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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