On writing: show versus tell

[SmilingLez]

How about both?

As he entered the apartment, he slammed the door and stormed across the room, his footsteps stomping loudly against the carpet. His lips were pursed and his face a dark shade of red.

He was mad.

If you want a last line, anger hits harder than mad.



As he entered the apartment, he slammed the door and stormed across the room, his footsteps stomping loudly against the carpet. His lips were pursed and his face a dark shade of red.

Anger.

 

[AG31]

When a character reports events in dialogue, is it "showing" (re character's state of mind) or "telling" (re events being reported)?

 

[CalBishForNow]

Then suddenly my stories get much longer. Any suggestions around that? Probably one of those 'just do it well' and 'it depends' scenarios.

Personally I'd worry about that sort of thing after finishing the first draft, during my top-to-bottom edit.

 

[AStrangeDesire]

I think that I have mentioned before that I seldom write a story in a linear fashion. I might write a scene that leads off to the conclusion before I write a scene detailing the conflict. It all depends on where my inspiration is at the time.

Being such a panser, I find that telling the entire story as I write, and getting all the needed elements positioned properly, allows me to go back and change some of the "tell" to "show" with a better understanding of how it fits the entire context of the story and serves the characters best. It becomes part of the initial edit, when I decide upon where the best places are for section or chapter breaks, etc. It also helps with the consistency of the characters' dialogue and actions throughout if I know their entire role before deciding how I have shown them at one point versus another.

Similarly, I tend to find sections during my initial edit that seem to have a different flow and often it's because I decided that I needed to tell a bunch to get to the next part.

At that point I often break that section up and see if adding some dialogue and improves the balance of the story.

 

[crookedletter]

When a character reports events in dialogue, is it "showing" (re character's state of mind) or "telling" (re events being reported)?

Both, in the ways you note in your parentheses.

For a scene like that I would guess that that particular character's thoughts, and the way they describe the events in question, are more important to the story than the events themselves. In that sense it's showing.

But insofar as it imparts information about what happened in the past, it's kind of just a showy way of telling. (And can be more than a little awkward, in the "As you know, Bob" sense.)

 

[Britva415]

Except in a few very extreme cases, a good story requires both "show" and "tell"

You can't show anything without telling something else, and arguably you can't tell anything without showing something else.

The whole "show vs tell" thing is just a reminder to give a little thought to the matter, and make mindful decisions about just how to convey a particular detail. Is it too unclear? Maybe tell it. Is it too direct? Maybe show it instead.

 

[SimonDoom]

How about both?

As he entered the apartment, he slammed the door and stormed across the room, his footsteps stomping loudly against the carpet. His lips were pursed and his face a dark shade of red.

He was mad.

Why do both?

It seems like gilding the lily. If you've written the first line correctly, and shown the reader, then you don't need the second line. It's as though you lack confidence in what you've shown the reader with the first line, and you have to tell them with the second because of the lack of confidence. It's redundant.

 

[Britva415]

I'll leave one morbid observation: too much immersion is literary waterboarding.

Brilliant

 

[Britva415]

good telling is often better than bad showing

"Hard telling not knowing"

 

[TheExperimentalist]

Usually I'll say "this is how I view it, please feel free to chime in with your own thoughts and arguments," but I'm pretty adamant about this. Except in a few very extreme cases, a good story requires both "show" and "tell".

I'm with you, this is a hill I'll die on as well. I'll do you one better though: In my opinion, too much show is worse than too much tell.

Let me explain. I've read stories that have both what I'd consider too much tell, and too much show. In the former, I don't really connect with the story ("and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, until finally this happened, yay, woo, story's over"). On the other hand, I found the stories I've read with too much show completely and utterly incomprehensible, because every line was either an implication or a reference or intended to be read with the same, very particular tone with which the writer imagined it, and if you miss even one of those steps, you're lost with zero resting points to catch up and make sure you're on the same page (pun possibly intended) with the narrative before continuing.

So basically:
Too much tell - Still conveys the events of the story, but may feel dry and unapproachable.
Too much show - Story is incomprehensible unless your mind works EXACTLY the same way as the writer's.

Personally, I prefer a happy medium. Use three or four pieces of show, but then put in a tell break point so the reader can catch up. If they miss one or two of the pieces of show, the tell will fill in the gaps without them losing much, but it'll add richness and depth for those who do catch it. Not every reader will catch every implication worked into every story. As long as there's enough tell to cover it, that's okay.

 

[Britva415]

Too much show - Story is incomprehensible unless your mind works EXACTLY the same way as the writer's

Or maybe not incomprehensible, but, not necessarily anything I appreciate reading.

 

[Britva415]

"Show don't tell" is a remedy. It's not a rule. A certain amount of it is what to do when "too much tell" is making the story fail to breathe, fail to immerse, fail to feel alive.

But I also feel like "too much tell" isn't the right way to talk about this. You can't show anything without telling something else. So there's going to be the same, or even greater, amount of "tell" as there was before you decided to switch to "show" for any particular element.

 

[TheExperimentalist]

Or maybe not incomprehensible, but, not anything I appreciate.

"Show don't tell" is a remedy. It's not a rule. A certain amount of it is what to do when "too much tell" is making the story fail to breathe, fail to immerse, fail to feel alive.

The problem is that for some reason, the advice people's default assumption is that most writers will end up not showing enough, so they end up recommending "show, don't tell". But when aspiring writers who already, innately have a good sense of how to balance show and tell, or worse, ones who already lean too showy, come across that advice, they take it as an ideal, not a correction, and end up developing what I'm going to call 'tell anorexia'.

I once read a story that threw you into the deep end, talking about a character's situation without explaining any what or why, including incomplete mentions of life events, the configuration and equipment complement of the room she was in, all sorts of technobabble (it was sci-fi), and even the nature of the crisis itself, and it was all just expected to be understood. I asked the author about it, and they cited "show, don't tell" and told me that because all of those things were second-nature to the POV character, she wouldn't stop to think about the meaning or details behind any of those things, so even though they HAD meaning and explanations, the story didn't include them. As you might expect, I did not get much out of the story.

Side note: I do find that sci-fi often tends to include a lot of oblique references to species or equipment or concepts or whatever, but generally only with non-central stuff, as a way to make the universe feel larger than just the window being shown by the current story. So they can leave it up to your imagination exactly what about Gryleks has a well-known adage advising against wrestling them, or why it's a bad idea to eat Kimuga on an empty stomach, or what nasty surprise Zipzap got when he tried to hook up with that Draltonian waitress, so long as none of those things are particularly important to the story. It doesn't work when every other line introduces a Chekhov's gun on the wall when you don't know what a gun is, what a wall is, or who Chekhov is, and are just supposed to figure all that out from no-context.

 

[RemoteShadeofGreen]

When a character reports events in dialogue, is it "showing" (re character's state of mind) or "telling" (re events being reported)?

For me, reporting events in dialogue would count as telling, but *how* the character reports them and the conversation overall should show quite a lot about the character. Pretty much all dialogue has the potential to reveal something about the character of the person speaking, whether it be internal or external.

 

[AlexBailey]

It’s funny how this thread has me thinking of Norman Rockwell paintings.

Rockwell had a way of showing that told stories. If a picture is worth a thousand words, his were worth a hundred thousand. You can see deeply and imagine further into the lives of his characters through a moment frozen in time.

People might see different things in the same picture, or in the case of writings, they may see themselves or someone else. They may relate to one character’s grief and another character’s triumph in the same piece.


In regards to the narrative people have been exploring in this thread; some readers may relate to the wife, others to the angry husband. “Show” the picture of what the characters see, let them “tell” what’s going on through body language and dialogue. It’s hard to ignore a train wreck, it’s easy to ignore a news article about one. Give the readers something they can feel and relate to, not just a clever story.

 

[Britva415]

When a character reports events in dialogue, is it "showing" (re character's state of mind) or "telling" (re events being reported)?

It's 100% possible for a character's statements to show-not-tell, just like it's possible for an author's/narrator's statements to show-not-tell.

Anything which can be told could be showing something else.

The telling of an event ("I just heard a knock on the door") could be a show of something important (they found us and they know we're here).

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Great questions. I, too, like dialogue as a way of "showing" not telling, or as a way of telling that gets the narrator of the way.

But in my experience, some Lit authors (probably myself, too) have too much dialogue. It goes on too long, and it goes on unnecessary tangents.

My general response to this is to use dialogue, but to cut it down to the minimum necessary to do the job. Don't write dialogue just to keep conversation going. Try to follow the principle that a little goes a long way. Trust your readers not to require having everything overexplained to them.

A good number of authors strive for realism in this sense, it seems. Real conversations contain a lot of chit chat, a lot of dialogue that's not to the point. And I think such an approach isn't good, even if it's realistic. If there's anything that dulls the story and slows the pace, it's protracted, unnecessary dialogue.

Make the dialogue voices distinct, but also to the point, I think. It's better not to be a hundred percent realistic in this sense than to bore the reader and kill the pacing of the story.

 

[SimonDoom]

A good number of authors strive for realism in this sense, it seems. Real conversations contain a lot of chit chat, a lot of dialogue that's not to the point. And I think such an approach isn't good, even if it's realistic. If there's anything that dulls the story and slows the pace, it's protracted, unnecessary dialogue.

Make the dialogue voices distinct, but also to the point, I think. It's better not to be a hundred percent realistic in this sense than to bore the reader and kill the pacing of the story.

It fits with my "Zen Garden" concept of writing. Like a Zen Garden, you're not trying to portray reality in all its particulars. You're carefully selecting and placing elements to suggest an idea of a reality and hopefully immerse the garden visitor/reader so the depiction is a satisfying replacement. Then they don't care that it's not real.

 

[anthrodisiac]

A good number of authors strive for realism in this sense, it seems. Real conversations contain a lot of chit chat, a lot of dialogue that's not to the point. And I think such an approach isn't good, even if it's realistic. If there's anything that dulls the story and slows the pace, it's protracted, unnecessary dialogue.

Make the dialogue voices distinct, but also to the point, I think. It's better not to be a hundred percent realistic in this sense than to bore the reader and kill the pacing of the story.

Yep, impression of, not fidelity to. Too much fidelity gets you fifty pages of meander to get to: "So, see you at three?"

 

[AG31]

The way I see it, the distinction is this: "show" immerses the reader, and "tell" moves the story forward.

I keep coming back to this, and I've decided it pretty much says it all.

 

[NuclearFairy]

How about both?

As he entered the apartment, he slammed the door and stormed across the room, his footsteps stomping loudly against the carpet. His lips were pursed and his face a dark shade of red.

He was mad.

I think that works better in first person, like so:

As he entered the apartment, he slammed the door and stormed across the room, his footsteps stomping loudly against the carpet. His lips were pursed and his face a dark shade of red.

Oooh boy, he was mad, and of course, it'd be my job to fix it.

 

[XerXesXu]

Entering the apartment, face a dark shade of red, lips pursed, he slammed the door and stomped across the room.

Saving of printers' ink = 30%

Surplusage - proliferating words that neither tell nor show - is the great sin.

 

[Cagivagurl]

In writing, there is no right, and no wrong. Yes there are rules, but as has already been said. Rules are only guides... And, meant to be stretched and broken.
Good writing is good writing. A story told well, is a captivating thing....
For me, I love dialogue, and tend to read only stories that feed my preferences...
Narration mostly bores me... Like a report, or a list of prompts... So yes, dialogue is my preference...
Doesn't mean I never read stories told by narration, it's just not my thing...
Give me a 500,000 word story full of beautiful dialogue. But, that's just me...
Stories just have to be told... You have an idea, and need to tell it... Then write, forget about trying to please a perceived audience... Please yourself first...
Forget about the people that may or may not read your story...Please yourself, enjoy it... embrace it.
Importantly, develop your own style... Find methods that work for you...
You may after all be the only person that reads it....

 

[SimonDoom]

When a character reports events in dialogue, is it "showing" (re character's state of mind) or "telling" (re events being reported)?

I think it depends. In most cases, it's probably a blend of both.

Ask yourself: is the author simply trying to relate events through dialogue to avoid doing so through pure narrative? Then it's probably telling. That's not always a bad thing, though.

OR, is one character telling another character something that is important to propel the story forward? Or to reveal something about the character telling the story, or about the character listening to the story? In that case it might also be showing.

To give an example that many here probably are familiar with: the Council of Elrond scene in Fellowship of the Rings. Several characters tell the other people at the council about things that have happened prior to the meeting. Many of these things are unknown to the reader as well as the characters at the meeting. So, in many ways, it's telling: the author uses the device of multiple long monologues by the council members to narrate events to the reader in a way that doesn't require many, many additional chapters to tell the same story. It condenses the telling of the story in a useful way.

But the council chapter has a "showing" element as well, that's just as important. It introduces important characters to us. We get to know them, their concerns, their motives, by what they say and by how they react to what others say. And the dialogue and storytelling have an essential plot purpose, because everybody at the council learns something they didn't know before, and what they learn urges them on to the next chapter of the story.

Imagine if Tolkien had dispensed with this scene and instead inserted many chapters that "showed" the reader what is told in summary form at the council. It would be awful. It would bog the story down.

 

[CalBishForNow]

I think that works better in first person, like so:

As he entered the apartment, he slammed the door and stormed across the room, his footsteps stomping loudly against the carpet. His lips were pursed and his face a dark shade of red.

Oooh boy, he was mad, and of course, it'd be my job to fix it.

Heh. In the first draft of the "my husband came home mad" comment, the subject of the sentence was "Steve" rather than "My husband," but I changed it to avoid the implication that the story was close 3P following Steve. In 1P or close 3P it seems hard to avoid telling what's going on in the head of the protagonist, or seems like the distinction between telling and showing matters less. In those cases, the narrator either is a character or is very close to them, and meandering about the nuances of their emotional state is just a stylistic choice.

I'd apply the "show, don't tell" advice to parts of the story that the narrator couldn't reasonably directly observe or the reader needs/wants to see for themselves, and to some extent it's the writer's choice what that is.