple core into the kitchen. I heard the mail truck a half hour ago but it's still in the box, too. It's fiction!
I think of all the "rules" or well meaning advice....show don't tell....has got to be the one that irks me the most, maybe because it sounds like good advice from well meaning people, but it's the worst advice, in my opinion. When I came across blog after blog of writers and editors clarifying this little nugget of misguided advice I felt immense relief.
Here's a snippet from a blog I found
An author’s job is to create a connection between the reader and the character. Readers want to get inside the character’s head.
But when we meet that guy with the clenched fist, we are just looking at him from the outside. We’re shut out of the story.
When you say, “Lula-Mae bit her fingernail,” we don’t have access to her feelings. She may be apprehensive, but she may simply have an annoying hangnail or be desperate for a cigarette.
“Lula-Mae was so terrified of meeting the man from the FBI, she’d chomped off three fingernails and was working on a fourth,” gives us a much better idea of her internal state even though the author is—gasp—telling us Lula-Mae is terrified.
Here's a snippet from a blog I found
An author’s job is to create a connection between the reader and the character. Readers want to get inside the character’s head.
But when we meet that guy with the clenched fist, we are just looking at him from the outside. We’re shut out of the story.
When you say, “Lula-Mae bit her fingernail,” we don’t have access to her feelings. She may be apprehensive, but she may simply have an annoying hangnail or be desperate for a cigarette.
“Lula-Mae was so terrified of meeting the man from the FBI, she’d chomped off three fingernails and was working on a fourth,” gives us a much better idea of her internal state even though the author is—gasp—telling us Lula-Mae is terrified.
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2011
- Messages
- 11,740
- Reaction score
- 12,180
- Location
- Atherton Tablelands
- Website
- snailseyeview.medium.com
The right verbs can make a hell of a difference in both show and tell: trudged vs sauntered, guzzled vs sipped, pondered vs struggled to find another suitable example...
That's a good article and it's worth paying attention to. But I'd like to add a little caveat to what she said about the guy with the clenched fist. To quote:
She's right, if a writer is in the habit of showing random body language without giving the reader any clue why the character is acting that way. (In fact, come to think, I'm reading a book right now where the author does that occasionally, along with a host of other bad habits.) But usually the reason for the gesture (clenched fist, nail-biting, whatever) will be clear in context. If A insults B's mother, then B's clenched fist will not need to be explained in any way. In fact, it would be the worst kind of telling to explain it.
Last edited:
This, completely. Readers are intelligent people they can make connection, understand implied meaning or subtext. I had the issue in my early writing until I learned RUE (Resist the Urge to Explain). BethS example is a perfect illustration of that.
IMO "show, don't tell" is something you learn when you start writing and once you mastered it you can start being able to find and use the right balance of show and tell in your stories. Plus as Helix said using strong verb makes a whole difference, as well as avoiding using too much filtering word such as: see, notice, believe, seem, feel, think, etc...
Ji'ire
Registered
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2018
- Messages
- 44
- Reaction score
- 12
This. Some words do have more of a poetic quality than others, either what we associate when we hear them, how they sound and I'm sure a multitude of other reasons but they don't mean anything without the context around them.
A big pitfall when you have just started writing is to use lots of words that sound good and fill your sentences with them, but this actually just makes them bloated. For example if you use the word passionate or romantic in a scenario where two characters are harmlessly flirting it might sound good but it doesn't line up with what's going on and won't do anything for the reader. If you told me how the cleaner sniffed the desk of the owner of the house, almost drooling and cleaned off every speck of dust laboriously then hopefully it gives you some mixed feelings about the cleaner such as she's overstepping her boundaries but is putting lots of effort into her work and seems to care for the owner in a secretive way that might also be described as passionate.
This is what people mean by showing but not to dwell on that the sentence gives you all of these feelings because of context, you know a cleaner shouldn't be sniffing at the desk and you know that cleaning every speck of dust is going a bit too far but this is only because of the context that she's cleaning someone else's house, which you get from the term "owner of the house" as it creates a sense of distance between.
You could easily provide a different context for each line and their meaning would be transformed, the cleaner sniffs at the desk because of a ghastly smell, she cleans every speck of dust because she's anal about cleanliness, she drools because she's daydreaming about some hottie she saw. In this case she's cleaning laboriously because she wants to get the job done quick or for some other reason we don't know, where as in the first example it was meant to give you an aching feeling about her silent dedication.
Its the context that creates the words power and so I'd argue that any word can be as strong as the context provided with it, a simple word like crying can be really powerful if given the right context or equally bland without it.
- Status