• Member Since 12th Nov, 2011
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Mystic


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  • 577 weeks
    Rant time! Show vs. Tell: Why You Know People who are Doing it Terribly Wrong

    It’s always depressing to see people give bad advice. It’s even more depressing to see people eat that bad advice up and say things like, 'This is really good and totally right!' Now, I don’t like starting arguments on the Internet, so I normally just shake my head and look the other way. But this is something I have seen more than a couple of times from people who have a greater audience than

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  • 581 weeks
    Honest Words

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Mar
4th
2013

Rant time! Show vs. Tell: Why You Know People who are Doing it Terribly Wrong · 5:11pm Mar 4th, 2013

It’s always depressing to see people give bad advice. It’s even more depressing to see people eat that bad advice up and say things like, 'This is really good and totally right!' Now, I don’t like starting arguments on the Internet, so I normally just shake my head and look the other way. But this is something I have seen more than a couple of times from people who have a greater audience than next to none, and this is not a good thing.

So! Time for another essay, I think. Show vs. tell.

As a general rule, showing the audience something is infinitely better than telling them. Why? Because it’s more engaging and interesting. Why? Because it allows the reader to draw implications and connect the dots, and this gets them to immerse themselves in whatever the author is trying to say. This is a simple but absolutely critical point to make because it underpins everything I am about to say. Telling the reader information, generally emotions, etc, is boring because it’s unengaging. Simple. This is something that anyone wanting to write well needs to understand.

Now, this is the rule. It gets thrown around a lot, and for good reasons. However, people hate criticism. And when people get hit with this particular piece of criticism: ‘You need to show more’, they love to rush to their own defence. The amount of times I have seen people go ‘EqD just doesn’t understand that there are times it’s perfectly okay to tell the reader SOME things!’...

It’s an interesting point because those people are, technically, correct. There are times when telling is acceptable, though they tend to be few and far between. Of course, this little caveat gives people a ridiculous amount of room to run around spewing rubbish about show vs. tell and how justified they are in their mediocrity. Normally that’s fine. I can live with people not really understanding what they’re talking about, and it’s an ocean of mediocre writers out there, many of whom don’t realise that they are part of that ocean. It’s not so fine, however, when they try passing off incorrect or poorly explained information as fact.

And this is where all the problems and the misinformation start. So, I will briefly run down the times when telling is generally more acceptable:

Summarisation: Telling is okay is where showing the reader something would be gratuitous or slow the plot down too much. For example, you don’t need to show the reader what the building looks like in the middle of a shootout. As far as character emotion is concerned, telling is only recommended if it's telling the audience a detail that isn’t important to their character. For example, a character is described in a passing detail as watching t.v and they look upset watching it, rather than giving painstaking and ultimately unnecessary detail about the tears streaming down their face in order to try and show they are sad. Of course, if it’s an important detail that the character is sad watching whatever is on t.v, then you should show instead.

Implication outside the initial scope: Now this is complicated. So I am going to use someone else’s explanation when they were teaching it to me:

There is a technique where you baldly state how a character feels or what a character thinks about something, and that statement can imply things far beyond the scope of what you wrote. If you've ever read Bubbles you might remember how the style is very simplistic, with Derpy telling the reader all sorts of things that other writers might try to show instead, like the things that makes her happy, or her favourite foods, or what might make her sad. The thing is, telling here is not an error, because what the writer was trying to portray subtly is not Derpy's emotions or her interests. The thing the writer was trying to infer here was Derpy's simplemindedness, and the relationship she has with her mother. It's the same sort of thing in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, where Christopher does not understand his father's love and ambivalence towards him, but it comes through very clearly in their dialogue and interactions.

There is an interesting, slightly tweaked version of this where the author tells the reader something, and then goes on to show the reader how to reach that same conclusion. So, for example, in our story the narration tells us ‘He loved her.’ or ‘He hated her.’. But then what we do is we go on to show the reader the personality traits or the physical attributions/whatever that lead to that emotion. That way, you are still engaging the reader by helping them reach the same conclusion.
(This is also the easiest to get horribly wrong.)

Two substantive points.* Not a whole lot. Makes it easier to remember and attempt to apply.

But there is an important point to be found in the examples above, and one that people often forget. You will notice that the second example is only kind of telling. This is because it touches at the heart of showing: letting the reader connect the dots by themselves. That’s what showing is about, a point that often gets confused and forgotten in the constant ‘show don’t tell’ mantra that gets thrown around. People forget WHY you show things and WHY you don’t tell them. You show things to let the readers understand on their own what is going on. In this line of thought, you can tell the reader something to show them something else, the real point that you are trying to get across.

For example, if something is making a character feel uncomfortable or out of place, don’t tell the reader that. You can show their physical reactions to imply that emotion (which is a great and efficient way of doing things and definitely the route you should take frequently), or you tell them how the character doesn’t like the way people stand in groups and always look around him. Or tell them how the character doesn’t like their clothes, or sense of fashion, or the way they talk. All of the above is telling the reader something to actually let them understand that the character feels like he doesn’t fit in well. And how much more interesting and entertaining is that?

Don’t hold the reader’s hand and point out things like you would with a three-year-old. It’s so dull. Or, to use another person’s point again:

[…] but it's not so much that you need to make your readers spend time working things out. You just need to let them connect the dots on their own.

If you see people going on about ‘I can tell! EqD don’t know anything!’ beware. I often chase up the stories of people who write those things, and oh boy, they don’t get it right. Show vs. tell is a difficult concept to nail because it’s often layered and nuanced, and a lot writers (myself definitely included. Oh god, this stuff still gives me a headache trying to put it into practice and do it well), struggle with it. But at the end of the day, unless you’re summarising material or touching on the second point, for the love of everything that is holy, don’t tell. Show. The more you let the readers engage with your writing, the better your writing will become.

Also, if you see people talking about this issue and all of their examples are from the best novels from before 1900… Yeah. I love the classics, I really do, but beware of changed standards and styles. For example, there’s a reason we no longer write ridiculously long, over-punctuated sentences. There isn’t really anyone in the fandom who can tell stories anywhere near as well as Austen, Dickens, Dumas or Doyle anyway, so until you are confident you have the whole show don’t tell thing down, stick with it before you start trying to break rules and copy the 19th century greats.

I have yet to see someone be correct when they attack any ‘you need to show more’ criticism levelled at them. Mainly because those people forget/don’t understand why you ‘show’ in the first place, or have only a limited understanding of the matter to begin with.

So, what do you do if someone brings up show vs. tell with your work? Ask them very politely for an example, then you can see what the real problem is. A lot of times people say you’re using tell-y language, but if you never have the problem areas highlighted specifically, you won’t learn what you could be doing wrong, and, more importantly, how to go about fixing it. It also means you aren’t left to guess what’s actually tell-y and what’s not. Too often people get told they are being tell-y and just try to add more description, thinking that description is showing, therefore they must be doing something right. It’s misunderstanding the issue like this that leads to all kinds of terrible places.

So in conclusion, watch out! I have seen people write essays on this topic who clearly don’t even understand what is showing and what is telling, and I have seen people go ‘That was immensely helpful!’ on those same posts. There is lots of material out there that will lead you down bad places and teach bad habits.

And be safe, don’t be sorry. Show, don’t tell.

Questions? Comments? Let me hear 'em, and I'll do my darndest to answer them as best I can.


*You might find specific examples where using a more telling style of narration may fit better, but believe me when I say that if you think your telling is an exception to the rules and working, it’s almost certainly not, and your work would be far stronger if you utilised showing.

(Special thanks to Sessalisk for letting me steal her far better worded examples, lol)

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Comments ( 28 )

"You can't just have your characters announce their feelings! That makes me angry!"
--Robot Devil

For example, a character is described in a passing detail as watching t.v and they look upset watching it, rather than giving painstaking and ultimately unnecessary detail about the tears streaming down their face in order to try and show they are sad. Of course, if it’s an important detail that the character is sad watching whatever is on t.v, then you should show instead.

That's actually quite an interesting example. Sure, we're not shown why the character is sad as they watch T.V., be we may very well be being shown something else at the same time we're being told about the T.V. program: the character is the sort of character who can become emotional at T.V.

As a general rule, I fully agree with the Show vs Tell arguement. That said, I am terrible for going 'Twilight was mad, rawr!' and moving on to something else. Ah, the terrible case of doing as I say, not as I do. :fluttercry:

Thanks for that, Mystic! Now I feel better for pointing out when people don't show. (Or at least more confident that I was correct.)
Anyways, maybe a rant about LUS? I try to explain why not to use it to people, but... I don't think I'm doing it right.

I still struggle with this sometimes. But at least my proofreader points out the worse stuff to me. And hey, I'm improving on my more obvious mistakes, so there's hope for me yet. :pinkiehappy:

887898 Thanks for the reference. This was good.

Also I may be able to help with LUS, as I have--as you well know--been struggeling with it, and gotten some advice from on high. Here is how an it was explained to me.

One way to think about it [LUS] is like thinking of one of those snobby art films. If the film suddenly focusses on a certain aspect, then the reader expects the statement to have some bearing on the story. Focussing on their color throws something in front of the reader... and then expects them to ignore it. Once a character is introduced into a scene, use the action and dialog to tell the reader who is speaking. Keeping one character speaking per paragraph is another way to attribute such dialog.

For example, there’s a reason we no longer write ridiculously long, over-punctuated sentences.

I do. Trolling my teachers since years.

BTT:
I think it is wrong to say 'tell vs. show is an issue of writing'. It surely is one of the most important mayor-style-issues, but it's not only to have the principle in mind while writing.
Writing, as it exists since thousands of years, is not something independent but a form of communication. The basic idea is to transport your thoughts as informations to another person, and that's what every other sort of communication, conscious or not, does.

If you go out and pay attention to humans around you, you'll soon find out that subtlety is a big part of socializing. Body-language, mimic, your tone and the actual choice of words play together to tell the recipient what we are thinking, why we are thinking it, how we feel about it and maybe even how he want him or her to react. The last thing isn't an active message, but with social structures and with subconscious grids that decode all those signals, multiple signals are combined by him or her, what influences his acting a lot.

For an example, I'd like to rename 'show vs. tell' into 'human vs. vulcanian' temporarily.
I think each brony in here knows the feeling when you just saw a nice girl and want to engage her. You could be a vulcanian and say, "Well, I know what I want from her, so I go and ask her for a date. That is the fastest way to get an result, and the sexual hormones will do the main-part anyway."

This is a way of acting, that many people, I would call them bad socializerseses, display. While this is clearly possible to do, and maybe even leads to a lucky time, communicating with the other gender has (almost every time it's performed) a big part of affections. While animals are reduced to they sex hormones (and now I begin to sound like a 1910' guy) when it comes to reproduction, humans have built social networks long-since. Every human has his experiences and expectations with and of other humans. Every time we begin to talk with a person, his signals immediately fall through our very personal raster whether we "like" him or her, or not. This don't only happens in this case, since politicians do not visit kindergartens for fun, but it's particularly strong in this case I guess.

A good socializer would know this, maybe just in his subconsciousness, and would approach with more subtlety. Maybe he would dry to catch her attention at first. He does not want to overrun him/her with all his informations that are sent without his permission, but reducing the first impression to something low. As an side-effect of doing so, he also changes the one-way-communication that was reduced to him telling her his urges into an interplay between talker and recipient. He wants her to start active communication with him, what builds up an emotional reaction itself. And that's what it's all about, getting emotional contact to him/her.

And that sort of communication is exactly what we have in fictional writing. Of course we want tell something to the reader, to transport information. That's also, in my opinion, the main reason why there is this cliff between fictional and non-fictional writing. While non-fictional writing most of the time wants to transport the idea is clear as possible, giving the reader the chance to think about it himself, a fictional writing wants him to enjoy this. Here, not the idea itself is necessary but how it is transported.

Now, the problem is that writing is one-dimensional communication. Contrary to speaking, we don't have our full body, mimic and smells to impress the recipient. All we have are black letters on white paper and a muted opponent, who maybe even is thousands of miles and years away from us. This is where 'show vs. tell / human vs vulcanian' comes in handy. Since we are lucky enough to not have a certain draconequus ruling over our world, we have something that we call "reality" to rely on. We want our reader to enjoy our fiction, and enjoyment is... an emotion! As the empiric science does it, we can watch the world around us and use it to learn what impressions we really get from this world.

Am I just angry or is it a complex reaction to my environment in my brain? In most cases, characters should be receiving such a flood of informations, and to show that, their reactions and to decide what would just drown in this infinite barrage of impressions. But those can't come from nowhere, either. World-building is a close mate of this rule I think, and the fact that 'show vs. tell' is influenced that intensely by experiences and other non-writing qualities, as well as it depends on technical skills to get down the idea properly, is what makes this the master-discipline of writing fiction.

Therefore, I would call 'show vs. tell' rather a rule of communication than a rule of writing. You have to write down subconscious impressions and for that, you'll first have to realize that they exist at all. Good writing is a question of self-conception and anthropology (no, not the fic). Ear-dropping, watching apples fall off trees and of course reading tons and tons and tons of good fiction helps to get a better feeling for it, and to fill the mental pool with methods and ideas.

I think this comment is long enough now. :facehoof:

This was actually quite helpful, it made me think about what I'm doing wrong if god forbid I do write anything.

Unfortunately, I can't fav a blog post here - but if I could, this would be one of them.
Really shows how things should be written.

Interesting that you should mention "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" - I've actually read that! How it is written does make sense in context of the character and their mental 'infliction'. Good example.

Frostwyrm

This actually made me feel better about my own writing, though when it comes to emotions I've probably done things the fast way instead of the right way more often than I would like.

The only other thing I have to add is that bubbles also illustrates another exception to a degree. When dealing with first pony sometimes telling simply makes sense because knowing what the character thinks is far more important than what is actually happening. For example, Pinkie things everyone is happy, but it quickly becomes clear even though all the griffins are smiling they are planning to kill her. Obviously the showing is still vital, but you start with the outright tell because unreliable narrators are just like that. Of course the previous in no way suggests I've ever managed to pull something off like that correctly, or if I've even tried, but seems at least relevant to me.

I don't have anything substantive to contribute, but I thought this might amuse you, Mystic: I was pointed at a thread on /mlp/ not too long ago where my story, "Going Up," was used as proof that it's okay to tell, because EqD posted it and it was fine, so if any of the pre-readers say you shouldn't tell they're full of... well, of something unprintable. Anyway, point is that telling's totally legit because Chris did it.

Just thought you might like to know that all your well thought-out points have been completely disproven, and it's all thanks to me. Sorry to bust your bubble!

Also, if you see people talking about this issue and all of their examples are from the best novels from before 1900…

Heh, so true. I've lost track of the number of times someone will point out that Dostoyevsky or Chekhov did a lot of telling in their stories.

"For example, there’s a reason we no longer write ridiculously long, over-punctuated sentences."

I guess the important question there is what counts as ridiculously long or over-punctuated. The tendency towards both becoming less is not one that I like at all. I certainly wouldn't advocate Shakespeare-esque levels of punctuation, but I get irritated by those advocating a minimalist approach to semicolons, dashes and the like. Language is fun, so have fun with it. Oversimplifying punctuation and sentence length is a much more grievous error in my mind and depressingly commonplace. Short sentences add punch when they're comparatively rare, otherwise they just start to look childish and imply a lack of faith in your reader.

As for the show-vs-tell thing in general, playing editor was WAY more useful as a learning tool that writing ever was. Not that it means I can just do it on command, but at least I feel that my fundamental understanding of it is solid now. Next is the oft-quoted ten thousand hours of practice to master a skill...

-Scott

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

As far as character emotion is concerned, telling is only recommended if it's telling the audience a detail that isn’t important to their character.

I'm really not sure what you're getting at with this. If it's not important, why is it being included in the story at all?

So, what do you do if someone brings up show vs. tell with your work? Ask them very politely for an example, then you can see what the real problem is.

Just remember that the pre-readers (since you've been invoking them throughout this journal) aren't an editing service, and many of them take their stance as not-being-editors quite seriously. This is the kind of question you take to /fic/ and go, "Hey, the PR's said I'm being telly: can you help me find where?"

Beyond that, this is a great article. :D

Sometimes the writing style of an author is filled with... nuances, so to speak. Like casual alliteration or implied irony by using the same words in a different context, things like that. They don't exactly seem to show or tell much. What do they do?

I'm not even gonna lie here, I'm guilty of quite a bit of telling instead of showing. The one story I have on FiMFiction isn't too good of an example, because it's just Quydlin's musings on stuff, but in my normal writings, I hate them because it lacks the depth that comes from showing what's going on, showing how this stuff messes up the characters and their interactions. Also because I tend to rush through stuff too quickly, but in a way that goes hand in hand. Its something I'm working on, but its rather hard to adjust to because of how long I've been set in the same rut.

887898 A rant on LUS? Heh, whenever I try to write something on LUS, it normally comes out a little too offensive, haha. LUS is just a really amateur mistake because it makes you look like you have fallen in love with your thesaurus. Kinda like using too many speech verbs that aren't 'said'. Occasional use is okay, but whenever possible, use a proper noun or pronoun. The more... 'professional' response is that it's clearer, unobtrusive and concise, just like what 888026 said, haha.

888067 Haha, there's some cool thoughts in there! And you're right, showing really does help breathe a sense of realism into a piece of work. It's why it's so effective.

888145 That's actually Sessalisk's example! She's the one who I stole the quoted sections from. :rainbowlaugh:

888326 Hahaha, oh man. As a pre-reader, that amuses me to no end. Looks like parts of /mlp/ need to be added to the list of people who don't understand show vs. tell properly!

889257 I would say McCarthy, but then again, only McCarthy can write as well as McCarthy. He's more than good enough to be able to start breaking rules.

889598 The first point is actually why summarisation's uses are few and far between. Normally it's unnecessary detail. However, there is a chance you will get times when you are describing a scene as a whole, and details like that can be used. That and what 887859 said. It's only for specific uses, but it can come up enough to warrant mentioning it.

889767 You would be surprised actually by what can constitute 'showing'. I didn't really touch on the subject here because it's just so massive, but showing can take many different forms and whatnot. A lot of the time various techniques are utilised not for the technique itself, but because they help to show the reader what's going on. Makes it easy to picture/become invested/engaged in, etc, etc, which is what showing is about.

When I submitted my fic to EqD what they did was they told me I was telling to much, but when I showed them that they were wrong and telling is RIGHT, they TOLD me that I needed to look at it again and fix it more.

FUCKING HYPOCRITES.

891387 :pinkiegasp: :pinkiegasp: :pinkiegasp: :pinkiegasp:

THEY ARE SO CORRUPT!!!1! I, like, cant ever take them for serial now.

My head exploded. NO, YOU AREN'T MEANT TO LEARN ON THE INTERNET!!!

895528 Learning?! On the Internet?! Oh God I should be shot! D:

Comment posted by BaJi bAjI deleted Mar 24th, 2013

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Too much learn today. These words make head sad. I go eat bag of drums now.

I like the explanation of "implication outside the initial scope". I don't technically disagree with you; "summarization" covers a lot of territory. But I disagree with the implication that telling should be rare, or that EQD has got a good grasp of the matter. I disagree because I've taken great books and gone through them looking for showy vs. telly language, and great books from all time periods are full of telling. Some authors have a particular hard-boiled style that doesn't include much telling, like Hemingway or Elmore Leonard, but that's because they want their characters to have a "manly" lack of externally-visible feelings, and the narrative to be quick and snappy rather than lush and imagistic.

The thing to do is go through good books and highlight showy versus telly language in different colors, such as Titanium Dragon did here for part of a Harry Potter book.

Showing vs. telling has to do with the mood you want to create, and with the specificity vs. wordiness of the alternative ways of describing something. There are many, many cases where throwing in a single adverb gives you more bang per word than five words of body language.

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