Writer's Workshop #15: Show, Don't Tell · 10:02pm Mar 7th, 2015
Seriously, what the heck does that even mean? "Show, don't tell," I mean. You're writing as best as you can, but then some jerk editor like me writes, "Show, don't tell here" on your work like it's a gift from the gods, drops the mic, and walks away. And you're left staring at your story wondering what you did wrong. Truth be told, it, like all writing advice, is very complicated and not always correct. But I'll try my best to help you look behind the curtain and understand what exactly "show, don't tell" means.
The magic of writing, if you get all the way down to it, is that it can depict something without having to have it right there in front of you. So I can write the word "apple" or "tree" without having to show you a picture of an apple or a tree, and you know what I'm trying to say. Or I can write, "Twilight walked to the store," and you can see that in your head without me having to make an animation of it. But do you see how many details you added to that one sentence when you imagined in your mind? Did I say what color Twilight is? Did I say that she walked the standard walking cycle you see on the show? Did I say what the store looked like, or if it had a sign on it, or where it's located in Ponyville? I didn't have to! You saw all of those details without me saying them. So why should I write "Twilight, the purple unicorn mare, put one hoof in front of the other in equal rhythm until she arrived at the squat brown convenience store over by the joke shop" when the first one delivers the exact message I needed?
That's the basic idea behind "show, don't tell." Just by saying "walked" or "Twilight," I've put so much meaning into the story anyway that I don't need to explain it with a bunch of extra narration. The "show" is the first depiction, the "tell" would be all the extra cruft added to it. But wait! What if the way she's walking is important? Or what if there's something about the store that's absolutely necessary for the reader to understand? How can I get that point to my readers without some extra telling? Your first instinct is probably to use adjectives and adverbs, like "Twilight walked slowly to the brown store," but that's really just telling, and it's not very interesting. We can do better than that.
One great way to show nuance without telling it is to use stronger verbs. "Walk" doesn't say much other than the physical act of walking. But what about, say, "march?" Or "stride?" Or "plod?" Each of those conveys a subtly different form of walking that also expresses a certain amount of emotion and method. If I say "Twilight plodded towards the store," you can tell she's kind of depressed or drained, walking slowly and heavily, without any energy to her step. Before you go to your thesaurus (like I did), though, here's the catch: don't use fancy-pants synonyms unless you have a use for it. In general, stick to approximately an eighth-grade reading level. Don't use "perambulate" or "locomote" instead of "walk." Your readers aren't reading your story to see you show off the words on your word-of-the-day calendar. Now, if you absolutely can't get your intent across if you don't use "prevaricate" instead of "lie," then go for it, but make sure to couch the rest of the sentence in as much context as possible so that the readers that don't know what "prevaricate" means don't get confused.
Another trick you've got is called figurative language. This is what turns your story from just a bunch of words on a page to art. Let's say, for example, you have your character walking into a small hotel room. But rather than say, "the hotel room was small," suppose we try something like, "the hotel room was like a prison cell?" The room isn't literally a prison cell, of course, but by comparing it to one, we're conveying a little bit about our character. They feel trapped in such a small space, confined. But notice, again, that I've said nothing about what's actually in the room. I've left it to you, the readers, to interpret what "like a prison cell" means in context. There's a lot of different kinds of figurative language (which is probably worth a Writer's Workshop on its own), but the kind I just used is called a simile. If I say something like "Twilight dragged herself to the store," I'm using hyperbole. She's not literally dragging herself, but... you get the picture.
So where does "show, don't tell" fall apart? The one I see most commonly is when people interpret it to mean, "don't say what happens directly." This usually manifests as body parts moving on their own, like a bad horror movie. "Applejack's eyebrows shot up." "Twilight's hooves moved her over to the store." "Fluttershy's wings flared open." The thing is, all of those are trying to communicate an emotion, but rather than just say it outright, they're trying to express it through body motions. It sounds really weird to write it like that, and really, is it more important that Applejack's eyebrow shoot up, or that Applejack is skeptical? Showing doesn't mean you talk in circles, but that what you show be so precise that there's no need for telling. It's the difference between "Fluttershy's wings flared open," "Fluttershy seemed upset," and "Fluttershy seemed upset at the idea that Rainbow Dash had hurt Pinkie Pie."
In the end, I find the best way to consider show, don't tell would be more like, "write what's important." Is it really important to say, "she walked quickly?" If not, just cut "quickly." If so, change "walked quickly" to "strode" or "ran," giving your exact meaning without an adverb hanging off the end. The more you write, the more ways you'll find to make your writing more elegant and fluid without having to resort to telling. You'll start to figure out the best ways to convey details about your characters through their actions. But, as with all things, you've just gotta write as much as you can. That's the only way you'll get better.
You may be a jerk editor, but I couldn't ask for a better one.
Another great workshop! I feel like I've really learned something.
Whenever I think show vs tell, I think of my old, awful version of the prologue chapter of my story vs the new, much improved one. The new one isn't perfect by any means, but it's a far, far sight better in the show vs tell department.