"Show vs Tell" and Top-Rated Stories

[HeyAll]

Overall I agree.

But I also think the standard is different because most of Lit is considered short stories, or novellas. It's meant to be read quicker than a book from a store. And with erotica people want to get to the titalating points quicker, which is the whole point, depending on catagory.

 

[GrushaVashnadze]

from Pride and Prejudice:

Elizabeth, feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand that her sentiments had undergone so material a change since the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure his present assurances. The happiness which this reply produced was such as he had probably never felt before, and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do. Had Elizabeth been able to encounter his eyes, she might have seen how well the expression of heartfelt delight diffused over his face became him; but, though she could not look, she could listen, and he told her of feelings which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his affection every moment more valuable.

Just saying...

 

[Living_in_a_lewd_world]

When writing a story, we sometimes by necessity need exposition to tell backstory or set up the universe. Where as in movies / TV it's much simpler to show these things.

I personally think, "show don't tell" is not about the "what" but more about the "how".

While:

Judith is an 18 year old girl with blonde hair, who currently helps to mow the wheat. John likes Judith very much. John and Jake talk about Judith.

and

John to Jake: "Oh she was great. Her name was Judith. She had hardly come of age and her hair looked like the golden wheat, she was mowing."

provide the same information, the letter is more figuratively and vivid, so it is more "showing than telling", despite both sections are mostly exposition.

 

[THBGato]

from Pride and Prejudice:

Elizabeth, feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand that her sentiments had undergone so material a change since the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure his present assurances. The happiness which this reply produced was such as he had probably never felt before, and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do. Had Elizabeth been able to encounter his eyes, she might have seen how well the expression of heartfelt delight diffused over his face became him; but, though she could not look, she could listen, and he told her of feelings which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his affection every moment more valuable.

Just saying...

Indeed.

However,

1. Austen is being comic here. Telling does work better for comedy, I think.

2. This is probably why relatively few people opt to read Austen these days (they'd much rather be shown the events in a film adaptation). Modern tastes mean readers would rather hear the dialogue than have it reported to them.

I say this as somebody who has read all of Austen's novels, by choice, outside of literature classes. Personally, I think Northanger Abbey is hilarious, especially the Blaise Castle joke.

 

[intim8]

I would agree that Literotica readers, in general, are not overly picky, and one can find stories with high scores and especially with high view numbers that are no great shakes in the prose department. But there's some correlation, in my opinion, between good prose (including the appropriate use of "showing") and good scores.

This. Lit sets a fairly low bar for literary quality, though there is still some correlation between quality and reception. It's somethng I stay aware of since I have writing aspirstions in the wider world, and worry about getting complacent.

SDT is a good rule, but one of the definitions of a good rule in art or creative work is that it should be broken on a regular basis.

 

[intim8]

"Show don't tell" and similar rules are for authors and critics. Readers get from a story what they want to get, and that doesn't have much to do with rules.

I don't agree that there are any such rules. It's true that few readers know or care about theses rules, but the reason they are there - the ones that make any sense at all, at least - are because they make the work more accessible, understandable, and impactful specifically to such "lay" readers.

Analogy to music: 99.9% of people don't know music theory, intervals, chord progressions, etc., but most will detect a sour note, even if only subconsciously.

 

[NotWise]

I don't agree that there are any such rules. It's true that few readers know or care about theses rules, but the reason they are there - the ones that make any sense at all, at least - are because they make the work more accessible, understandable, and impactful specifically to such "lay" readers.

Analogy to music: 99.9% of people don't know music theory, intervals, chord progressions, etc., but most will detect a sour note, even if only subconsciously.

The "rules" of writing don't have anything like the sensory effect of music, so it isn't a very good analogy. But, even with music, what has been perceived as "correct" changes from time to time, and has gone through complete revolutions. Modes in classic Greek music had little to do with modern concepts of harmony. The "correct" compositional rules used in the Renaissance involved combining cords in polyphonic sequence, not so much with harmony. Composers and academics in the late Romantic era rewrote the rules of harmony to include discords that were avoided in the Classic era. What's "right" changes.

The rules of writing weren't written for or by readers. They were written for and by authors, teachers and critics. There's no end to discussions on this board about popular author's producing technically horrible work, yet their work sells, and sells and sells.

There are reasons for the rules, and sometimes those are good reasons. Personally, I try to stick with them, but it shouldn't surprise anyone when a particularly popular bit of writing happens to break the rules. The people who make the work popular (the readers) don't know about or much care for the rules.

 

[SimonDoom]

from Pride and Prejudice:

Elizabeth, feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand that her sentiments had undergone so material a change since the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure his present assurances. The happiness which this reply produced was such as he had probably never felt before, and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do. Had Elizabeth been able to encounter his eyes, she might have seen how well the expression of heartfelt delight diffused over his face became him; but, though she could not look, she could listen, and he told her of feelings which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his affection every moment more valuable.

Just saying...

I'm a big Jane Austen fan and I love that book. But:

1. I agree with TBHGato that this passage works for a particular comic effect. It also reveals a certain era-specific delicacy that no longer exists. The sensibilities of readers of that time were such that they might not wanted to have read the full transcript of the dialogue in which Darcy expresses himself as a "man violently in love." Readers today have very different sensibilities (especially at Literotica!).

2. Nobody (or almost nobody) writes like this anymore. If you wrote a novel or story in this style, it would seem archaic. It's true that 19th century fiction is much less likely to abide by the "show don't tell" adage, but if you try writing this way it's going to come across like a parody of a 19th century novelist.

3. There are plenty of instances in P and P where Austen shows rather than tells, principally through dialogue between characters. There are plenty of such instances between Elizabeth and Darcy, the characters involved in the cited passage. If the whole of P and P had been written in the style of the cited passage, it wouldn't have worked.

 

[Bramblethorn]

3. There are plenty of instances in P and P where Austen shows rather than tells, principally through dialogue between characters. There are plenty of such instances between Elizabeth and Darcy, the characters involved in the cited passage. If the whole of P and P had been written in the style of the cited passage, it wouldn't have worked.

Further, a large chunk of this particular "tell" is recapping developments that have already been shown. Elizabeth's "change of sentiments" has been conveyed over many chapters - it's most of the plot of the book - and now she's just telling Darcy what the reader already knows. Likewise, Darcy's actions have shown how far he's willing to go for her happiness and to repair the damage done by his previous mistakes.

 

[Britva415]

Show and tell have different roles in writing

The way I see it is that you tell one thing in order to show another. So it's about picking and choosing what to tell and what to show.

"Show don't tell" and similar rules are for authors and critics. Readers get from a story what they want to get, and that doesn't have much to do with rules.

It depends on the story and on what it is that's being shown and not told, but the reader experience can be very greatly enhanced by "show don't tell."

Feeling like one is discovering something by reading between the lines is a completely different reader experience than just being told what the between-the-lines message would have been.

Storytelling is showing. Of course, it's telling too, but often it's not telling everything. It's telling things which show something else, and it wouldn't have the same effect if it wasn't shown but was just told.

But you're right about one thing: This isn't about a rule. It's just about which storytelling technique the author wants to employ, and for what reasons they make that choice. It should serve the story in a way which intentionally crafts a certain experience for the reader.

To be honest, I never regarded it as a rule, I always perceived it as a technique. It's true that "show don't tell" is sometimes employed as a criticism, but that doesn't mean a rule was broken, it means that writing which only tells and which doesn't invite or ask the reader to fill in any blanks is often poor writing and not very enjoyable. So as a criticism applied to a specific piece or part of a piece, it's not a "rule," it's just a critique.

 

[Otto26]

"They're more like... guidelines."

The point of storytelling is to tell a story. The 'rules' of fiction writing are supposed to be there in order to help you tell a better story. If they don't do that for your story then they serve no purpose.

Readers will also forgive a lot of technical sins if the story is working for them. If someone writes a story that hits all my buttons I don't care if they've got spelling mistakes or poor grammar because I'm enjoying the story.