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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23949
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23949
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You tell it. Show vs tell has become a monster that is twisting fiction out of any recognizable shape. While it is often good advice for particular passages, telling is a fundamental part of the novelist's art. It it the great privilege we have over the movies. As E. M. Forster pointed out, it is what allows us to show those things that go on in the head that are _not_ reflected in action. These are very important human things. Sometimes we feel deeply but show nothing. Movies cannot portray this very important human characteristic. It leads to a certain shallowness in movies: they are all surface.

"Show vs tell" originated as advice to novelists trying to write screenplays. Movies are a visual medium and therefore the story must be carried by the visuals, by what is shown. The novel is a verbal medium. The story can and often should be carried by what is told. A novelist trying to write a screenplay needs to find a different way of telling a story. But the novelist trying to write a novel is not bound by any such restrictions. And the novelist lacks so many of the visual and auditory tools that the movie maker has, that if they give up their own tools and attempt to emulate movie storytelling without any of the movie directory's tools, they are going to be in trouble.

Remember that the author of a movie is not the screenwriter but the director. In the novel, it is the writer who gets to sit in the big chair. A novelist should master and use the tools of their own trade: storytelling with words.

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