[Write On!]

Search Write On!

Show and Tell

by janra
Posted to Craft, The tools we use on Fri Oct 19, 2001 at 04:17:07 PM PST
[Print]

'Show, don't tell' is an oft-heard admonition to new writers, and given that a lot of people new to writing do far too much 'telling' it's probably reasonably good advice. But then there are some people who hold the invalid assumption that 'if a little is good, more must be better', and think that everything in a story must be 'shown'.

There are things in a story that should be 'told' and not 'shown'.

Consider the following:

(Show) Cassidy slammed her notebook shut and stood up, taking a step back from her advisor. "This is the second and last time I'm going to tell you: what you're doing is considered sexual harrassment. I'm requesting a different advisor if you don't stop what you're doing and start advising me."

"Cassidy, what's gotten into you?" He patted Cassidy's shoulder. "I'm only trying to help."

and:

(Tell) Cassidy was fed up with her sleazy advisor's advances. She set an ultimatum, allowing him one last chance to start advising her as he was supposed to before she reported him.

It's pretty clear here that the 'show' example is the better one. It takes up more space, true, but it lets us know a lot more about both Cassidy - she's pretty tolerant and her advisor may think that his behaviour is, in fact, acceptable. And I didn't even have to use the words 'sleazy' or 'fed up' for you to know that they applied.

On the other hand, there is this:

(Tell) They had been searching for 5 hours, pulling encyclopedias, reference books, anything that looked like it might have something for them off the shelves. The dust danced in the light from the overhead lights, another puff jumping into the air with every book from the back room they opened.

You really don't want to 'show' something like that, do you? It would be mind-numbing. A sentence or two does an admirable job of telling the reader what's been going on and lets you get on with the business of showing the important stuff. In this case, 'telling' would be the preferred method. You could add in a bit more description or perhaps name a few of the books they look through, depending on how important that 5 hour search is to the story, but should only do it as a 'show' scene if it is absolutely critical to the plot.

However, what about the following:

(Show) The sun was approaching its peak and they slowed to a walk. Kerry started looking from side to side, searching for a reasonably comfortable spot to spend the hottest part of the day.

"You're being paranoid, you know," he commented when Nancy followed her brother towards a likely-looking break in the undergrowth. "It's been weeks. I'm sure they've stopped looking for us by now."

Nancy paused, and glanced back at Kerry. "Perhaps, but I won't feel safe until I've rejoined my family."

He rolled his eyes. "All right, but don't expect me to help you get the sap off."

"You should hide a bit better than that," Nancy added. "Lying on the side of the road just screams 'come attack me, all you bandits and highwaymen!' - even if they aren't the ones we escaped from."

Kerry smiled and nodded indulgently.

"I don't think you understand." Nancy stopped just short of the edge of the road. "I've been travelling a lot longer than you have, and the bandits know nobody travels alone. They'll see you, and start searching for us."

"They can't afford the time. There's only so long they can go between raids if they want to keep eating." Kerry leaned against a tree and closed his eyes.

He didn't seem willing to continue the argument, so Nancy hurried to catch up to her brother, and they started searching for a good, hidden place to rest.

Maybe it was paranoia, but none of the hiding places they would have chosen only two months ago looked hidden enough. Nancy sighed and looked up into one of the biggest trees in the area.

"Not again," her brother complained.

"Did you see a better spot?" Nancy replied. "Come on." She struggled up the branches, fighting against the twiglets that grabbed at her and reaching for the thickest branches to pull herself higher. She paused for breath and looked around. Above her, on all sides, and below, were branches and leaves. She carefully shifted to a pair of branches at the same level that looked like they would be strong enough for her to sit on.

Or:

(Tell) They had fallen into the habit of taking their midday rest off the road and well hidden. Kerry said that they were paranoid and it had been weeks since they had left, but he didn't try to stop them when they left the road.

The path they were following stayed in the forest for a long time, which made it easy to find a hiding place - usually a big tree, as awkward as they were to climb. Kerry sat just off the road in the shade of a bush or tree and dozed there.

The 'show' version of this clip could be used as part of a scene or a scene itself, and it describes them, their situation, and their habits pretty well. The 'tell' version of this clip, on the other hand, is not a scene in itself but is a lead in to a scene or perhaps a bridging structure between two scenes.

In this set of examples, the 'tell' version sets up their habits and allows you to start a 'show' scene when something starts happening, with one character on the road and two hiding in a tree on any day after they've developed the habit and before they leave the forest. The 'show' version allows you to continue the scene with the same character locations, but with a couple of differences: a lot more emphasis is placed on the argument and it seems to be a one-time thing not an ongoing thing as it is in the 'tell' version; and you are making an implicit promise that something will happen the day of the argument and not some other day. In this case, because such emphasis is placed on the argument that they will not be found, you just know that either they're going to be all found, or some of them are going to be found, possibly by the bandits they're arguing about and possibly by someone else. In the 'tell' version, the thing that happens might have nothing to do with the bandits, because their arguments are only mentioned in passing.

Both are good; you must decide which one works best for your story and what you are trying to do with that scene and the ones around it.

Anyhow, my point is, 'Show, don't tell' is advice that, like any advice, needs to be applied when it suits the situation and ignored when it doesn't. There are no hard and fast rules for choosing which 'writing rules' to apply and when - if there were, computers could write better stories than us, because if there's one thing computers do well it's follow instructions without applying judgement or experience.

'Show' generally is best for showing an important event or example from a series of similar events where the event itself is important, while 'tell' generally is best for setting up a situation, or describing a series of events where the overall view is important but no one individual event is worth making a whole scene for.

Login
Make a new account
Username:
Password:
Related Links
Display: Sort:
Show and Tell | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 hidden)
After a few discussions (4.00/1) (#1)
by janra on Thu Nov 29, 2001 at 05:27:03 AM PST

I've had a few discussions off-site, and I think part of the reason people still spout the 'show, don't tell' mantra is due to confusion as to what, exactly, 'showing' and 'telling' consist of.

Based on my observations, I would submit that, in short, 'showing' is dramatisation, while 'telling' is narrative.

I have heard people argue that if 'telling' is bad and shouldn't be done, then narrative that is vivid and detailed and entertaining and generally just good must obviously be 'showing' - an example of faulty logic if I ever saw one. I have also heard people continue that argument, and say that 'telling' consists of stuff like 'the car is red' - simple descriptive sentences, and that narrative is only 'telling' if it's boring (not in so many words, of course, but in a more roundabout way that apparently makes sense to them and supports the absolute 'show don't tell' argument).

Narrative is more efficient, but less dramatic; dialogue and other dramatisations are more dramatic, but less efficient. It's the writer's job to find the balance - using narrative to skip over something that isn't critical to the plot while still conveying to the reader the high points that are necessary to understanding is much more entertaining than dramatising a ten-page section on taking a relaxing walk through a forest. (Unless there's a very important conversation happening during that walk, but then it doesn't fall into the category of 'something that isn't critical to the plot'.)

What I think the writer's job is, is to determine which technique will convey the information in the most entertaining and 'attention-holding' way.


--
Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?
"Show-don't-tell" vs. "Be specific& (none/0) (#2)
by Anonymous Writer on Thu Nov 29, 2001 at 09:52:55 AM PST
I think "show, don't tell" is a particular instance of the better (and more widely applicable) rule, "be specific." Showing and not telling forces you to be specific, which is pretty much always a good thing. The problem with SDT arises when it forces the author to spend time on unnecessary details, in effect diluting the focus of the story. We don't (always) need a flashback to a character's childhod to find out why he's afraid of spiders if his arachnophobia only shows up in one scene. Just say, "John hated spiders, so he skipped the trip to the Nature Museum," and get back to telling (and showing) the story about what he does wind up doing.

--macrobat (can't seem to login for some reason)

Blending showing and telling (none/0) (#3)
by fidelity on Mon Jul 01, 2002 at 09:44:24 AM PST

While I realize there's a value in rules like "show, don't tell," especially for newer writers, I think that sometimes it's easy to get caught up in defining something as one or the other.

Certainly, as you point out, extensive showing in expository passages is rarely a good thing. However, in one of your examples,

(Tell) They had been searching for 5 hours, pulling encyclopedias, reference books, anything that looked like it might have something for them off the shelves. The dust danced in the light from the overhead lights, another puff jumping into the air with every book from the back room they opened.
there's actually a blend of the two.

The second sentence, I would argue, is a kind of showing. The detail provided gives the reader a much clearer picture of the age of the books, adds a sense of the number they've gone through, and does so very economically.

Having read (and written) a great deal of bad prose, I've come to understand that even telling as exposition is usually far from engaging when it lacks such details: think how boring those prologues to fantasy novels can be when they're basically a summary of the world's history.

Blending (none/0) (#4)
by janra on Mon Jul 01, 2002 at 01:33:13 PM PST

Yes, blending to various degrees is probably the best. Even "tell" sequences benefit from the detail usually associated with "show".

I think there are degrees, but the main thrust of the article was to get people to think about whether "show" or "tell" is more appropriate, instead of blindly parroting "Show, don't tell".

I'm starting to think there's three different things at work here, and the confusion arises with the middle ground, between pure "show" (detailed dramatisation) and pure "tell" (concise, non-detailed summary). There is also a narrative form, that seems to me to fall half-way in between pure "show" and pure "tell" - the detail-rich summary. As you point out, that library "tell" example would fall there, because while it is a summary, it also has specific details which give life to the passage - details that a lot of beginning writers leave out to do a list of events. It isn't just a description of what they did or where they are, it moves - the dust, them - they aren't static. But at the same time, nobody could possibly claim that it was a dramatic, and hence "show", passage.

As I see it, the problem is that because of the rule "Show, don't tell", a lot of people start thinking that there are only the two options. A detail-rich summary is a summary, therefore is "tell", and is bad because the rule says "Show, don't tell."

Black-and-white thinking like that annoys me.

"Tell", in the sense of the dry "history of the world fantasy novel prologue" is definitely not a good idea. But what can we call that middle ground, that detail-rich summary that still isn't full-blown dramatisation? Because it isn't "show", and to include it with "tell" gives unintentional props to the kind of "tell" that doesn't belong in fiction. In this article, I was including it with "tell" - perhaps not such a good choice.


--
Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?
[ Parent ]
Show don't tell - the missing component (none/0) (#5)
by NDK Creative Artist on Mon Aug 05, 2002 at 01:50:04 PM PST
I agree that Show and Tell both have their place and that the writer must determine which of these perfectly valid techniques is going to best service the story (or work in the case of non-fiction) and the reader. That said, Show Don't Tell is a confusing principle to grasp and follow, and that's (in part) because the most major component left out is The Reader's Mind.

You can't engage the reader's mind and get it involved in the work it is presented with if you just Tell it what is happening utilizing the technique of exposition. That's a passive inflow and it doesn't put the reader's mind in gear and engage it with the story. The formula for fiction writing I've developed to express this is:

Author + Fiction Work + Reader = Satisfying/Good/Great Reader Experience

For Non-fiction:

Author + Non-Fiction Work + Reader = Well informed reader

The author is the cause point or originator of the communication (story/work), but the communication is not a one-way flow from author to reader as most authors and teachers suppose or as is completely left out of the picture. It is a two-way communication, initiated by the author, continued by the author unto its conclusion while engaging the contributions of the reader's intellect and experience with the story.

This is the point that people apparently miss and which leads to so much confusion. It is the missing component of Show Don't Tell, that writers and teachers of writing dance around as an issue but do not reveal and hold up in all its simplicity so that the new writer can quickly grasp and apply it.

The other part of why trotting out a principle such as SDT is so hard to learn is that "Show Don't Tell" is a cryptic and very terse way to express the concept. As an expression meant to teach it leaves out vital information and is at best only a partial communication for it omits that vital piece of information, that important component: the Reader's Mind.

It's one of those horrible little examples of educational arrogance that leaves the teacher looking smart and the student feeling dumb because they don't get it the first time they hear it. Well, who could make sense of such an encrypted incomplete thought?

The complete phrase should be: "Show Don't Tell the Reader's Mind" and even then, I would say using the word "show" is not the best of choices because what the author is really endeavoring to accomplish and what a writing coach or teacher is endeavoring to get the writer to do is: involve the reader's mind in the story, make the reader a participant in the experience of the story.

I'd rather say "Engage the Reader's Mind by Showing--utilizing good description--rather than Telling what's happening."

Telling leaves out the reader's mind, intellect, awareness, senses and emotions. Showing engages the reader's mind and senses in the story and makes them (and thereby the reader) an active participant in the story.

When this process of showing rather than telling is transparent to the reader then a writer has accomplished a high level of craft, for the reader is now wholly engrossed in the experience of the story and nothing else exists to interrupt that experience until it is over and the story's conclusion is reached.

I haven't yet found a better description of this particular principle at work, though many talk about it, as if it is just a cliche to bandy about, and its statement gives them a claim to understanding above and beyond those who do know. Most material written on this principle appears to reiterate and repeat what others say, without really adding anything to it, so that it becomes easier to understand and more importantly use, though there are a few good articles available on the subject here and there on the Internet. A search lead me here.

But the fact of the matter is that most "writers" forget they're writing for a reader, and so write for their own satisfaction alone. Then they wonder why their writing does not succeed. It's because they forgot the reader.

A great story is as dependent upon the reader being a part of it, as it is upon the writer's ability to craft the story itself. And the end result is a reader who has had an experience that engaged their intellect and their senses, and let them discover what's inside. And that is the greatest journey you can take them on as a writer; the journey inside to discover what lies within, waiting to be evoked, provoked and brought to the light of the reader's awareness and thus reveal themselves to themselves.

This is my contribution to the principle of Show Don't Tell. Perhaps now it will make more sense.

NDK, Creative Artist http://allforart.com Copyright (c) 2002 NDK, Creative Artist. All worldwide rights reserved. Permission to redistribute for noncommercial purposes without alteration providing this notice and the signature above remain intact is freely granted. Please report any violation to legal@allforart.com

Show and Tell | 5 comments (5 topical, 0 hidden)
Display: Sort: