On Writing: Showing and telling

No, not that, stick it back in your shorts. Sorry, couldn't resist.

One of the main authorial admonitions in the writer's world--no matter what you write--is to Show! Don't tell.

But what does that mean? Exactly? What do you mean when you advise others to show not tell? How does this improve your writing? What are the benefits of doing this?

On the flip side, do you think there are times when it's better to tell rather than show? How do you know? Do you have any examples?

When telling is right: foreground and background. Just as you can say 'three months passed and they got to know each other well', because you want to move onto the specific scene three months later: so you can sometimes just background the feelings and events: e.g. 'she was jealous, she thought she was being lied to, and she resolved to get her own back'.

That can be a simple transition between scene 1 and (two months later) scene 2. You don't need to detail all that if you're doing a fade.

Same is true in closer detail. If you write a conversation between people you don't need to spell out every single utterance. 'They exchanged amused banter for half an hour', or 'over the next few hours they learned a lot about each other'. I often use this when I'm writing dialogue and I'm stuck or bored. You can just pull back the narrative camera and say such-and-such happened, now let's move on.

That's backgrounding.

In foregrounding, in the immediate actions you're focusing on, showing is usually better. It's more vivid. But remember the camera can move back and forth, and you've got dissolves and fades. You don't have to spell everything out.

Hmmm .....

You know this has always been something that has perplexed me. The only differance between showing and telling seems to be detail, but where is the line drawn?

I mean every line of a 2 hour dialog is showing ... but something like they talked for two hours is telling .... but something like

he chuckled softly, "You know, my cat did that once. Poor guy got stuck in the dryer"

She giggled and sipped her drink. Laughing at the similarities in their experiences. Finally she stood up, "Its getting late, and I'm hungry. Want to keep talking at Denny's?"

Is it showing or telling because I didn't relate the story of his cat as he came out of the dryer having a sock stuck to him he was soo staticy?

I always thought if you told a story well enough it was like being there .... but you're always telling.

*shrug* sorry for incoherance, but when the 2 words seem bandied about as much as they seem to be, I can't even begin to answer the question. I mean does it really matter if you are 'showing' or 'telling' as long as the story telling is good

Alex

Well Alex believe me I'm no expert , but as one Alex to another, I would say the examples you have given are 'showing'.

He said his cat got caught in the dryer, would to me, be telling.

A sock stuck to the cat when he got out of the dryer would be just too much information for me. You nut, you!

I always thought if you told a story well enough it was like being there .... but you're always telling.

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That's a good point. I've never given much thought previously, but I guess you could be right.

Alex(fem).

Rainbow,

Foregrounding and backgrounding: Do you mix the showing and telling.

I can go with the lets move on deal, because even though I want the characters to interact and not just gloss over what can be meaningful comminication, I wouldn't want to spell out every hour of their lives.

Summarizing conversations rather than writing out every line of dialogue doesn't strike me hard as a detrimental form of "telling". Sure, it can be, if overdone, but certainly it's necessary sometimes to give the gist of a conversation instead of its exact words. It depends on priorities and pacing within the story.

What often strikes me badly is laying out all sorts of facts about a character before I ever get a chance to decide for myself what kind of person she is. A laundry list of physical description is one thing--when you meet someone, you do generally notice what she looks like, and there is not any realistic way to inform the reader that a character has blue eyes or a tight butt other than saying so. There's not much point in bending over backwards to "show" things like that--the thing to avoid is clumping it all in one paragraph, or talking at length about someone's figure and features when it might be better to let the reader fill in his favorite dimensions or coloring.

But telling me flat out in so many words that someone is, say, shy and vulnerable and religious in a California New Age way and dislikes cucumbers and loves French cheese and never picks up the living room or fails to contribute ten percent of her income to charity and is troubled by deep doubts about humanity's place in the world and was beaten up by her younger brother on September 27th, 1981, is the stuff of character biographies, not stories. Resist info dump. You may know all sorts of things about your characters that never directly make it into a story.

I heard it said once that the bad sort of "telling" is that which cheats the reader of a chance to discover something for herself. Whenever you can, try to let the reader feel as if she is exploring and finding clues or pieces of a puzzle and putting them together on her own. Don't tie her down and stuff it all into her face. Let her get as interested in what you are NOT saying as in what you are.

MM

Hear, hear!

I often make a point of not describing people. When you meet someone, you notice some things about their looks, but superficially: gorgeous, dark-haired, short. As you talk you get a lot more of what they're nervous about discussing, what they're passionate about, whether they've got a good sense of humour: all things that dialogue can show.

Speaking for myself, I fantasize about people who smile like that, or who make witty retorts when you want to kiss them... I don't fantasize about hair colour. So why not concentrate on that, show the aspects that interest you, and not tell the superficial details that you can expect the reader to fill in from their own preferences.

thanx Alex, BTW

So it seems to me that telling is simply bad telling and showing is good telling?

*sigh*

Sometimes I wish I had a better computer, I'd make all my stories audio. I don't think of myself as a writer rather I tell stories.

I tell stories ot myself, I tell stories to children, I tell stories to friends. When my husband (boyfriend at the time) was sis states away I told him elaborate stories of what I would do to him. When my friend' 2yo was screaming non stop, I grabbed the closest thing (some advert for a bird sanctuary) and told her a long story (it was a very long trip) about this seagull, peter, who got lost on his way home ... well it was a long rambly story off the cuff and all.

I think everything I do is telling. If I tell you what every line of dialog is in a conversation, I am still telling. This whole showing vs telling thing seems like nothing more than some way of differentiating between good story telling and bad story telling without ever having to actually SAY what is good.

Maybe I'm missing the point, I mean I am a very non-literary person more likely to watch stripperella than read Joyce. Hell I can't even think of anything Joyce wrote, and my book of whitman I never read past the nice note a friend wrote in it when he gave it to me.

*sigh*
An always confused Alex.

And PS, since I can't put up a dang avatar yet, I'm a girl, just FYI.

http://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=177120

It seems that a most contributors would accept dialogue as showing and not telling. I don't think this is strictly true. e.g "He was six feet tall" she said.

Personally the difference between showing and telling is a matter of expansion rather than facts, or even merely implying something rather than stating would be showing, not telling.

Telling;

'She was five feet six inches with blonde hair and he was six feet two with broad shoulders and big hands.'

Showing;

"Standing silently, her dyed hair swaying and tickling the backs of his pianist fingers, his arm draped carelessly across her shoulders, she snuggled into his side and glancing upwards noted the fact that she could see right up his nose."

Although it takes a lot more effort, it draws a picture for the reader and is a lot more satisfying if it describes the picture the writer has in mind.

Alex756, It seems you know exactly the difference between showing and telling you're just having difficulty in applying the words to what you do.

Gauche

I heard it said once that the bad sort of "telling" is that which cheats the reader of a chance to discover something for herself. Whenever you can, try to let the reader feel as if she is exploring and finding clues or pieces of a puzzle and putting them together on her own. Don't tie her down and stuff it all into her face. Let her get as interested in what you are NOT saying as in what you are.

MM

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Yes this is a very good point.

It's said that people found Alfred Hitchcock's movies so exciting and thrilling not because of what they could see, so much as what they couldn't see.

Alex(fem).

gauchecritic said:

Alex756, It seems you know exactly the difference between showing and telling you're just having difficulty in applying the words to what you do.

Gauche

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I think it is misleading to call one showing and one telling when they are both telling but just with differant levels of skill.

Nearly every example of 'telling' could be worked into a story and suddenly become 'showing' since it was well done.

**

The dective sat on the corner of the coffee table. As he looked at the pale girl, her feet curled up under here and a blank stare on her face, he gently asked, "Can you tell me how tall he was?"

"He was six feet tall," she said.

**

GC, I think you nailed the differance actually in the thread in the AH, it may be leading but one is alot more coercive.

I just think its difficult for people to figure out whats wrong with their writing if you say 'show don't tell' when I swear everything is telling, just with differant ability.

Its like one is being dragged into Bath and body works with a threat of "I never complain when you want to look at some stupid speakers" and the other is being gently lead with the promise of a nice reward in the shower later. Either way, you are going someplace you don't really want to, but the second way makes it alot more bearable.

So maybe it's not that I have a problem applying the words, so much as the fact I think the words are wrong.

Alex756
shesh can't throw a rock around here without hitting an Alex.

I've also felt that if you want a reader to get into the story and feel as if they are there then showing is best. Let them see with there own eyes what is happening. It invokes the imagination. You paint a picture for your reader to see.

Wow that's an old thread.

Painting a picture is a pretty good description of 'showing'. Telling is talking about the pigment.

An author once told me that the readers eye is much more vivid than anything I could try to write. That once the characters have been set, and the small world of the moment created, that just saying 'they made love quietly thoughout the night' would allow the reader to enjoy that moment in the sexiest way the reader knows how. And that, in fact, I would never find the right words to satisfy the wide gammet of readers (with different tastes) that might read my story.

I guess that doesn't really address the mechanics of your question, but I believe it addresses the why.

Hmm

This is something I struggle with. I write off the cuff, with very little planning, and little editing. I write stories for the Lit audience who are looking for an erotic thrill, and not necessarily great literature. I am in no way saying that the two are mutually exclusive. They're not. The point is that, at some level, if you're masturbating and a passive voice, or being told rather than being shown, kills your mood then perhaps you're overthinking the whole thing.

On the other hand, if your goal is to craft something fine, then these issues are important.

The examples I've seen here have been ok, but perhaps I can take a stab at illustrating the concept:

1) She licked his balls and he moaned, his cock getting even harder.

2) "I love that your cock gets so hard as I lick your balls," she whispered, smiling.

3) "God! Your hot tongue sliding over my balls is driving me crazy! I feel like my cock is going to split in two!"

Example 1 works. It isn't bad. It isn't wrong. It is just not all that interesting.

I wish KillerMuffin would come back and give us some examples of her own.

Peace.

srw

Wow, this is an old thread. You may be interested in reading a How To.. I compiled called Show or tell which includes some of Muffins work from a thread on the subject from 3 years ago??

SHOWING VS TELLING

I cant find any good examples that illustrate the issue, so I'm gonna wing it and hope I make sense.

It is virtually impossible to show everything in a story because showing requires too much effort, too many pages, and induces a coma in the reader...over-kill.

Generally speaking you want to use showing to advance the action, reveal character, stage conflicts (sex or anything highly visual), and to draw attention to things that are common knowledge to the characters but not the reader (like, the streets were filled with horseshit prior to 1900...or virtually all the hardwood forests in the Eastern US were gone by 1870).

Use telling for incidental, collateral information and to summarize the scene when the action is concluded. The non-dramatic stuff. Stuff you dont want a lot of information about. Like toilet functions. Or hemmorhoids. Its okay not to give people a detailed visual for some activities. Use telling for stuff you want to get thru quickly....like the car trip from your office to Burger King. Or the ride in the elevator.

If I can start a paragraph with...

...this one time, in band camp...then I'm telling. Then I need to decide if "telling" is appropriate in that instance.

I try to keep things simple for myself!

ninefe2dg said:

...this one time, in band camp...then I'm telling. Then I need to decide if "telling" is appropriate in that instance.

I try to keep things simple for myself!

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Wait a second, I had some really great stories from band camp…

I read my stuff aloud, and if it doesn't sound like something that would hold anyone's interest, I change it. I use the movie narrative test—some movies have narrators that have to tell the audience what they might not pick up just from watching a scene, but they speak only rarely. If the narrator of my story is too chatty, I have a rewrite on my hands.

wanderwonder said:

Wait a second, I had some really great stories from band camp…

I read my stuff aloud, and if it doesn't sound like something that would hold anyone's interest, I change it. I use the movie narrative test—some movies have narrators that have to tell the audience what they might not pick up just from watching a scene, but they speak only rarely. If the narrator of my story is too chatty, I have a rewrite on my hands.

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Yeah.

One of the things handy about writer's groups and workshops is that you have free editorial comments from semi-knowledgeable folk.

Of course you should develop an insensitivity to grenade explosions and have hide as thick as a rhino as most of the people will try to make themselves feel good at your expense. But I try to think of it -- if they found something that made them stop, I must have put up some kind of stop sign.

Even if I don't like the comment, I take the insight seriously. I may not make a change, but at least I look it over. And most of the time the comments really are helpful because there really is something wrong.

I highly recommend the editing discussions in this forum as an example. And it's pretty unique in that people almost always try to be helpful.

ST

'Show it, don't tell it' is the big mantra in songwriting, too. "She was crying" vs. "She wiped a tear from her cheek." It might take a little more space, but it's much more interesting for the reader when you can give them a visual to spark their imagination.
One analogy is the newspaper report of an incident vs. an eyewitness account. The eyewitness is going to tell you what they saw, the newspaper is going to tell you what happened.

Tell: He sat on a rickety chair.

Show: His chair wobbled and creaked.

*

Tell: Alice hated her husband Bob and wanted a divorce.

Show: "Fuck you, Bob." Alice twisted the wedding band off her finger and hurled it out the window. "Fuck you!"

*

Tell: "What was that?" he asked nervously.

Show: He flinched. "What the hell was that?"

Blame MarshAlien for the fact that I'm here. I am not the best writer here by miles, but isn't it simple.

Dialogue and action can move a story along at breakneck speed whilst narration, desciption and explanation are that slow bit while they wind you up to the top of the rollercoaster (and your tension level rises). That's what they mean by 'show not tell'.

Two lines of dialogue are usually better than two paragraphs of narrative in advancing the plot.

KillerMuffin said:

No, not that, stick it back in your shorts. Sorry, couldn't resist.

One of the main authorial admonitions in the writer's world--no matter what you write--is to Show! Don't tell.

But what does that mean? Exactly? What do you mean when you advise others to show not tell? How does this improve your writing? What are the benefits of doing this?

On the flip side, do you think there are times when it's better to tell rather than show? How do you know? Do you have any examples?

Click to expand...

Some famous writer (oddly enough, I don't remeber who it is) was quoted as saying, "Don't tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass."

When I read that, I was like "yeah, that makes more sense than any book I've read on the subject of description"

For example, if someone is beautiful, don't say she's beautiful. Don't even compare her to something that is beautiful. Show her beauty by the reactions of those around her. Does she get leered at when she walks down the street? Are people at work constantly hitting on her? Things like that. This way, you are not TELLING she is beautiful, you are SHOWING it.