Show and Tell · 1:48pm Apr 27th, 2014
So... This kind of a topic. As I said in my last blog, I've been reading a lot of craft literature. One of the books I picked up was a book that went over the theory of telling vs. showing and gave lots of examples of both and why they do and don't work. Also, this is going to be a somewhat long blog entry. The story is tagged because it's what inspired this blog post and what I continue to work on.
So. First thing's first. What's telling?
This is simple to explain because telling is explaining. Telling is what happens when you tell your reader what reaction your character had. Some examples below:
"She felt sad that her mother wasn't there."
"Terror froze her limbs, preventing her from moving."
So what's wrong with the above? Nothing, structurally. They're both complete sentences, free of grammatical or punctuation errors... but they're hollow. I'm telling you what she's feeling, not revealing what she's feeling. But it's more than just emotions. Telling lends itself to unnecessary repetition of intent.
"What?!" she exclaimed.
The above is a perfect example of repetition and telling. The exclamation should stand by itself. That's what the "?!" is there for. Since that punctuation was used, it's very unlikely that your character is doing anything but exclaiming something. This leaves the reader essentially reading the same intent twice.
So what is intent? It's what I call the purpose of the sentence. The purpose of the above sentence was to convey surprise, usually loud surprise, considering the punctuation used. If you must use a saidism, use something other what the punctuation might suggest - like hissed. Whispered wouldn't be likely, nor would grumbled.
So... What is showing then?
Showing is revealing. This means that instead of telling exactly what a character is feeling, you let the revelation of small things give a picture of what your character is feeling and let the reader build up an image for themselves of what's going on inside a character's head. It's somewhat analogous to listening to a history lecture vs. watching the events unfold in front of you. Sure, the lecture gives information about what's going on in fairly exacting terms, but it's also boring.
How to fix the above sentences? Let's give it a shot, shall we?
Original: "She felt sad that her mother wasn't there."
Showing: "Her throat tightened painfully as thoughts of her mother drifted through her mind."
Two things:
1: We don't say that she's feeling sad.
2: We don't say that her mother's not there.
We can infer both of these things from context clues. Why would she be close to tears while thinking about her mother?
A reasonable person might infer that her mother isn't there for whatever reason, though honestly the rest of the text should also provide context as well.
Original: "Terror froze her limbs, preventing her from moving."
Showing: "Her legs trembled as numbing ice crawled along her spine. Run! she cried to herself, cursing hooves that refused to listen.
1: We don't use the emotion word, we use a physical reaction and a sensation to show that she's feeling fear.
2: We don't say that she can't move explicitly.
Again, we can infer both of these things from the clues we leave in the text. Trembling and an icy, numb feeling often accompany fear or terror. Of course, people react to fear differently. Finally, she tells herself to run, implying that she's not already, and then she curses her hooves because, well, obviously they're not moving.
It takes more space to convey showing than it does for telling, but to allow your reader to get their own cues and build their own image of what your character is feeling is to make the story feel more personal and get them invested in a story much more easily.
Dialogue can also tell, but it's also one of the greatest tools an author has for showing as well. It's also one of the greatest pitfalls that authors face for repeating intent. I still run afoul of this, but I think I'm getting better at it.
Example:
"Are you sure-" Quick Fix started.
"Look. I don't care what it costs, just do it," he said rudely, interrupting the younger stallion.
Sorry, Cogwing, I used Quick Fix as an example, but it's not from your new story, I promise. It just fit the situation.
So... Right here we have two tells and two repeated intents.
The first,
"Are you sure-" Quick Fix started.
indicates that Quick fix is being cut off, then the saidism at the end repeats the same implication. We can just leave off the saidism or put something at the start, like so:
Quick Fix looked over the order sitting on the counter. "Are you sure-"
Some context was added, we're not repeating the intent, and we're still indicating that Quick Fix is being cut off, even if we don't know what's doing the cutting yet.
The next one is a bit different. We have a tell "rudely" and a repeated intent "interrupting the younger stallion". We can fix both of these by breaking up the quote and inserting a saidism and an action.
"Look," he grunted, shoving the order at the younger stallion. "I don't care what it costs. Just do it."
Grunted isn't something you usually do when you're trying to be polite, nor is shoving an order at someone. Also, breaking up the dialogue like that indicates a break in the flow of dialogue. So he says "Look." and then shoves the order, then he continues - indicating that he's being brusque, but it's up to the reader to decide if it's being rude or not.
So that's a little bit on showing vs. telling. I hope it provides some insight into what I've been learning and working on and might give you all some ideas for your own stories or look at works in a different light.
After text:
I'm also working on characterization and flow of events as well, but that's kinda something I've been working on. I'll probably be doing a blog post soon on active setting as well, but Mare in the Moon doesn't have a lot of places to insert active setting yet. It will, but Silver Spoon doesn't have much of an attachment to any of the settings yet, and that's deliberate. She only right now has an attachment to a certain pink tyrant.
I suppose it's pretty academic that I would get to it eventually, considering what I did with Chapter 1 and continue to do today with Chapters 2 & 3 of The Mare in the Moon. If you read the first chapter before yesterday, I've changed quite a lot since then. There is less telling. I went through and looked for things that were telling an emotion or a reaction rather than showing the evidence of the reaction or emotion.
So, the book I've been reading is here:
Show or Tell? A powerful Lesson on a Crucial Writing Skill by James Thayer. Kindle edition for 2$.
OH! Craft books. Books about improving your CRAFT of writing. For some reason I kept picturing Popsicle sticks and tacky glue...
Definitely a bunch of useful ideas here. In fact, if half the people I've edited for had read this article, I'd be out of a job. Telling people to ax sentences because they'd already implied the contents earlier is all I know how to do
Granted, telling has its place as well. Are you considering doing something about when to clam up with the showing and get on with telling the story? Maybe more effective ways of telling, such as what to do about those long lists of "x happened, then y happened, and z..." ? I've seen those errors as much as lack of showing.
2053000
I have thought about it, and that's one of the things that I keep coming across in my reading. Telling definitely has its place, but it should be like salt. Sparingly and in just the right places, adding flavor at just the right moment.
Tidbits of backstory are great places for telling, for example, from my latest bits of work:
Telling the reader that her parents would be disappointed rather than imagining the looks on their faces. Short, simple, gives her a reason to buck up, and also gives a bit of backstory. Dad spends a lot of time in courts and mom spends a lot of time in crowds and take pride in their jobs.
As for the list bits... I don't think I've gotten to a point where that would be something good to do. I've usually only seen long bits of telling in exposition, and other than a bit between Luna and Discord, there hasn't been much of that yet.
Action, of course, is a great place to tell, but I haven't had much of that yet either. I might fix that soon with a writing exercise, though.
But, in general, I would say that for long lists of things... they tend to happen when there's no clearly set viewpoint character or from an omniscient viewpoint. It's easy to fall into that because there's no way to attach emotion to the actions from an omniscient or unclear viewpoint.
A viewpoint character will add character to a list. Example:
Fixed:
A bit of telling with emotion mixed in... Probably not my best, but spur of the moment stuff rarely is.
'Tis a list, but with a little of Apple Bloom's signature take on it, down to the repetitive tone in the first sentence - perhaps she likes slopping the pig troughs? Or maybe she just likes the pigs.
What could be dirty and disgusting about the stable? Well, probably mucking it out... but it's left up to the imagination somewhat and really only someone with even a rudimentary knowledge of stables might guess that. Other things might have been disgusting, but the lack of specificity says she'd rather not remember it.
I think it adds some character to her as well, saying that perhaps she's not as happy on the farm as everypony thinks without saying it outright. Or maybe it's just a youngster's desire to be with friends.
At least... that's what I was going for when I wrote it. What the reader gets from it, well. That's up to them and the rest of the story to fill out.
2053037
Interesting. I guess I don't work with omniscient enough to have run into that case. I was more thinking about when an author bogs down the action by listing off the actions a character is doing one after the other:
Sometimes, it works. Other times, it melts down into this slog of attention-death. Kind of like how you can only stare at things so long until your eyes cross. Gut feeling says varied sentence structure and telling only the actions that are needed to get the important points across is the key, but I haven't given much thought to it recently.
2053096
Ahah. I see what you mean now. I suppose I was thinking along different lines. Detail lists, then. I have run across those, both in my older writing and, occasionally, in my newer. I've gotten decently okay at finding those and eliminating them though, I think. They tend to stick out, honestly, and break up the story.
I suppose... Hmm. Blog idea coming. "Brevity is the Soul of Wit. Except when it's not."
Lists and when they're appropriate. (hint, hardly ever.)
I'll have to do some research and meditation, I think. I have not much experience with writing them because I tend to avoid them like the plague, but I very much remember the mindset that I was in ten or so years ago when I started using them. It's the less subtle cousin of foreshadowing and more like a violation of a variant of Chekhov's gun: Chekhov's arsenal.
I know they're meant to show that the character is preparing for something, as that's the mindset I was in, along with a author patting self on the back pointing out that they know these things. Or a hamfisted way of putting in backstory.
And then never get mentioned again.
Or maybe that's it... I'll have to think. Perhaps a cautionary tale blog post.
2053096
And here I've misread your comment again... Good grief my brain just can't...
Anyway... I see what you mean... again. And I've run into that more recently. Maybe my brain can get it together more after I go for a walk around the farm. Too much time indoors spoils the brain.
2053157
I know the feel. Granted, for me it is usually followed by my PM inbox catching on fire
Also: you have a farm? Lucky
2053196
Well, it's the family farm. I don't live there. I have to drive about 6 miles out of town to get there, but it's also a place where I spent many a summer vacation as a child. Lots of childhood memories out there. It's why I like to go out there to reconnect when I write child characters. It's easier to feel what it used to be like when I'm in a place where I was once small and the world seemed a little bigger.
Also, I think I figured it out.
Consecutive Action Overload... and I do have a few things I'd like to say about it too.
Edit: How not to have a CAO. (Pronounced Cow)
I found this recently. It illustrates much the same thing, however, it also points out where telling is more useful, which you touch on in the CAO post. It explains it in more depth, in a more direct way, so I'm offering a link to it.
Also, The Writing Guide is quite amazing for beginners and gives some examples of this in one section, though I think yours may be a little easier to read in this particular instance. More in-depth, too.
2053678
Bookmarked! Good examples, and also a thing I didn't consider before.
I'm currently working through a book on Active Setting, and this is in there too. Setting can be told to. The sun doesn't just shine. Speckles of sunlight trace back and forth over Applejacks coat.
The wind is blowing, the sun is shining and based on what we know of Applejack, she's probably under an apple tree.
I am a bit of a heretic from the faith of Show, Don't Tell.
Showing is most definitely better when one is attempting to portray a single action or emotion. "His muscles were agony and his lungs afire for each new breath after the first hour of digging the ditch" is more evocative than "He found ditch-digging hard and painful work."
But showing can break down where one has a long and complex concept to convey. Witness the works of Jack Vance, in which the plot frequently hinges on the details of a bizarre alien culture -- such as in "The Moon Moth," in which all social interaction must be mediated through the wearing of elaborate masks and self-accompaniment by musical instruments, and a failure to navigate this labyrinth of forms can lead to ostracism or even justifiable homicide. Vance does show us some of this system in operation, but there would have been no easy way for the reader to understand the story did he not also lay out the basic principles in exposition by dialogue and other means.
Pure showing instead of telling works best if one is depicting a setting with which the readers and characters are both thoroughly familiar. (And even then, one should beware of unshared assumptions -- pick up anything written during or right after the Countercultural Revolution off 1965-1974, by either side, and imagine it through the other side's assumptions for a good example of this). Science fantasy requires a lot of telling in order to work, because it does not take place in our world, and both the physical and cultural assumptions may differ. The trick is to do it artistically.
2053976
Very much agreed, but I think most people know telling is required sometimes. It's only a rare few who insist that telling can never be done.
2053976
Very much agreed. I've never said telling is bad completely - just bad for deep characterization. Heck, some of my favorite parts of a story series involving Relativistic time travel include the telling of events as they happen back on Earth while the travellers in the ship going at near-c speeds reach their destination. There's nothing to show. It's all tell. But it works really, really well and gives the reader an idea of what to expect when the travellers eventually return - again, going at near-c velocity.
2054500
Mere telling can epically fail when it comes to character, even when it involves one character thinking about another character -- because one must remember the limitations of viewpoint. For instance, a character viewing another character on first impression is not going to have a very complex understanding of that other character's psychology or history, and if the writer simply cut-and-pastes his own character description, the reader is going to be wondering "How the heck does he know all that?
A good example of this is in Jack Williamson's early SF story "The Prince of Space" (1931) -- my review here -- in which the viewpoint character describes the heroine in this manner on first meeting her:
There is absolutely no way for him to have noticed all this on first view, since she hasn't actually said anything so he knows nothing of her "intellect" or the "deep stream of her character." Jack Williamson obviously just plunked his whole character description for her into her first appearance in the tale.
Aside from damaging verisimilitude, this also raises the risk of creating Informed Attributes, where all sorts of claims are made for the character which are not borne out in the text. This is actually true in the case of Paula Trainor, who comes off through her later words and actions as being a spoiled neurotic lunatic, rather than having any the positive attributes Jack Williamson meant for her to exemplify. I've also seen this done in some stories here -- it's always a hazard of putting more into a character description than the character will have the chance to demonstrate in the tale, but it's egregious when the character actually displays the opposite attributes (a "genius" who constantly does idiotic things, a "virtuous maiden" who acts like a dizzy slut, and so forth).
Part of the problem, I think, is that a writer sometimes likes the sound of heroic attributes, but has no idea how to display them in action -- or, occasionally, no idea of what comprises them at all. This is most common with very inexperienced writers.
A writer can, of course, develop past this flaw. The writer I quoted from -- Jack Williamson -- went on to become one of the finest writers in the history of science fiction, with a seven-decade career that only ended with his death in the 2000's. So there's hope for anyone.