Show Dont Tell, A Revelation

[NOIRTRASH]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tiQwVFh57k

Janice Hardy published a book in which she explains the SHOW, DONT TELL canon of fiction writing. I bought a copy. I was looking for a screen writing tutorial. I read a snatch of Hardy's book and it was like a revelation.

She makes plain how much of showing is really telling. She also explains how adverbs are problems as well as passive verbs.

Showing is the business of depicting what the reader knows and can do.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I went looking for SHOW & TELL in your stories, and found plenty of TELL within high score tales. It seems few writers know show & tell.

Hardy doesn't recommend it but I say TREAT EVERY READER AS PEOPLE WITH ZERO EXPERIENCE WITH ENGLISH. Do not explain or describe, DO! Readers and Amazon Indians get DO.

TELLING ALERTS US WHERE OUR STORY IS UNFINISHED.

 

[SusanJillParker]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tiQwVFh57k

Janice Hardy published a book in which she explains the SHOW, DONT TELL canon of fiction writing. I bought a copy. I was looking for a screen writing tutorial. I read a snatch of Hardy's book and it was like a revelation.

She makes plain how much of showing is really telling. She also explains how adverbs are problems as well as passive verbs.

Showing is the business of depicting what the reader knows and can do.

Huh? What? Pardon?

Fade in:

"Action!"

Show and not tell in a screenplay (lol)?

Screenplays are 120 pages of dialogue. It's a little difficult to inject show and not tell in dialogue. Of course it can be done but not in the way that a novelist can do in a story.

When it comes to screenplays, the show and not tell is entirely left up to the director, sometimes the actor, but never the screenwriter. The screenwriter is just a tool (lol).

I agree with you, too many stories posted to his sight lecture the reader and telling the reader instead of showing the reader with the use of description, dialogue (yes, dialogue), and imagery.

Fade out:

"Cut! That's a wrap."

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Screenplay is 120 pages of dialogue?

Yeah?

Gee. And there I was having written THE love scene in Year of Living Dangerously and you could have fooled me.

Mind you, Jack Suriano, the Indonesian location exec-producer was on his back in a hospital having stepped on a Lion Fish or something and completely delirious, so maybe you're right. Maybe he'd scratched out all those direction notes and left just the dialogue - of which there wasn't any except maybe some 'oohs' and grunts and slobbering and stuff.

I wouldn't really know, as I haven't been part of any of this recent era crop of ultra-fantastic amazing Hollywood Blockbusters.

Screenplay, 120 pages of just dialogue, eh. Well fuck me.

(I kinda know what you mean in one sense because it DOES SEEM that that is what it is, and often the pages look like that's what they - only - are).

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Instead of, 'PILETTE is a cocksucjer" write, "PILETTE's inflated cheeks reminded me of a squirrel with a mouth full of nuts."

 

[sr71plt]

Instead of, 'PILETTE is a cocksucjer" write, "PILETTE's inflated cheeks reminded me of a squirrel with a mouth full of nuts."

Glad to know that the popping of the gaseous bubble known as James B. Johnson is still getting under his skin.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

HOW TO WRITE SHORT STORIES by James Scott Bell

Ninety percent of the book is a waste but his writer books always include one feature that's useful, and this effort is no exception. I came away with something new that oughta make a difference, plus the book includes 5-6 short stories by the best of all times.

I own his Plot book, and its a wonder in the spots he knows well. This book looks at some other feature of the best short stories. I call it the MOMENT OF TRUTH, Bell calls it something else. But the world definitely changes regardless of what you call it. Its rare in LIT stories.

 

[SusanJillParker]

Screenplay is 120 pages of dialogue?

Yeah?

Gee. And there I was having written THE love scene in Year of Living Dangerously and you could have fooled me.

Mind you, Jack Suriano, the Indonesian location exec-producer was on his back in a hospital having stepped on a Lion Fish or something and completely delirious, so maybe you're right. Maybe he'd scratched out all those direction notes and left just the dialogue - of which there wasn't any except maybe some 'oohs' and grunts and slobbering and stuff.

I wouldn't really know, as I haven't been part of any of this recent era crop of ultra-fantastic amazing Hollywood Blockbusters.

Screenplay, 120 pages of just dialogue, eh. Well fuck me.

(I kinda know what you mean in one sense because it DOES SEEM that that is what it is, and often the pages look like that's what they - only - are).

As I'm sure you know, screenwriters write the dialogue, even set the scene. It's up to the director to fill in the rest, the backstory, the color, the description, the tension and the imagery.

Many directors prefer writing their own screenplays as only they know what's in their heads.

Piano by Jane Campion was the only screenplay, that I recall, that was written before the book and before the movie. Usually, it's the other way around, book first and then adapted screenplay, finally the movie.

Age of Innocence is the only book, by Edith Wharton, that I know of, that was taken word for word as a movie. She was such a great writer. She made you feel as if you were there.

No one could do F. Scott Fitzgerald justice when adapting his works to a movie, which is why the Great Gatsby book is so much better than the movie. His novels dripped with imagery that never fully translated to the big screen.

It's unusual for a movie to be better than the book. Peter Benchley Jaws book was so much better than the movie. In comparison, the movie was a disappointment. Actually seeing the great white shark wasn't as frightening as reading about the great white shark.

The second version of James Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, perhaps dated, was so much better with Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson than it was in the first one with Lana Turner and John Garfield, don't you think?

Mario Puzo's The Godfather was the only book that held me riveted as much as the movie. Wow! Seeing that come to life with the great acting of Brando, De Niro, Pacino, Caan, Keaton, and Duvall, not to mention the music was unforgettable.

It's truly an eye opener to read the book and read the screenplay before seeing the movie. I could never be a screenwriter. I prefer writing everything instead of just dialogue. I wouldn't want my work to be destroyed by the director and the actor.

"About my scene in the opening, I'd like to change that," said the actor.

"Get the screenwriter. We need a rewrite," said the director.

Yet, if they paid me millions of dollars, I could turn my back on directors and actors making changes to my story.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I sampled some popular commercial authors, and their SHOW & TELL incompetence is obvious. Raymond Chandler had the best command of SHOW & TELL.


Bottom line: Know your subject enough to boil it down to fixed traits all can recognize. For example: A bipolar female applies makeup like a 5 year old.

 

[sr71plt]

I just love it when you stumble upon longstanding aspects of writing and come panting here to tell us all about it like you've discovered packaged white bread for the first time in anyone's life.

 

[CarlusMagnus]

I just love it when you stumble upon longstanding aspects of writing and come panting here to tell us all about it like you've discovered packaged white bread for the first time in anyone's life.

You mean (Gasp!) you can get packaged bread? White, too?

The next thing you know, you'll be able to get it already sliced!

 

[sr71plt]

You mean (Gasp!) you can get packaged bread? White, too?

The next thing you know, you'll be able to get it already sliced!

Oh, goodie, with JBJ discovers it can come sliced, we'll get another one of his revelation posts.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I finished reading both books and deleted both books. Each had one great idea and plenty of filler. The great ideas are:

Write as if your shadow is there with the POV character in the bed or wherever. Use NARRATIVE DISTANCE (think newspaper article) when your shadow aint around. First Person POV is the most intimate for readers.


2. Include a GREAT MOMENT OF TRUTH that changes everything for all.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

To SusanJillParker,

I'm sure you're pretty close to the mark there with all of what you said. I don't come from that kind of 'tradition' and have never participated in any mainstream commercial movie. Although 'Year of LD' did win various mainstream movie awards it was a low budget, virtually independent movie with a United AmFilmCo production label due to tax advantages and was released TWICE!

First time it nearly flopped but then Mel Gibson's career took off and frankly, Weaver was virtually an unknown in the major box office sense. She was very young when the thing was made.

I do have some background (direct personal involvement) in really huge advertising business though through commissioning work for various companies - I knew the MD of Grant's Hong Kong (made the Coke commercials throughout the Eighties and Nineties), a really fantastic Canadian guy. And I still have some peripheral contact with Saatchi's old NY firm people (they are not called Saatchi and Saatchi anymore and I don't agree with their political tenor nowadays).

In my view the best 'movies' that have been made in recent years are all long duration advertisements and I include some of the work of the photographer Karl Lagerfeld - his fifteen minute 'Fable of the Fairy' (I think it's called, is pretty good stuff for what it sets out to be, it's almost Hitchcock in character).

I regard Bruno Avelan as the best director working today, with this young Romanian kid - now in L.A. - who made 'True Skin' the sci-fi short classic as an up-and-comer.

Production funding is still an interest for me although it has not been at all easy over the last ten years. There are so many changes going on in the 'industry' (YouTube/PC games/standard film/other) that nothing is straightforward anymore in the sense that there ever was some 'template' for financing and then buying 'screenplays' and doing the 'over/under-the-line' budgeting and distribution.

The point I will make to you is this - there is a lot of what is taught in formal places about writing/screenwriting and film-making. And you are repeating those 'truths.' As I have said hereabouts on other occasions, my own brother-in-law was the executive producer for the hit movie 'Love Actually' and he had it under his arms for DECADES! And whenever I looked the thing over, to me, it was a dog full of clangers and desperate 'English' humor that just didn't come across as sufficiently professional for a movie.

It was one of my all-time favorite movies when I saw it!

Shows what I know.

But I still wouldn't give you any money for anything that you said, or that even JBJ said here (much though I like many things he says and his discussion subject here is spot on).

Nope.

It ISN'T 'revelation' that makes the story. Not for me. That is old old hat stuff.

It isn't revelation.

But I won't be saying what I think the 'secret' is.

Somebody give me a good clear, NEW, narrative pitch and I will buy it.

I haven't seen any for years.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

SHOW should be as plain as this example: "Jimbo frowned at Freddie then lifted his middle finger at her."

 

[SciFurz]

But I won't be saying what I think the 'secret' is.

Somebody give me a good clear, NEW, narrative pitch and I will buy it.

I haven't seen any for years.

I think there's not a single secret which makes a book or a movie or a drawing or any kind of creation great.
It's one or maybe two aspects that stand out so much it defines the whole thing, be that the characters, the special effects, the plot, the magnificent wide views of nature.

Movies for example, I don't like war movies, but I love Apocalypse Now, the redux version. Don't like westerns but Once Upon A Time is in my collection. Bladerunner, Alien, Akira, Ink, Fritz the Cat, Ghost in the Shell, Leon, Heat, the Day after Tomorrow, the Dark Crystal, Naked Lunch are all different but each has something that appeals so much it became one of the favourites.
Just look at the super hero movies in the last years. The only ones I liked are the Micheal Keaton Batman movies, Deadpool and Antman. But so many people like the rest so they do have some secret. Just one that doesn't appeal to me.
Same with books, visual art, music. It's all relative, a matter of perspective.

Some like a lot of description, some don't, some like a lot of dialog, some don't. Whatever draws a reader or viewer into the story, that's the secret. Just don't think it's the same for everyone.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

SciFurz - I think you're dead right. I don't there's 'one single secret' either.

And I really like what you said about drawing the reader or viewer in.

Probably what NOIRTRASH is talking about is the fact that there are a lot of writers who over-indulge in words, just going round and round or 'describing' stuff way too exhaustively. It just wearies people... Most people, anyway.

And yeah Michael Keaton - totally under-estimated actor in my view, never had the optimum material really. The producers and agents might disagree but I don't think he's ever been given the roles he could excel in. Maybe the scripts, frankly, haven't been around either though.

I am waiting to see a kick-ass story-line from someone...

Sex there is plenty, violence there is too much, car-chases (puke), song-and-dance/politics/corruption/bathos blah blah yeah so what...

I want BELIEF speared into the audience. Skewered in there.

...There have been bits and pieces now and then: Bellucci fucked in the ass in the underground walk-way, Nicole Kidman with a mask and otherwise naked in a group sex thing (now where do I think I have seen her doing THAT before... ; )

Mike Douglas 'Greed is good, greed is right...'

What else? Baby Alien bursting out of Bishop's chest and yelling 'Alahu Akbar!'

That was a while ago now and that's about it, too.

Oh wait, the 10 minute spew scene in Team America.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

SciFurz - I think you're dead right. I don't there's 'one single secret' either.

And I really like what you said about drawing the reader or viewer in.

Probably what NOIRTRASH is talking about is the fact that there are a lot of writers who over-indulge in words, just going round and round or 'describing' stuff way too exhaustively. It just wearies people... Most people, anyway.

And yeah Michael Keaton - totally under-estimated actor in my view, never had the optimum material really. The producers and agents might disagree but I don't think he's ever been given the roles he could excel in. Maybe the scripts, frankly, haven't been around either though.

I am waiting to see a kick-ass story-line from someone...

Sex there is plenty, violence there is too much, car-chases (puke), song-and-dance/politics/corruption/bathos blah blah yeah so what...

I want BELIEF speared into the audience. Skewered in there.

...There have been bits and pieces now and then: Bellucci fucked in the ass in the underground walk-way, Nicole Kidman with a mask and otherwise naked in a group sex thing (now where do I think I have seen her doing THAT before... ; )

Mike Douglas 'Greed is good, greed is right...'

What else? Baby Alien bursting out of Bishop's chest and yelling 'Alahu Akbar!'

That was a while ago now and that's about it, too.

Oh wait, the 10 minute spew scene in Team America.

Writers are lazy and cut corners. Showing is real work.

Twenty five years ago I collected wonderful details for historical writers. The details make the blabber come alive.

 

[SciFurz]

Writers are lazy and cut corners. Showing is real work.

Twenty five years ago I collected wonderful details for historical writers. The details make the blabber come alive.

As long as the details don't distract from the story.

For instance, almost finished William Gibson's Virtual Light and what I noticed is that there's unnecessary details at some parts which sidetrack me. It didn't feel natural to me.
Maybe if these had been placed at a different moment during the chapter or scene it would have fit better with the flow of the story.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

As long as the details don't distract from the story.

For instance, almost finished William Gibson's Virtual Light and what I noticed is that there's unnecessary details at some parts which sidetrack me. It didn't feel natural to me.
Maybe if these had been placed at a different moment during the chapter or scene it would have fit better with the flow of the story.

The following is a good example of NARRATIVE DISTANCE and how characters better be in the same place and time. In the example HE and SHE are in a SEX ED classroom.

SHE: Ewwww! Anal sex is so gross and nasty.
HE:You liked it fine last night.

 

[SciFurz]

SHE: Ewwww! Anal sex is so gross and nasty.
HE:You liked it fine last night.

SHE: I was drunk! And that strap-on dildo I used on you chafed my front.










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