Writing 101: Allow Inference, Don't Dictate—What is "Show, Don't Tell" and Why Is It so Important? · 10:07am Mar 2nd, 2017
I know what you’re thinking, Jimmy (do you mind if I call you "Jimmy"?). “cleverpun, this subject has been covered a hundred times before, by authors who are way better at writing than you. What could you possibly tell me that I don’t already know?”
To that I say: this topic is so important, that it is worth having as many perspectives as possible. Hopefully this longer-than-average blog post either provides some new insight into the topic, or at least reinforces its import.
First, let’s briefly define what “show, don’t tell” means. It can sometimes be a fuzzy concept. It’s so ubiquitous, that oftentimes someone will blurt it out as advice, without any clarification or addendum.
In simplest terms, to show rather than tell means to allow interpretation. The audience should have room to figure things out for themselves. If your character is angry, have them show it to the reader with their actions: maybe they punch the wall, or have a smoke, or give someone the finger. Don’t tell the reader they are angry, either through narration or the character blurting it out or whatever else. The Robot Devil teaches us the wrong way to do things. Sometimes I like to phrase this advice differently, to make it more explanatory: “Allow Inference, Don’t Dictate.” Allow the reader to infer the meaning of scenes and actions for themselves, don’t dictate how they feel or what they should think.
Now this brings us to the important part: why is this principle, this advice, this cliche, so important? What about it leads to better writing?
To answer this question, we must first ask ourselves: what is the most fundamental strength of prose fiction? Prose’s greatest strength is its flexibility and interpretability. It is not exacting. When one writes about a fish or a lake or a house or any other thing, there is no way to exactly define what it looks like. A character’s appearance is ultimately up to the reader, no matter how many times you mention their haircut or hook nose or any other detail.
This is the defining feature of prose fiction in comparison to most other mediums, particularly visual media like film and comics. We all know what Superman looks like, from the color of his clothes to his haircut. But when it comes to Harry Potter, the details are more flexible. Each reader has their own vision of him.
That is where its most potent strengths and glaring weaknesses of prose come from. One needs to play to their strengths and around their weaknesses to create great art, regardless of medium. In prose fiction, every reader creates their own version of a story. The author gives them the broad details: a young man, a faraway school, magic. The fine details, however, are left to the reader: feelings, motivations, mechanics. An author might tell a reader that the main character has a chair, or that they abandoned their family. The reader, however, is the one who decides what type of chair, or why the character decided to leave and how and when.
This is why this advice is so important. Allow inference, don’t dictate. The more details you give to your reader, the more you contradict the strength of your medium. The more blanks you leave, the more the reader fills in for themselves. The more of themselves the reader injects into the story, the better it becomes, if only to them.
Allow me to use some of my own stories as a talking point. Where Things Are Hollow is a very simple story: After years of being a princess, Twilight Sparkle turns herself into a background character. The story presents this concept in fairly straightforward terms. Twilight gets sick of her job and casts a spell that lessens the burden of destiny on herself. And yet, the story doesn’t say exactly why the spell works the way it does. It doesn’t explain what everything in the story means. It just sprinkles clues and context and lets the reader draw their own conclusions.
The Conquer Trilogy is similar. The series shows a future Nightmare Moon regret her victory, and she goes to great lengths to undo her mistakes. But which mistakes is she really trying to undo? How does she view the situation, and how does this perspective affect her actions? And when she claims that she did everything she could, is she lying or is she truthful? The story shows events and repercussions, but motivations and feelings and perhaps even mechanics are left entirely to the reader.
Your job as an author is not to construct a perfect story. You are not here to tell readers how to feel or what to think. They don’t need to know what wood the chair is made of or why that character went out for a smoke.
The author and the reader are a team. They build a story together. The author provides the broad strokes, the reader the fine details and implications. So always remember; allow inference, don’t dictate. Show, don’t tell. Let the reader tell the story to themselves. Because when they do, you can be assured that they will tell a better story than you can.*
Thanks for reading. As always, comments, criticism, and counterpoints are welcome.
*(Conveniently, however, you get to keep all the credit for yourself.)
You do have to be careful of the reverse, though, where you don't give them enough details and they walk away confused, which I am horribly guilty of time and again
4441456 This is definitely true. This leads into the corollary: one needs both showing and telling to write a story. In different quantities, certainly, but doing just one or the other are equally dangerous extremes. A story with nothing but telling is blunt, and a story with nothing but showing is obtuse.
This leads to another question: how does one determine what is worth showing and what is worth telling? That is a topic that deserves its own blog post, though. Suffice it to say, every story is going to answer that question differently, and experience and editing are a big part of figuring out when to show and when to tell.
4441468 I think my line I've drawn is 'If you can show it, show it, but some stuff you gotta tell on' - like my next planned story is set in the far future. On some level I can show it, if I wanted to say, show the crumbled remains of Canterlot; except, well, we're not going there because the whole thing takes place in the...Monastery, for lack of a better word, in which Celestia dwells. At some point in there I'm probably going to have to flat out give a summation of bits of history at that point for word count reasons, and because said history is more dressing but not the point of the story; the point, after all, is a story about relationships.
So I guess, for me, Show is for key details to the plot, and Tell is for rapid exposition, as a light rule?
It's all about thoughts... all about character thoughts. I over use that stuff like frosting on a cake.
4441474 that approach has its merits. The problem is that exposition is one of those things that is very hard to make interesting. I'd actually consider it one of the worse candidates for telling, because that makes it more boring.
Obviously, this won't always hold true, since the delivery will determine whether the final product is boring or interesting. And as you said, sometimes concessions must be made to word count or timeframe.
4441792 the problem with that is that overrelying on character thoughts can make a narrative awkward to read. It can make the characters come off as dense or awkward. As with everything, however, it depends heavily on execution.
That's another blog I need to write: how to avoid using first person narration as a crutch.
4442410 Of course it can be a crutch if done wrong, but used right, a few words and I mean A FEW can go a long way as you show what they're thinking.
4442410 Trying to think how you can do Show on exposition; I mean, one has flashbacks, but what other methods are there for infodumping that aren't Flashback or straight up Tell?
4442472 The main one would probably be environmental storytelling: implying things through the use of environmental and setting details. For example: lets say you want to gradually introduce the fact that the world is a post-apocalyptic wasteland caused by a mysterious virus. There's lots of ways to let readers infer this through the construction of the environment. Make the buildings empty, but intentionally leave out physical damage. Make a point to show discarded medical supplies. Have the protagonist note signs or posters about vaccinations or quarantines. And so forth.
Another technique I like to use is to have characters discuss important things without providing any context or exposition. Rather than having one character say "As You Know", I'll just write the conversation naturally, as if the reader had already seen the events that lead up to it. Then the reader is left to figure out for themselves what they are discussing and why via context.
Of course, this all comes back to that same old thing. Fiction is subjective. All these things are just individual techniques and tools, not the only right way. Avoiding tell in favor of show just for its own sake is pointless, because it all depends on context and execution. Infodumping can be perfectly fine, as long as one makes it engaging or entertaining. Discworld novels take breaks for exposition all the time, Terry Prachett just makes them witty. Every Fallout game opens with a lengthy monologue, but who could argue with Ron Perlman?
Also as usual, each of these topics could fill up their own blog post and more, so I'm trying not to ramble
4443340 Yea, no worries, I'm looking for options to use for the one I'm kneading over right now; one of the issues being that the setting is fairly limited in scope so it's hard to go on a long tour of 'Yea, Canterlot is abandoned' when we're never going to Canterlot. Still, I think I can make do with what I have, and the discourse is always interesting! (Even if it always makes me sad you are Ponyfic retired
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4443472 Well, obviously I can't offer specific advice without more information. If you want some more specific advice, however, you are welcome to PM me
4444163 Once I scribble out the missing scenes and am ready for pass overs on editing I probably will!
Like the great Miles Davis said, it's all in the notes you don't play.