Third Person POV: What level of telling is acceptable for character motivation?
The novel I'm writing is third-person limited POV in style. This means that the narration's coverage is limited to what the POV character can observe, think, feel, while others' thoughts, feelings, and out-of-sight actions are naturally not covered.
The dilemma is thus: Show don't tell as an adage is often trotted out as universally true, but of course, the occasional tell is necessary.
The reader in theory should be privy to the thoughts and motives of the POV character, and therefore there's always going to be enough information 'available' for the narration to theoretically say 'X felt sad'.
Of course, 'X felt sad' is an extreme example and I'd never consider using it, however, there are times and places where laying out certain feelings and motives could be useful, or the story would make no sense if they weren't laid out in a direct manner (for example, if I arbitrarily left out a POV character's logic for a certain plan just to artificially produce tension despite the fact the narration has the information, making it read like it's withholding information for the lulz).
My question is this: What general rules are there for a 'good' tell and 'bad' tell in limited third-person POVs? Are there any hard and fast rules? This is less a 'question that needs solving' as much as an opening of a discussion.
My ideas on the topic:
- If the feelings are ones the POV character is running away from, it's more likely it'll be downplayed in the narration.
- If you have to tell the audience a feeling, it could be you've insufficiently demonstrated it through a character's actions.
- Telling emotions directly is more acceptable if the character's experiences at that moment are largely internal, that is, their actions or ability to express emotion are limited yet there's a maelstrom within their head.
What ideas do you guys have on this topic?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/38206. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
2 answers
The difference between showing and telling, as it applies to story writing, is whether you create a scene that conveys information, or whether you state the information explicitly. So instead of arguing that everything is telling, let us talk about the decision of whether to show a visual or scene, or whether to state the information explicitly.
The problem with stating the information explicitly is this: It gives the reader something to memorize. For example, "John is brave." If you never show a scene in which John is brave, then presumably you told us this so we would remember it later. You have asked us to memorize something. Which is fine, but if you ask us to memorize more than about seven things, the average reader will lose track and forget, we just can't remember that many disconnected facts. "John is brave. He is tall. He loves dogs." and on and on; after another ten things about John, we don't remember most of it. It is too much to memorize.
That said, if it isn't important for the reader to remember a piece of information for more than a few paragraphs, then telling can be appropriate.
If it is important, then what we (humans) can remember for a longer term (even permanently) is experiences. That is the point of both short visuals and scenes, to simulate an experience.
If we witness John being brave in a scene, intentionally risking his life or injury or punishment for some purpose, then we will remember that scene and the author never has to tell us John is brave, we saw it. It was shown. We can say the same about John being tall, or loving dogs, or being in love. Visuals and scenes have impact. Explicit "telling" has very little impact, especially with vague words like "sad" or "happy".
So whether to tell or show depends on how important the information is, how the story is paced at the moment (if you can show a scene or visual), and just how difficult it would be to show instead of tell; it can be quite difficult to show some feelings accurately.
To me the rule is to never impart information explicitly if it matters for more than a page or two. If it is a part of the character that drives them or the plot, make a scene to demonstrate it. If John is good with dogs, or engines, or magic, or knows how to fly a helicopter, and that has an impact on the story later: Make a scene to convey it. Don't just say it and expect the reader to remember it five chapters later.
The same goes for an event; if events have significant consequences later in the story, put them in a scene. Not just "John fought and killed Alex," then a hundred pages later some character shows up and says "I am Alex's father!"
The reader will have forgotten Alex, and think Who's Alex, again?
We create scenes for the reader's experience; some just have entertainment value, others are there to aid the reader's memory so future scenes will have context necessary for entertainment value.
Within scenes, we state information explicitly (we "tell") that doesn't need to be recalled outside the scene. It is the reader's imagination of these character interactions, assisted by our prose, that makes the whole scene memorable.
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Please understand that "third person limited" and its ilk are categories of analysis applied to works after the fact by those who find it entertaining to categorize everything. They are not rules that you are obliged to follow. You are not obliged to pick one box and stick to it.
Also note that the only means of showing in a novel is telling. In a movie, you can literally show things by filming them without commentary. But on the page, everything is told because everything is words. If show don't tell means anything on the page is means to show the reader A by telling them B. Thus you show them that the character is sad by telling them that tears are running down their cheeks. But telling -- telling that tears are running down their cheeks -- is the instrument by which showing is achieved.
But you can't do this for everything. It would get to be unbearably tedious. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a viewer can take in a picture, and all it tells, at a glance, but it takes quite a long time to read a thousand words. If you want someone to get something at a glance (because your pacing depends on it, or because it is a supporting detail for something else that your are trying to show) you can't spend a thousand words on it, you have to tell it directly. And this includes saying "X felt sad" when that is an incidental detail that leads to something else.
Telling has the virtue of economy. Showing has the virtue of engaging the reader in forming a conclusion for themselves. The economy of telling is essential to setting up the reader to see certain key things for themselves. Showing, on the other hand, creates an incident to which subsequent telling can refer to retrigger an emotional response economically. All teling is a reference to what has been seen or show in the past.
Showing and telling are not opposites; their relationship is iterative and supportive. You need both to write effectively. As there is a time to reap and a time to sow, so there is a time to tell and a time to show, and the only means of showing is to tell.
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