Is it okay to include world-building facts by "telling" instead of "showing"?

Well first I would question giving readers information that no character knows. This creates dramatic irony, and while it has its uses is very frustrating to the reader who instead of feeling like he figured something out just sits there and waits for characters to discover what they already know. This seems like a setup for a Greek tragedy.

What this really feels like is a worldbuilding question. You want to convey a part of your worldbuilding, but not through regular dialog. There are a few ways this is traditionally done.

A showing prologue. This would be an introductory of a few pages to a story. These would be in a different tone than the rest of the work. In these pages the reader would quickly be caught up on the history. This approach is frowned on a lot in modern literature.

A cut to other characters. Does anyone know? Maybe you could cut to some scholars sitting in a library discussing the intelligent species of the world. Game of Thrones does this in the beginning and end of every book.

Scripture or prophesy. At some point have some ancient documents read into the narrative. It may not say the facts that you need clearly, but it does it in some way. The Wheel of Time series mentions the Prophesy of the Dragon every now and then.

A narrator that's a character. If the narrator has a real personality they can then explain things. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy does this. The narrator is a whimsical fella and he tells jokes and sometimes explains this. This to me works poorly in anything meant to be serious.

Otherwise... just include it in dialog.

posted over 6 years ago

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Andrey‭

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If your narrator knows about it and regularly tells the reader things that no character can possibly know it's fine

If you are using a narrator that doesn't know more about the characters it would be very weird if he suddenly knew something that "very few people know", assuming that your main character or main characters do not belong to this group of rare individuals.

If he on the other hand tells the reader regularly about stuff that the characteres couldn't possibly know then adding a little worldbuilding into the narration is perfectly fine. Maybe your narrator can use this to accentuate something that is currently happening in the story. For example if the characters are talking about something racist or differences between the species your narrator could tell the reader that these differences are not as big as people nowadays believe, as both species have been the same just a few thousand years ago or something similar.

If he could theoretically know more, but never uses this knowledge, except for this one instance, it would be weird again. You probably shouldn't make it the single exception. If you decide that using the narrator is the only option to tell this important fact, and you are sure that this fact is so important that you need to tell it somehow, you should make sure that telling fits the style of your narrator.

If you can't simply use the narrator you should evaluate if you really have thought of all possibilities to show

For example you could have characters from both species talk about old rituals and religions. Both parties could mention creation-myths that sound quite similar, like the dwarves in the mountains talking about 'em old big masons from ye sea and the humans talking about the great seafarer that first settled the lands. This is of course overly simplified.

You could have them slowly build up instances where such legends, myths, religions, documents and fairytales sum up to show the reader that both sides originally were one and the same.

posted over 6 years ago

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Secespitus‭

550 reputation 9 193 104 11

I think that depends on the nature of your narrator. If it is third person limited (the narrator only described the thoughts and feelings of one character, and the story is told by following that character), then I think you break the reader's expectations by knowing something that character does not.

In third-person omniscient, it should be fine, the narrator knows everything, including things the characters do not.

posted over 6 years ago

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Amadeus‭

3156 reputation 2 1399 613 37

You have to understand what show vs tell means in the context of prose. In a movie, you can show something by pointing the camera at it. In prose, all you have is words and all you can do with words is tell things.

Showing in a prose context therefore means telling us one thing which leads us to see another. So rather than telling us directly that:

John was nervous.

You tell us things that John is doing that lead us to conclude that John is nervous:

John chewed his fingernails and looked at the floor.

You are still telling us these things about John. But you are doing it to make us conclude for ourselves that John is nervous. This is an effective technique in many cases because that is how we normally figure our when someone is nervous, so when we see if for ourselves, we believe it.

On the other hand this kind of showing takes more words and sometimes the thing you want to get across is more complex or less obvious from behavior. Thus if the idea you want to get across is:

John was nervous about his mother's friend's cousin's appendectomy.

It is going to be quite difficult to get that idea across merely by telling us how John is behaving.

So, while you can definitely get some ideas across by telling us about other things, like a character's behavior, in prose you are always telling something and there are times where it is either cumbersome or impractical to get the idea across indirectly.

World building facts are very likely to fall into this category. You may be thinking about weaving the worldbuilding into the narrative, which is often a good idea, but that is not the same thing as show vs tell.

posted over 6 years ago

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Mark Baker‭

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