A place to discuss the craft of writing: tricks, philosophies, styles

[StillStunned]

Sometimes "tell" works best. It's been a while since I read Pride and Prejudice, but if I remember rightly the happy denouement at the end all happens in "tell" mode.

And anyway, it's difficult to write a story with no "tell". A monologue or dialogue with no narration, perhaps. "Tell" has a purpose in writing. When people say "show, don't tell, they usually mean "I think this should have been shown, not told." But it's never quite so black-and-white. Sometimes the writer has reasons for telling rather than showing.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Agree. "Show don't tell" isn't quite that cut and dried. There are moments when tell works better than show. Effective exposition can work wonders. However, as advice for new writers, "show don't tell" is generally good because so often new writers do waaayyy too much telling and their scenes become so impersonal and bland.

 

[big_cane_sugar]

Inspired by Salinger's "A Good Day for Bananafish," I have been playing with the show/tell idea experimentally, using long passages of dialogue for the "show."

The first half of John's Wife Needed Money begins as almost relentless dialogue; other than one paragraph of exposition near the beginning and tags to indicate the passing of time ("a few days later"), everything is "show" until she decides to have his baby. Then it's a lot more exposition with little showing. I have also just finished another LW story that is even more skewed toward showing without telling, with almost nothing but dialogue in six of the seven chapters. (I also snuck in one and a half brazen Salinger allusions. If anyone cares about that, I'll let you know when it passes moderator approval.)

I did it exactly the opposite in Another Man's Trophy Wife, even rendering reported speech as exposition rather than dialogue for the first half of the story. The second half switches to mostly dialogue.

In My Sluttty Cheerleader Fantasy (a much-improved edit of which is due to be posted relatively soon, and when that happens I'll post it in the "best stories" thread because it will be my new best), I alternated between long chunks of exposition and long-ish dialogues.

In all three cases, I did it with a bit of mischief, kind of trying to see what I could get away with. All three stories have done pretty well by my standards.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Except when telling is the way to go for that particular story and is done reallly well. I'll make note if I find such stories in the future.

That is certainly true. But I do think it's best practice to default toward more telling, less showing. That's a lesson I learned from others here when I was starting out, and I think it's made a significant difference in my writing.

 

[ElectricBlue]

That is certainly true. But I do think it's best practice to default toward more telling, less showing. That's a lesson I learned from others here when I was starting out, and I think it's made a significant difference in my writing.

Don't you mean more show, less tell?

 

[Publius68]

I’d say that a lot of us, myself included, fall into the trap that Show means dialogue. I don't really think it necessarily does.
You can do a lot of Show without dialogue. You simply have to describe actions and resulting emotions in a fluid, narrative form that embodies Consequences.
The Tell that is deadly is the series of declarative sentences, one after another. Stuff like this:

Our friends Dave and Carol came over last night. It was fun. My wife Denise (she’s really hot) welcomed them in. Denise has always had a fantasy about Dave. Dave was flirting with her all night. We got drunk. Denise got so worked up, she sucked Dave’s cock right in front of me and Carol! We did not get angry. Carol was sitting in my lap fucking me at the time. [What follows is an insanely detailed, impossible to follow, set of sexual descriptions that read more like the assembly instructions from a Heathkit radio than erotica.]

I joke about things moving that fast, but we all see perfectly good story ideas wasted on Literotica because the author just works in short, declarative sentences. But don’t throw out exposition with the bathwater. Well told, an information dump, the ultimate Tell, can be a story unto itself.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Don't you mean more show, less tell?

Yes, thanks for noticing that.

 

[StillStunned]

’d say that a lot of us, myself included, fall into the trap that Show means dialogue. I don't really think it necessarily does.
You can do a lot of Show without dialogue. You simply have to describe actions and resulting emotions in a fluid, narrative form that embodies Consequences.

Very good point, and the opposite is also true: dialogue can be "tell" just as easily too.

The most commonly used examples are the "As you know" conversations, but dialogue that's used to convey information that isn't borne out by the rest of the story, or by the characters' actions, is also "tell".

 

[SkyBubble]

I’d say that a lot of us, myself included, fall into the trap that Show means dialogue. I don't really think it necessarily does.
You can do a lot of Show without dialogue. You simply have to describe actions and resulting emotions

You can say what the character is feeling, or you can describe what the character does that reveals that feeling.

 

[StillStunned]

I've mentioned once or twice in various discussions how for me the plotting process is like shaping clay: I begin with a rough lump of an idea, move forward with it, and then go back and forth until the story overall takes on a pleasing and cohesive form.

Here's an example from a recent story: Hag-Ridden: A Fairy Tale. The premise is a land that's been cursed by a witch. The story is that two princes encounter a hag who's too much for them individually, but can't handle them together.

In the back of my mind was the romance of The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle - or, as a commenter noted, The Wife of Bath's Tale. In both those tales, the hag turns into a beautiful woman after her curse is broken by the main character. In my story, the hag becomes a beautiful redhead when the princes manage to give her full sexual satisfaction. The hag, of course, is the witch who cursed the land.

But I wanted to avoid the cliché that "all she needed was the love of a good man a good fucking." I didn't want the witch's bitterness to stem from lack of sexual gratification, and as soon as she has the fuck she needs she's revealed to be beautiful on the inside and the outside.

So I went back and rewrote the start of the story. The witch is bitter and ugly, but the more she curses, the uglier she becomes. Her evilness takes a physical toll. But when she curses the queen, and by extension the land, it takes all her power to maintain that curse. She has no energy left for any other curses.

When the princes finally manage to satisfy her, it breaks the curse on the queen. The princes assume that when she says "the curse has been lifted" she was the one who was cursed, and they've freed her. It's the other way round, though. All the power that she put into the curse flows back to her, and because she hasn't actively cursed anyone for two decades, she has all her beauty back as well.

But it's only on the outside. As the story's ending reveals, she's still plotting to bring unhappiness to the land, and she'll use her beauty to cause strife between the princes.

This is my example of back-and-forth pantsing. Halfway through the writing, an idea or question arises that becomes central to the story. So I go back and change what I've already written to suit the later developments, and use these plot elements to bring the story to its conclusion. It's like plotting from the midway point.

 

[HordHolm]

I've mentioned once or twice in various discussions how for me the plotting process is like shaping clay: I begin with a rough lump of an idea, move forward with it, and then go back and forth until the story overall takes on a pleasing and cohesive form.

Here's an example from a recent story: Hag-Ridden: A Fairy Tale. The premise is a land that's been cursed by a witch. The story is that two princes encounter a hag who's too much for them individually, but can't handle them together.

In the back of my mind was the romance of The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle - or, as a commenter noted, The Wife of Bath's Tale. In both those tales, the hag turns into a beautiful woman after her curse is broken by the main character. In my story, the hag becomes a beautiful redhead when the princes manage to give her full sexual satisfaction. The hag, of course, is the witch who cursed the land.

But I wanted to avoid the cliché that "all she needed was the love of a good man a good fucking." I didn't want the witch's bitterness to stem from lack of sexual gratification, and as soon as she has the fuck she needs she's revealed to be beautiful on the inside and the outside.

So I went back and rewrote the start of the story. The witch is bitter and ugly, but the more she curses, the uglier she becomes. Her evilness takes a physical toll. But when she curses the queen, and by extension the land, it takes all her power to maintain that curse. She has no energy left for any other curses.

When the princes finally manage to satisfy her, it breaks the curse on the queen. The princes assume that when she says "the curse has been lifted" she was the one who was cursed, and they've freed her. It's the other way round, though. All the power that she put into the curse flows back to her, and because she hasn't actively cursed anyone for two decades, she has all her beauty back as well.

But it's only on the outside. As the story's ending reveals, she's still plotting to bring unhappiness to the land, and she'll use her beauty to cause strife between the princes.

This is my example of back-and-forth pantsing. Halfway through the writing, an idea or question arises that becomes central to the story. So I go back and change what I've already written to suit the later developments, and use these plot elements to bring the story to its conclusion. It's like plotting from the midway point.

I see your clay and I raise you Polyfilla . Which is facetious, but also kind of true with my plotting as in, I'll get a basic idea which seems good, but as I think it through I'll see the gaps. These gaps can be in the mechanics of the plot, or in the actions of the characters. For example, I have a big WIP which revolves around a policeman infiltrating a bunch of posh trust fund 20 somethings to find out why one of their friends was murdered. I have the answer already, no problem. I know who murdered him and how. I have some scenes already, also no problem, but now I need to move my main character from A to about K or L:

a) without leaving groan-inducing obvious plot holes that readers would scoff at,
b) whilst making the main character believable in his assumed role, and the secondary characters believable in their acceptance of him and,
c) adding the fun nekkid stuff interspersing all this, ensuring it seems believable in the world that they inhabit.

I am currently not writing, precisely because I am currently working out the answers to the above. I have some of the answers at some of the necessary points, but I'm still holding the metaphorical tub of filler and spatula, trying to figure out how to fill in some substantial issues. Which is in equal measure fun and frustrating (fun when I get the answer, frustrating when I don't, or when an answer to a question leads to a further question). My current issue is how to have a pair of bouncers remove a creep from one my undercover cop's targets without her friends a) seeing her in a club with him before he needs to be removed, and b) without them seeing him being ejected as they come in. The club, a real venue throughout the Jazz Age, had one door. I will find an answer, but until I do I can't write the all-important introduction scene when he meets, and starts to be accepted by his targets.*

* and writing this all down has lead me to the obvious, facepalm answer - add a back door to the club.

 

[Dreamerman77]

There were a few messages mentioning "the show, don't tell" principle. I wrote a short note to myself - type guide on the subject. Pretty basic stuff. Just something to get started by if you haven't tried it before.

If you want to read a short example of the principle in use, I recently entered a short story contest on another site with a story where I practised using the principle and other stylic stuff, like intentional grammatical mistakes to get a better flow.

The Bell got some really good feedback on both sites. It's non-erotic, so don't be disappointed about the lack of cum and pussy.

 

[Off_base]

There were a few messages mentioning "the show, don't tell" principle. I wrote a short note to myself - type guide on the subject. Pretty basic stuff. Just something to get started by if you haven't tried it before.

If you want to read a short example of the principle in use, I recently entered a short story contest on another site with a story where I practised using the principle and other stylic stuff, like intentional grammatical mistakes to get a better flow.

The Bell got some really good feedback on both sites. It's non-erotic, so don't be disappointed about the lack of cum and pussy.

Your "trust your readers" guide is very valuable to me. I'm new to writing and still learning, so the " how to" category is my friend, and your submission is one of the best I've found. It's lovely that so many great writers share tips like that. Thank you.