The time to tell instead of show.

[Living_in_a_lewd_world]

For me, show vs tell is all about pace and timing. If you have some info that the reader needs to know but this info doesn't really require its own scene, just drop in some exposition (tell it). Here's an example of something that I wrote where I mixed show and tell.



You can see that I highlight the exposition (the telling) in color. The scene allows the reader to meet the characters by seeing them talk and interact.

Why I chose to skip over bits with telling was for pacing. If I had fully shown all of the dialogue that might explain how Mike Pierce was a champion and a respected driver, the scene would have been much longer and the whole thing would have bogged down. The important info that Mike is cheating on his wife is SHOWN, but the important info that he is a highly respected former champion is TOLD.

The same for the line about David and Leigh leaving but the others staying for another round. We don't really care about the last round of beers, we just care that things are winding down and that some leave early and some leave later, so it's just TOLD.

Also notice that all of the colored text (the telling) is quite short compared to the rest of the scene. The exposition is dealt with quickly and does not bog down the pace. We don't want a WALL of TELL (the dreaded info-dump). 99 times out of 100 that is bo-ring. I don't want to waste the reader's time. I've done enough of that with all this dialogue already. : P Yes we are dumping info, but only in small doses here and there, so it still reads naturally and doesn't feel like a dump (at least I hope).

Then there is the timing of the exposition, which is less obvious. If the whole chapter was this one scene I could have stretched it out and done more showing, but this scene starts 7500 words into the first chapter (and the excerpt itself is over 1000 words) and there has been some flirting already but nothing steamy yet. Stretching this scene out will only make the reader antsy wondering when the hanky panky is coming. So making this scene 1500-2000 words would have been a mistake. The timing of the scene within the chapter urged me to shorten it and telling was a perfect tool for just that. I knew when I was writing it that it could get too long too long, bog down, bog down. So I took a couple of sections and glossed them over with exposition.

I personally see "tell" as purely descriptive writing without any figurative language, basically what you do, when you write an instruction or an scientific text. And thus, I don't see much "tell" but more "show"in what you write. I personally think, that the choice of first person alone might be a choice of showing rather than telling, as it's basically a way to show the world one is creating through the subjective eyes of a protagonist. Additionally all the figurative language you use like: "clash with my hiking trips", "tagging along behind him", "projected an aura of wanting to be anywhere else" produces images in front of my inner eyes. So, what you present is at least for me well written and a very good example of "showing".