Why are writers so hung up on "show versus tell"?

I take the "show don't tell" maxim to deal primarily with how my characters feel, or the content of their personality, and to mean "write about effects and manifestations, do not just state such things."

here is an obvious example: Does it help you, as a reader, if I write "Andy is hilariously funny," but I never have a scene where anybody laughs at anything Andy says?

I can write, "Stevie had a flawlessly photographic memory for baseball statistics; and this helped him place winning bets." This is bland and unbelievable; but it wouldn't be if I have scenes where Stevie is exercising this ability, expounding upon why he places the bets he does, perhaps to a new girlfriend or some other new acquaintance or friend.

I can write, "After she calmed down, Jenny felt regret for her outburst." A scene describing how exactly Jenny's regret manifests itself would be better writing.

Simply stating something about an internal mental state (or personality characteristic), or stating that something exists, rolls off readers, it can have little or no impact.

That is just part of the psychology of us humans reading a story; simple abstract claims do not get internalized nearly as well as what we feel "we saw for ourselves". "Alex truly hated Bill" is not as powerful as Alex doing something that can only be interpreted by the reader as Alex truly hating Bill. Thus if you can write a specific and concrete example of what Alex does because he truly hates Bill, it becomes redundant to also make the claim.

In the end every sentence we write is a claim; but the "claims" about actions or events that took place and dialogue that took place let the reader imagine they are seeing and hearing things. But the claims about feelings (hate, love, boredom, sexual excitement, greed, rage, etc) and abilities or skills (at fighting, puzzle solving, feats of recall or learning or arithmetic, etc) don't trigger imagination. It isn't enough to say "Sherlock possessed extraordinary powers of observation and deduction, and Watson was frequently astonished by them," and leave it at that. A writer needs to demonstrate Sherlock's ability with concrete examples, so the reader can feel as astonished as Watson.

Making claims about feelings, abilities, or personality traits is a shortcut: It is one sentence or word instead of a whole scene. Sherlock's throwaway demonstration of his abilities, when first meeting Watson, take pages to describe; and that may be part of the formula, too: It takes 2 seconds to read a sentence, and five minutes of imagined engagement to follow the demonstration, and I think it just takes several minutes and a scene for this kind of thing to feel real to the reader.

So although every rule has its exceptions, in general you should kill these claims about feelings / emotions, abilities and personality traits. Write a demonstration of them, instead. Part of the writing craft is figuring out how to incorporate such demonstrations into the narrative so they feel natural and unforced.

posted over 7 years ago

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Amadeus‭

3166 reputation 2 1399 614 37

Overly descriptive scenes leave me wanting less; I don't read many newer novels because they spend way too many pages describing things instead of developing and telling an intriguing plot with twists and turns.

Overly descriptive scenes

Those overly descriptive scenes are the "tell" that the show don't tell phrase is talking about.

Show Don't Tell

bad / tell:

He felt sad that he had been rejected by the beautiful woman.

The author has told you how he felt. He has not allowed the character to act it out before you to expose the story to you.

better / show:

Stanley looked up at the beautiful red-head standing in front of him.

"Would...would...would you like to go out for a drink, Margaret?"

Margaret wrinkled her nose as if she smelled something bad. "Uh, you're just not my type, Stanley." She scurried over to the office printer and fumbled with its buttons.

Stanley let his shoulders fall and he slouched over as he scuffled back to his desk. He sat down in his chair and dropped his head to his desk and sniffed as a tear formed in his eye.

Use more exposition -- describing things as they happen in front of the reader

than you use narrative -- telling the reader what happened.

Really, what you want is more exposition -- more seeing it played out in front of you and less narrative -- less of the author telling you something.

posted almost 8 years ago

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raddevus‭

250 reputation 4 22 48 0

"Show don't tell," as a three-word directive, is pithy and simplistic. But it's used because it's one of the fundamentals of writing well, and one of the things new writers understand least.

As Lauren says,"showing" doesn't entail endless description of minutiae, or attempting to convey a cinematic level of visual detail using text alone. What is means is that reading a book is something you experience - and an author doesn't provide an experience by telling readers what to think or feel. You do it by showing -- by creating things that will provoke readers to thoughts and feelings in response.

You could reformulate this as "demonstrate, don't dictate." Saying Bob is a funny guy does not make the reader laugh. Saying Alice had a mysterious smile does little to convey mystery. Saying Grizelda was a very sympathetic protagonist, and then something very exciting happened to her is a very poor story indeed.

There is a lot of nuance to "show, don't tell," and it's certainly a guideline that can be misunderstood or abused. (The idea that you should "show, don't tell" for everything is a common misinterpretation; knowing what to show and why is an important skill.) But, this question isn't asking for a full explanation of "show, don't tell," it's asking why it's such popular advice.

And the answer is, because it's one of the major things beginners get wrong.

The art of writing is so much more than getting words out on the page, or transcribing the outline of a plot. It's the difference between having scenes, characters, and plot twists, that you're just assuming the reader will be willing to wade through -- and creating scenes that are vivid, characters you want to spend time with, plot twists that have real emotional impact. Beginner writers make this mistake all the time - they write something because "that's what happens in the story," but they forget to craft the way in which the reader will receive and experience it. This is the fundamental error: to assume that because the author has written it, the reader will experience it, believe it, enjoy it, in the way the author intended.

So "show, don't tell," when used correctly, is shorthand for "you have described this thing as a fact; you have described this event as occurring; but you have not made it interesting, emotional, intriguing, or impactful, in a place where you should have."

Another reason it's so popular is because it's kind of a catch-all for an emotional effect that's missing. Explaining that something is missing is generally tricky - it's hard to explain what is missing, and why it is necessary. But more to the point, other criticisms, which deal with something included which is done poorly, are simply much more direct -- so they never become pithy sayings.

"Brenda is a really boring character" or "I don't believe anybody would act this way" or "I saw that plot twist a mile off" or "This has been done a million times by better writers than you" are all common critiques for beginners too, but they're never going to become snappy aphorisms.

But, when the problem is not "This is wrong", but rather "something's missing," then you get a refrain that's in common use.

The point I'm making here is: "show don't tell" is hardly the only tool in writing teachers' arsenal; it just stands out disproportionately, because it's a single solution/guideline for many, many unrelated issues.

Obviously, "show, don't tell" is sometimes used incorrectly. And the fact that it's such popular, well-known advice makes it, well, better-known, more often discussed, and more frequently misused. But there is a strong core to the principle, and good reason for its popularity.

posted almost 8 years ago

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Standback‭

680 reputation 38 269 122 1

Show vs tell is an overblown and misunderstood idea imported into fiction writing from screenwriting. It was originally coined to train novelists to write for the screen. (You can see how novel-like the storytelling was in many early movies. The screen had to struggle to find its own storytelling style, and "show, don't tell" was the watchword of that emerging style.)

Stories, as you say, are told. The novelist does not have any of the visual and auditory tools of the filmmaker. They only have words, and words are the tools of telling.

But it is entirely orthogonal to the issue of description. The amount of description in a story is determined by the importance of setting and of mood to the story being told. What you want is a story that is action oriented rather than, say, oriented to character or place. Many advocates of the "show don't tell" approach actually mean something very similar to this, as they advocate for a style that is almost all dialogue and action sequences.

EDIT: As to "why do so many veteran writers hammer beginners like me to 'Show, not tell.'?" -- Because most writers (not to mention editors and agents) are not trained in the tools of literary analysis, and generally they are not willing to put the work in to deeply analyse your stuff, so they reach for the great catch all: show don't tell. What should you take this to mean? 95% of the time it simply means that your writing is dull.

posted almost 8 years ago

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Mark Baker‭

4381 reputation 12 1104 745 58

You are confused about what's being shown. "Show, don't tell" means "show us that the hero is confused by describing the look on his face and how he stutters and drops things" rather than saying in narration "He was confused." It doesn't mean "don't describe the room he's in."

If you don't like a lot of scenery being described, there's nothing wrong with that preference. As Mark Baker correctly notes, there are stories focused on the place and those focused on the action. If you'd rather get into the action and not worry about a moody setting, that's just your cup of tea. Don't read books which have the background and location as a major plot point.

posted almost 8 years ago

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Lauren Ipsum‭

2098 reputation 13 1143 397 1