LITOPIA CRAFT CHAT
Welcome to Litopia’s new Craft Chat. Once a month (usually in the first half of every month) we’ll post a discussion on some aspect of the craft of writing. We will be taking some information from the old Craft Chat posts written by Carol Rose and adding to them, providing links to blogs, vlogs, books or extra information we think particularly good on the topic under discussion. If you have any topics you’d like to see covered, please let us know.
There’s so much advice on the internet about the craft of writing: from techniques for drip-feeding exposition, to some fairly sound advice about following agents’ submission guidelines. But there is also a lot of misinformation out there. All kinds of “Rules” that could drive writers mad if they don’t know which to pay attention to and which to treat with healthy scepticism. Above all, everything is about balance. Our new Craft Chats will aim to help you achieve that balance in your writing.
Take these guidelines from the new Craft Chat Team and use what works for you in your own writing journey. Enjoy browsing the links, videos and blogs we’ve included in the main Chat. If you have any links you want to add, please post them in the threads below. The discussion thread will be open for FIVE DAYS from when we post the Chat. Let us know your thoughts and experiences. If you disagree with anything, that’s fine. Tell us why. All opinions are welcome and valid additions to our learning. Keep it civil. I wouldn’t want to have to send the boys round.
We all have blind spots. These Chats aren’t aimed at correcting anyone or suggesting we know better than you. We are all still learning.
Rachel / RK Capps; Galadriel; Ed; Andy; Kay / Ancora Imparo
FIRST NEW CRAFT CHAT: SHOW -v- TELL
Absolutes don’t work for me. I’m not going to tell anyone there is only one correct way to write, that some techniques are “good” and if you don’t use those techniques your writing will be “bad”. So, if you prefer hard and fast “rules”, these Chats may not suit you.
Some points of grammar may be absolute (for example, we indicate the end of a sentence by putting a full stop after the last word in that sentence. We don’t put it in the middle of the sentence and hope the reader will figure it out as they go along). But techniques are… techniques. They work in different ways at different times, take the reader inside our characters’ heads or throw them out of it. If you know the effect you want to communicate, understanding which technique might help you achieve that will strengthen your prose. Adhere slavishly to any technique and you risk weakening your prose.
Apologies if I sound like I’m stuck on Repeat because I say this a lot: as with so many things in life, it’s all about balance. It is not “wrong” to tell the reader something. It is not automatically “right” to show the reader something. But there are good reasons why writers are advised to be aware of the differences between Tell and Show, so they can achieve the correct balance in order to communicate exactly the right image they want to appear inside their reader’s head.
We’re attaching lots of interesting videos and blogs covering Show Don’t Tell. Hopefully you’ll find something that resonates with you within them. Here are a few take-aways on how I think of Show and Tell:
1) Show: sometimes takes more words. Done skilfully, however, it can enhance characterisation, evoke emotion or work magic on your reader and draw them into your story by making them feel immersed and “with” your character.
Tell: can help you get from a to b in a scene with fewer words. It explains. It is not “wrong” to use a Tell. Just know when best to use it.
2) Show: is usually more active. It uses active verbs and active construction: she threw the knife. He screamed. Also consider a mixture: the bus swerved (show) but it couldn’t beat gravity (tell). It plunged into the ravine (show).
Tell: is often more passive (and gives less information): a knife was flying through the air and someone was screaming.
3) Show: can alienate your reader if you overuse it. After a while, we all get tired if the rhythm and cadence of a story don’t alter or if we get bogged down in the minutiae of a character’s movements. Show show show can do that.
Tell: can alienate your reader if you overuse it. I bet you don’t like someone telling you how or what to think. Well, your reader doesn’t like it either.
4) Show: dramatizes your story. This strengthens your prose (but see 3).
Tell: reports it. This can weaken your prose (but see 1).
5) Definitions can be blurred (thanks to Andy for this much-needed clarification).
Whether you like fantasy or not, whether you only read crime, romance, mystery, sci-fi, religious parables or seething erotica, techniques are much the same (they’re just used in different ratios). Brandon Sanderson is a best-selling, award-winning author. So he’s doing something right. Here’s a small excerpt from The Final Empire, book I of his Mistborn series:
Vin hurried to keep up, not wanting to be left alone in the mists. The landscape around Luthadel was barren save for scrub and weeds. Prickles and dried leaves—both dusted with ash from an earlier ashfall—rubbed against her legs as they walked. The underbrush crunched as they walked, quiet and a bit sodden with mist dew.
Occasionally, they passed heaps of ash that had been carted out of the city. Most of the time, however, ash was thrown into the River Channerel, which passed through the city. Water broke it down eventually—or, at least, that was what Vin assumed. Otherwise the entire continent would have been buried long ago.
Here’s how I see those two paragraphs (my italics and bold):
(P.150)
Vin hurried to keep up [showing through action], not wanting to be left alone in the mists [also showing us something of what this character is feeling. Point of view takes us inside Vin’s feelings: she doesn’t want to be left behind. The writer did not say “Vin didn’t want to be left behind so she hurried—for me, that would be a tell].
The landscape around Luthadel was barren save for scrub and weeds [telling. “the landscape…was barren…” is the giveaway. Tells often include was/were/is/are verbs].
Prickles and dried leaves—both dusted with ash from an earlier ashfall—rubbed against her legs as they walked [show: the dried leaves rubbed—active verb—against her legs, so we’re right there with the character feeling those dried leaves against our legs. Omniscient narrator is there, too, with “from an earlier ashfall”, which is telling us something].
The underbrush crunched as they walked, quiet and a bit sodden with mist dew [show: crunched—another great active verb—describes the underbrush. The writer did not say “The undergrowth was crunchy…” that would have been a tell.]
MIXTURE OF SHOW (x4) AND TELL (x2) but still mainly show
Occasionally, they passed heaps of ash that had been carted out of the city. [show: active verb they passed, instantly puts image of them passing heaps of ash into reader’s head.]
Most of the time, however, ash was thrown into the River Channerel, which passed through the city. [tell: passive construction: “ash was thrown”. NB: use of the word “passed” twice close together. No big deal—it’s the correct word to use].
Water broke it down eventually—or, at least, that was what Vin assumed [I think “water broke it down eventually” could also come under show but the clever addition of “or at least that was what Vin assumed”, even though that’s more of a tell, takes us right back into Vin’s head, so for me it is now closer to showing us what’s going on in her head. Remember: definitions can be blurred.]
Otherwise the entire continent would have been buried long ago. [inside Vin’s opinion again, or it could even be the omniscient narrator again, because there’s a lot of that in this story, too. But because it comes straight after “Vin assumed”, I think it’s meant to be Vin’s viewpoint.]
MIXTURE OF SHOW (x2) AND TELL (x2)
We could easily discuss point of view (close -v- omniscient etc), active/passive verbs and construction here as well, but that’s for another time. Right now, we’re concentrating only on show -v- tell. Reading the above, I hope you can see the mixture of techniques Sanderson has used, and all to great effect. There’s tell and show, there’s active and passive, there’s zooming in to Vin’s point of view and zooming out. Not all show or all tell, not all from her close point of view or all from the omniscient narrator. Balance.
Now, compare that with this small excerpt where the tempo of the piece increases. We’re no longer walking through a barren landscape “seeing” the world around these characters. Something important is happening here:
(P. 194)
The room fell silent. Tense. Vin sat up as Breeze whispered to himself.
In the room, Kelsier stood quietly for a moment. Finally, he reached up and pulled back the sleeves on his jacket, revealing the crisscrossed scars on his arms. “The Lord Ruler is not our god,” he said quietly “And he cannot kill me. He tried, but he failed. For I am the thing that he can never kill.”
With that, Kelsier turned, walking from the room the way he had come.
ALL SHOW.
Because it’s an important scene. Not “The room was quiet” (tell) or Kelsier was standing quietly (tell)… that would alter the pace and where you’re placing the reader in the scene.
That’s not to say it would be “wrong” to write “the room was quiet” or that your character was standing quietly. It depends on the effect you want to create. Like I said… balance. And, as Andy pointed out, definitions can be blurred.
Ancora Imparo
In the spirit of that, here is Rich’s piece from May 2019, when he was a guest on the original Craft Chat:
SHOW DON’T TELL IS A LOAD OF OLD TOSH
What? I hear you cry. The writer’s mantra is rubbish? The scribe’s sacred cow is nothing but nonsense? How can that be?
Well, hyperbole aside, Show, don’t tell is useful shorthand for something deep, complex, and less amenable to being summed up in a pithy phrase.
It’s shorthand for the idea that written fiction should seek to dramatize key story events in such a way that readers are forced to ask questions and develop emotional responses while simultaneously maintaining their immersion in the story, and the more engaging the questions and the more visceral the emotions, the better.
So, how do you do that? You show, right? You don’t say:
The girl held back her tears.
You say:
The girl threw back her head and set her jaw, but the expression lasted no more than a second before her lips pursed and her gaze found the ceiling. She shook her head, inhaled through her nose, and laid her forefingers in the hollows under her eyes.
That is, you write in a direct way about concrete actions. You show. But what happens if we tweak that paragraph to include a little interior monologue?
The girl threw back her head and set her jaw, but the expression lasted no more than a second before her lips pursed and her gaze found the ceiling. She shook her head, inhaled through her nose, and laid her forefingers in the hollows under her eyes. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her break. The bastard could whistle for it.
Those last two sentences of inner monologue aren’t really showing, are they? For a start I’m writing in third person and have chosen to report the monologue – to tell it – rather than present it directly (it’s still dramatic). But the real issue is: how am I going to show you a thought? Thoughts, as we commonly understand them, are not physical objects. They cannot be described in the same concrete terms as actions. I can’t show you the abstract. I can only tell you about it.
Let’s throw in a simile and a metaphor to drive the point home.
The girl threw back her head and set her jaw, but the expression lasted no more than a second before her lips pursed and her gaze found the ceiling. She shook her head, inhaled through her nose, and laid her forefingers in the hollows under her eyes. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her break. The bastard could whistle for it. She’d been running his errands like a hollowed-out geisha for years. He was a slug. He was a fat, greasy slug, sliming his way through her life, drowning her in his foul stinking goo.
In those last five sentences, I’m not showing you anything, am I? I’m telling you what she’s thinking in the hope that you’ll develop emotions that connect you to her. But I’m still taking care to do it in a way that preserves the vitality of the action, the sense of things playing out in real time, and the drama inherent in the moment. And if you look closely – that sentence about the geisha – I’ve even managed to throw in some backstory, some straight up exposition right there in the middle of the scene.
My point is this: Show, don’t tell is a weak and superficial way of saying that you should dramatize your story’s key moments. It does not mean that telling is bad. It does not mean that you should only show (if you did, you would have a long and boring story with no rhythmic or tonal difference between the vital organs and the connective tissue). But Show, don’t tell – once we dig down to its foundations – does mean that you should strive, at all times, to use the most appropriate range of narrative devices in the most compelling way to engage your readers. But that’s hard, and horribly subjective, isn’t it? Yes, it is.
Beware of pithy rules. Taking them at face value will cripple your writing. Writing is a craft. It’s an art. It’s messy, subjective and contradictory. It cannot be reduced to an algorithm. These rules we throw around are codes for complex ideas. We forget that at our peril.”
Ends Rich’s piece
I know Rich was exaggerating with some of his examples – sometimes you need to do that to make the point that showing too much can be just as tiresome as being told everything. I happen to think “The girl held back her tears” is show, too (another example of Andy's comment that sometimes definitions can be blurred). Yes, we’re being told what she did, but we’re also being shown her character, and her action. She’s physically fighting her emotions. This is another thing to be aware of, that sometimes there are nuances within nuances, and we all see things differently. The important thing to grasp here is the difference between the two techniques and decide which you, the writer, feels is best for whatever scene you’re writing.
Here are some more examples we’ve all found for you on this topic. Read over them, listen to them, watch them on YouTube—whichever medium is best for you. Then it’s over to you. What do you all think is the best (worst?) advice you’ve heard on Show -v- Tell? What works for you? Join in the discussion while the thread is open—for five days from when this Chat is posted.
We look forward to having an interesting, and civil, discussion.
Ancora Imparo
SOME EXTRACTS FROM CRAFT BOOKS
The status of “Show don’t tell” as writing advice has moved to that of cliché (since Chekov’s moon?), so much so that opposing advice or rejection of the idea is seen as noteworthy (see Viet Thanh Nguyen).
What does it mean, and how should you apply it?
1
TELL: The angry man drank his coffee.
SHOW: The customer ripped open three sachets of sugar and poured some of it into his coffee cup, and most onto the table. He snatched at his cup, wiping the spilt sugar off the table with the back of his hand. He drained the cup – how could you drink that much coffee so fast – then slammed the cup on the table. “Refill!”
2
Adverbs as dialogue tags
I know I said I wouldn’t give you any black and white don’t do this or don’t do that but… I implore you—for the sake of my barely surviving sanity—not to use adverbs as dialogue tags.
What’s an adverb tag? It’s an adverb used to describe dialogue, for example “she said courteously.” However, just like with description, when you use an adverb tag, you’re telling the reader how the character is speaking rather than showing the reader through their words. Let’s see an adverb tag in action:
Example 1: “Don’t you dare,” she shouted angrily.
Example 2: “How wonderful,” she said, vivaciously bouncing out of the room.
I’m hoping you can tell just by reading them how ridiculous and over the top these examples are. In Example 1, the tone of the dialogue is implied in the words themselves. I mean, have you ever heard someone say don’t you dare without some kind of growl or malice or exaggerated tone wrapped around the words? I haven’t. Even when it’s said quietly it’s still a threat. The thing is, you can remove the adverb and not lose any of the meaning, like so:
“Don’t you dare,” she barked.
Example 2 is even more ludicrous. First of all, you don’t need both “bouncing” and “vivaciously”—while they don’t mean the same thing, the two descriptors are over the top. You can imply the character is vivacious from her words and actions. Like saying:
“How wonderful.” She winked.
Or
“How wonderful,” she said, flinging her arms around my neck.
Black, Sacha. The Anatomy of Prose: 12 Steps to Sensational Sentences (Better Writers Series Book 7) (pp. 75-76). Atlas Black Publishing. Kindle Edition.
3
One of the hardest things a writer has to learn is that “What’s going on?” means precisely that—“What’s happening right now?”—Not, “What has gone on?” or “What’s the background and/or past history of the present action?”
How do you thus communicate present action?
You show what happens.
You show it as it happens, moment by moment, in strict chronological order. The sense of this at once becomes apparent if you stop to realize that the present is the only thing you can show. The past is already gone. Your only link to it is memory.
Swain, Dwight V. Techniques of the Selling Writer (p. 149). University of Oklahoma Press. Kindle Edition
4
Everyone has heard the famous writers’ mantra, “Show, don’t tell.”
That means write active, not passive.
With shorter books, these components are even more critical. Readers need to identify with your hero or heroine in the first few pages. Instead of rambling about your hero’s fear of commitment, open your book with him breaking off a relationship or scoffing at his friend’s engagement. Don’t tell the reader he’s a workaholic. Show him at the police station, drinking stale coffee at 2 a.m., pondering why he doesn’t have a life.
Probst, Jennifer. Write Naked . Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition
5
Advanced understanding of “show” and what it can do for you
Tension is created by showing the sword dangling overhead, and when the audience demands to know about it, you just shrug. “Who knows?” you say. “Maybe it’ll fall, maybe it won’t. It probably will. But we don’t know when.” And then you show the sword drifting lazily. You show the fraying ropes holding it up. But the suspense isn’t in the fall. It’s in all the moments before.
Wendig, Chuck. Damn Fine Story (p. 145). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition
6
TELLING IS SHOWING. It is one of those supposedly ironclad rules that storytellers should not tell us things—rather, they must show us things. And that’s true to a point. If you’re writing a novel, you don’t need to say, “Bob was angry,” because you can show him being angry—clenching his fists, his forehead veins throbbing, kicking his chair, whatever. And in a script, you might say Bob is angry, but the actor will demonstrate that onscreen (and in a comic, the artist would depict the emotion visually). And yet, dialogue is a huge part of storytelling—and in dialogue, characters tell each other things. The trick here, then, is to never have characters speak—instead, they convey information through hand gestures and interpretive dance and—*receives a note* okay that might not be right? Let me consult this other stack of notes here, hold on, hold on … ah! The real trick here is to avoid making a character’s dialogue clunky and expository. We don’t want them to needlessly explain (or rather, overexplain) things. The way a character talks—what words she uses, her cadence, her openness, or her reticence—speaks to more than just the words coming out of her imaginary mouth.
Wendig, Chuck. Damn Fine Story (pp. 163-164). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition
SOME USEFUL (AND VETTED) LINKS
YOUTUBE VIDEOS
If you have any useful comments or links on Show -v- Tell that you would like to share here, please add them to the Comments over the next five days. After that, this thread will be locked.
We hope you have all found something of interest in our first Craft Chat.
Rachel / RK Capps; Galadriel; Ed; Andy; Kay / Ancora Imparo
Welcome to Litopia’s new Craft Chat. Once a month (usually in the first half of every month) we’ll post a discussion on some aspect of the craft of writing. We will be taking some information from the old Craft Chat posts written by Carol Rose and adding to them, providing links to blogs, vlogs, books or extra information we think particularly good on the topic under discussion. If you have any topics you’d like to see covered, please let us know.
There’s so much advice on the internet about the craft of writing: from techniques for drip-feeding exposition, to some fairly sound advice about following agents’ submission guidelines. But there is also a lot of misinformation out there. All kinds of “Rules” that could drive writers mad if they don’t know which to pay attention to and which to treat with healthy scepticism. Above all, everything is about balance. Our new Craft Chats will aim to help you achieve that balance in your writing.
Take these guidelines from the new Craft Chat Team and use what works for you in your own writing journey. Enjoy browsing the links, videos and blogs we’ve included in the main Chat. If you have any links you want to add, please post them in the threads below. The discussion thread will be open for FIVE DAYS from when we post the Chat. Let us know your thoughts and experiences. If you disagree with anything, that’s fine. Tell us why. All opinions are welcome and valid additions to our learning. Keep it civil. I wouldn’t want to have to send the boys round.
We all have blind spots. These Chats aren’t aimed at correcting anyone or suggesting we know better than you. We are all still learning.
Rachel / RK Capps; Galadriel; Ed; Andy; Kay / Ancora Imparo
*
FIRST NEW CRAFT CHAT: SHOW -v- TELL
Absolutes don’t work for me. I’m not going to tell anyone there is only one correct way to write, that some techniques are “good” and if you don’t use those techniques your writing will be “bad”. So, if you prefer hard and fast “rules”, these Chats may not suit you.
Some points of grammar may be absolute (for example, we indicate the end of a sentence by putting a full stop after the last word in that sentence. We don’t put it in the middle of the sentence and hope the reader will figure it out as they go along). But techniques are… techniques. They work in different ways at different times, take the reader inside our characters’ heads or throw them out of it. If you know the effect you want to communicate, understanding which technique might help you achieve that will strengthen your prose. Adhere slavishly to any technique and you risk weakening your prose.
Apologies if I sound like I’m stuck on Repeat because I say this a lot: as with so many things in life, it’s all about balance. It is not “wrong” to tell the reader something. It is not automatically “right” to show the reader something. But there are good reasons why writers are advised to be aware of the differences between Tell and Show, so they can achieve the correct balance in order to communicate exactly the right image they want to appear inside their reader’s head.
We’re attaching lots of interesting videos and blogs covering Show Don’t Tell. Hopefully you’ll find something that resonates with you within them. Here are a few take-aways on how I think of Show and Tell:
1) Show: sometimes takes more words. Done skilfully, however, it can enhance characterisation, evoke emotion or work magic on your reader and draw them into your story by making them feel immersed and “with” your character.
Tell: can help you get from a to b in a scene with fewer words. It explains. It is not “wrong” to use a Tell. Just know when best to use it.
2) Show: is usually more active. It uses active verbs and active construction: she threw the knife. He screamed. Also consider a mixture: the bus swerved (show) but it couldn’t beat gravity (tell). It plunged into the ravine (show).
Tell: is often more passive (and gives less information): a knife was flying through the air and someone was screaming.
3) Show: can alienate your reader if you overuse it. After a while, we all get tired if the rhythm and cadence of a story don’t alter or if we get bogged down in the minutiae of a character’s movements. Show show show can do that.
Tell: can alienate your reader if you overuse it. I bet you don’t like someone telling you how or what to think. Well, your reader doesn’t like it either.
4) Show: dramatizes your story. This strengthens your prose (but see 3).
Tell: reports it. This can weaken your prose (but see 1).
5) Definitions can be blurred (thanks to Andy for this much-needed clarification).
Whether you like fantasy or not, whether you only read crime, romance, mystery, sci-fi, religious parables or seething erotica, techniques are much the same (they’re just used in different ratios). Brandon Sanderson is a best-selling, award-winning author. So he’s doing something right. Here’s a small excerpt from The Final Empire, book I of his Mistborn series:
Vin hurried to keep up, not wanting to be left alone in the mists. The landscape around Luthadel was barren save for scrub and weeds. Prickles and dried leaves—both dusted with ash from an earlier ashfall—rubbed against her legs as they walked. The underbrush crunched as they walked, quiet and a bit sodden with mist dew.
Occasionally, they passed heaps of ash that had been carted out of the city. Most of the time, however, ash was thrown into the River Channerel, which passed through the city. Water broke it down eventually—or, at least, that was what Vin assumed. Otherwise the entire continent would have been buried long ago.
Here’s how I see those two paragraphs (my italics and bold):
(P.150)
Vin hurried to keep up [showing through action], not wanting to be left alone in the mists [also showing us something of what this character is feeling. Point of view takes us inside Vin’s feelings: she doesn’t want to be left behind. The writer did not say “Vin didn’t want to be left behind so she hurried—for me, that would be a tell].
The landscape around Luthadel was barren save for scrub and weeds [telling. “the landscape…was barren…” is the giveaway. Tells often include was/were/is/are verbs].
Prickles and dried leaves—both dusted with ash from an earlier ashfall—rubbed against her legs as they walked [show: the dried leaves rubbed—active verb—against her legs, so we’re right there with the character feeling those dried leaves against our legs. Omniscient narrator is there, too, with “from an earlier ashfall”, which is telling us something].
The underbrush crunched as they walked, quiet and a bit sodden with mist dew [show: crunched—another great active verb—describes the underbrush. The writer did not say “The undergrowth was crunchy…” that would have been a tell.]
MIXTURE OF SHOW (x4) AND TELL (x2) but still mainly show
Occasionally, they passed heaps of ash that had been carted out of the city. [show: active verb they passed, instantly puts image of them passing heaps of ash into reader’s head.]
Most of the time, however, ash was thrown into the River Channerel, which passed through the city. [tell: passive construction: “ash was thrown”. NB: use of the word “passed” twice close together. No big deal—it’s the correct word to use].
Water broke it down eventually—or, at least, that was what Vin assumed [I think “water broke it down eventually” could also come under show but the clever addition of “or at least that was what Vin assumed”, even though that’s more of a tell, takes us right back into Vin’s head, so for me it is now closer to showing us what’s going on in her head. Remember: definitions can be blurred.]
Otherwise the entire continent would have been buried long ago. [inside Vin’s opinion again, or it could even be the omniscient narrator again, because there’s a lot of that in this story, too. But because it comes straight after “Vin assumed”, I think it’s meant to be Vin’s viewpoint.]
MIXTURE OF SHOW (x2) AND TELL (x2)
We could easily discuss point of view (close -v- omniscient etc), active/passive verbs and construction here as well, but that’s for another time. Right now, we’re concentrating only on show -v- tell. Reading the above, I hope you can see the mixture of techniques Sanderson has used, and all to great effect. There’s tell and show, there’s active and passive, there’s zooming in to Vin’s point of view and zooming out. Not all show or all tell, not all from her close point of view or all from the omniscient narrator. Balance.
Now, compare that with this small excerpt where the tempo of the piece increases. We’re no longer walking through a barren landscape “seeing” the world around these characters. Something important is happening here:
(P. 194)
The room fell silent. Tense. Vin sat up as Breeze whispered to himself.
In the room, Kelsier stood quietly for a moment. Finally, he reached up and pulled back the sleeves on his jacket, revealing the crisscrossed scars on his arms. “The Lord Ruler is not our god,” he said quietly “And he cannot kill me. He tried, but he failed. For I am the thing that he can never kill.”
With that, Kelsier turned, walking from the room the way he had come.
ALL SHOW.
Because it’s an important scene. Not “The room was quiet” (tell) or Kelsier was standing quietly (tell)… that would alter the pace and where you’re placing the reader in the scene.
That’s not to say it would be “wrong” to write “the room was quiet” or that your character was standing quietly. It depends on the effect you want to create. Like I said… balance. And, as Andy pointed out, definitions can be blurred.
Ancora Imparo
*
In the spirit of that, here is Rich’s piece from May 2019, when he was a guest on the original Craft Chat:
SHOW DON’T TELL IS A LOAD OF OLD TOSH
What? I hear you cry. The writer’s mantra is rubbish? The scribe’s sacred cow is nothing but nonsense? How can that be?
Well, hyperbole aside, Show, don’t tell is useful shorthand for something deep, complex, and less amenable to being summed up in a pithy phrase.
It’s shorthand for the idea that written fiction should seek to dramatize key story events in such a way that readers are forced to ask questions and develop emotional responses while simultaneously maintaining their immersion in the story, and the more engaging the questions and the more visceral the emotions, the better.
So, how do you do that? You show, right? You don’t say:
The girl held back her tears.
You say:
The girl threw back her head and set her jaw, but the expression lasted no more than a second before her lips pursed and her gaze found the ceiling. She shook her head, inhaled through her nose, and laid her forefingers in the hollows under her eyes.
That is, you write in a direct way about concrete actions. You show. But what happens if we tweak that paragraph to include a little interior monologue?
The girl threw back her head and set her jaw, but the expression lasted no more than a second before her lips pursed and her gaze found the ceiling. She shook her head, inhaled through her nose, and laid her forefingers in the hollows under her eyes. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her break. The bastard could whistle for it.
Those last two sentences of inner monologue aren’t really showing, are they? For a start I’m writing in third person and have chosen to report the monologue – to tell it – rather than present it directly (it’s still dramatic). But the real issue is: how am I going to show you a thought? Thoughts, as we commonly understand them, are not physical objects. They cannot be described in the same concrete terms as actions. I can’t show you the abstract. I can only tell you about it.
Let’s throw in a simile and a metaphor to drive the point home.
The girl threw back her head and set her jaw, but the expression lasted no more than a second before her lips pursed and her gaze found the ceiling. She shook her head, inhaled through her nose, and laid her forefingers in the hollows under her eyes. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her break. The bastard could whistle for it. She’d been running his errands like a hollowed-out geisha for years. He was a slug. He was a fat, greasy slug, sliming his way through her life, drowning her in his foul stinking goo.
In those last five sentences, I’m not showing you anything, am I? I’m telling you what she’s thinking in the hope that you’ll develop emotions that connect you to her. But I’m still taking care to do it in a way that preserves the vitality of the action, the sense of things playing out in real time, and the drama inherent in the moment. And if you look closely – that sentence about the geisha – I’ve even managed to throw in some backstory, some straight up exposition right there in the middle of the scene.
My point is this: Show, don’t tell is a weak and superficial way of saying that you should dramatize your story’s key moments. It does not mean that telling is bad. It does not mean that you should only show (if you did, you would have a long and boring story with no rhythmic or tonal difference between the vital organs and the connective tissue). But Show, don’t tell – once we dig down to its foundations – does mean that you should strive, at all times, to use the most appropriate range of narrative devices in the most compelling way to engage your readers. But that’s hard, and horribly subjective, isn’t it? Yes, it is.
Beware of pithy rules. Taking them at face value will cripple your writing. Writing is a craft. It’s an art. It’s messy, subjective and contradictory. It cannot be reduced to an algorithm. These rules we throw around are codes for complex ideas. We forget that at our peril.”
Ends Rich’s piece
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I know Rich was exaggerating with some of his examples – sometimes you need to do that to make the point that showing too much can be just as tiresome as being told everything. I happen to think “The girl held back her tears” is show, too (another example of Andy's comment that sometimes definitions can be blurred). Yes, we’re being told what she did, but we’re also being shown her character, and her action. She’s physically fighting her emotions. This is another thing to be aware of, that sometimes there are nuances within nuances, and we all see things differently. The important thing to grasp here is the difference between the two techniques and decide which you, the writer, feels is best for whatever scene you’re writing.
Here are some more examples we’ve all found for you on this topic. Read over them, listen to them, watch them on YouTube—whichever medium is best for you. Then it’s over to you. What do you all think is the best (worst?) advice you’ve heard on Show -v- Tell? What works for you? Join in the discussion while the thread is open—for five days from when this Chat is posted.
We look forward to having an interesting, and civil, discussion.
Ancora Imparo
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SOME EXTRACTS FROM CRAFT BOOKS
The status of “Show don’t tell” as writing advice has moved to that of cliché (since Chekov’s moon?), so much so that opposing advice or rejection of the idea is seen as noteworthy (see Viet Thanh Nguyen).
What does it mean, and how should you apply it?
1
TELL: The angry man drank his coffee.
SHOW: The customer ripped open three sachets of sugar and poured some of it into his coffee cup, and most onto the table. He snatched at his cup, wiping the spilt sugar off the table with the back of his hand. He drained the cup – how could you drink that much coffee so fast – then slammed the cup on the table. “Refill!”
2
Adverbs as dialogue tags
I know I said I wouldn’t give you any black and white don’t do this or don’t do that but… I implore you—for the sake of my barely surviving sanity—not to use adverbs as dialogue tags.
What’s an adverb tag? It’s an adverb used to describe dialogue, for example “she said courteously.” However, just like with description, when you use an adverb tag, you’re telling the reader how the character is speaking rather than showing the reader through their words. Let’s see an adverb tag in action:
Example 1: “Don’t you dare,” she shouted angrily.
Example 2: “How wonderful,” she said, vivaciously bouncing out of the room.
I’m hoping you can tell just by reading them how ridiculous and over the top these examples are. In Example 1, the tone of the dialogue is implied in the words themselves. I mean, have you ever heard someone say don’t you dare without some kind of growl or malice or exaggerated tone wrapped around the words? I haven’t. Even when it’s said quietly it’s still a threat. The thing is, you can remove the adverb and not lose any of the meaning, like so:
“Don’t you dare,” she barked.
Example 2 is even more ludicrous. First of all, you don’t need both “bouncing” and “vivaciously”—while they don’t mean the same thing, the two descriptors are over the top. You can imply the character is vivacious from her words and actions. Like saying:
“How wonderful.” She winked.
Or
“How wonderful,” she said, flinging her arms around my neck.
Black, Sacha. The Anatomy of Prose: 12 Steps to Sensational Sentences (Better Writers Series Book 7) (pp. 75-76). Atlas Black Publishing. Kindle Edition.
3
One of the hardest things a writer has to learn is that “What’s going on?” means precisely that—“What’s happening right now?”—Not, “What has gone on?” or “What’s the background and/or past history of the present action?”
How do you thus communicate present action?
You show what happens.
You show it as it happens, moment by moment, in strict chronological order. The sense of this at once becomes apparent if you stop to realize that the present is the only thing you can show. The past is already gone. Your only link to it is memory.
Swain, Dwight V. Techniques of the Selling Writer (p. 149). University of Oklahoma Press. Kindle Edition
4
Everyone has heard the famous writers’ mantra, “Show, don’t tell.”
That means write active, not passive.
With shorter books, these components are even more critical. Readers need to identify with your hero or heroine in the first few pages. Instead of rambling about your hero’s fear of commitment, open your book with him breaking off a relationship or scoffing at his friend’s engagement. Don’t tell the reader he’s a workaholic. Show him at the police station, drinking stale coffee at 2 a.m., pondering why he doesn’t have a life.
Probst, Jennifer. Write Naked . Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition
5
Advanced understanding of “show” and what it can do for you
Tension is created by showing the sword dangling overhead, and when the audience demands to know about it, you just shrug. “Who knows?” you say. “Maybe it’ll fall, maybe it won’t. It probably will. But we don’t know when.” And then you show the sword drifting lazily. You show the fraying ropes holding it up. But the suspense isn’t in the fall. It’s in all the moments before.
Wendig, Chuck. Damn Fine Story (p. 145). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition
6
TELLING IS SHOWING. It is one of those supposedly ironclad rules that storytellers should not tell us things—rather, they must show us things. And that’s true to a point. If you’re writing a novel, you don’t need to say, “Bob was angry,” because you can show him being angry—clenching his fists, his forehead veins throbbing, kicking his chair, whatever. And in a script, you might say Bob is angry, but the actor will demonstrate that onscreen (and in a comic, the artist would depict the emotion visually). And yet, dialogue is a huge part of storytelling—and in dialogue, characters tell each other things. The trick here, then, is to never have characters speak—instead, they convey information through hand gestures and interpretive dance and—*receives a note* okay that might not be right? Let me consult this other stack of notes here, hold on, hold on … ah! The real trick here is to avoid making a character’s dialogue clunky and expository. We don’t want them to needlessly explain (or rather, overexplain) things. The way a character talks—what words she uses, her cadence, her openness, or her reticence—speaks to more than just the words coming out of her imaginary mouth.
Wendig, Chuck. Damn Fine Story (pp. 163-164). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition
SOME USEFUL (AND VETTED) LINKS
- https://www.well-storied.com/blog/what-does-show-dont-tell-really-mean#:~:text=The%20most%20popular%20%E2%80%9CShow%2C%20Don,comprehend%20the%20author's%20intended%20meaning.
- Why the writing advice to "show, don’t tell" is inherently political
- Show and Tell—Not Just a Game We Play
- Show Don't Tell Examples from Successful Novels | Now Novel
- Showing vs. Telling Indicators - AutoCrit Online Editing
YOUTUBE VIDEOS
- This is a short video from Jerry Jenkins:
- This is an hour long video from Janice Hardy of Fiction University. Start at 7:30 if you want to avoid the chit chat:
If you have any useful comments or links on Show -v- Tell that you would like to share here, please add them to the Comments over the next five days. After that, this thread will be locked.
We hope you have all found something of interest in our first Craft Chat.
Rachel / RK Capps; Galadriel; Ed; Andy; Kay / Ancora Imparo
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