Show vs. Tell

[caleb35]

I thought it was time to start a thread on writing techniques. I imagine that this subject has come up before so my apologies in advance if I'm retreading any old ground for those who have been around the Authors' Hangout longer than me (I did see where @AG31 had a thread on this topic back in October 2024 but that seemed to be approaching it from the use of first person narrative, which is a tad different than what I'll be discussing).

So I wanted to ask something... I'm working on a draft right now, third person limited narrator, where I'm giving a lot of information (background, context, feelings, etc.) via statements about what the main character is thinking about as the story progresses. It's working well and in a few places I'm quite happy with the prose. However, as I'm going back through and making edits, I'm cutting a lot of that out, because I worry that I'm doing it too much. I want to make sure that I'm not hitting the reader over the head with stuff, or slowing down the pace of the story.

My question is -- where do you all end up on the "show vs. tell" spectrum? We're all told that it's better to show than tell, but we also all know that some amount of tell is always in play. How much tell is too much telling? I'm interested in opinions and thoughts; thanks in advance for any feedback.

 

[SimonDoom]

There's no perfect balance that's just right for all stories. It depends on the needs of the story.

I generally agree with the idea of showing, when you reasonably can, rather than telling. Let your characters reveal the story through what they say and do rather than have the narrator tell the story to the reader.

But sometimes it's necessary to tell to get things moving quickly or create a short bridge between two main scenes. Too much showing can make the story unnecessarily long.

 

[mouseberry]

I think for erotica telling can be quite hot. It really depends on your writing style. I reject prescriptive advice with regards to convention and grammar in general. If it works, it works. Personally I love reading direct expressions of desire. Obviously work up to it but people can be very coy and quiet about sex; it's refreshing to read it so naked in erotica.

 

[Britva415]

You have to pick and choose what to show and what to tell. So, to me, it's just a matter of being aware and making thoughtful choices while doing the writing.

Keep in mind:
You can't show anything without telling something else, and anything you tell will show something. So you have to just be thoughtful about everything you tell - what is it showing? Am I telling something I would rather show?

Your scenario is about infodumping, which I consider to be a different matter. I would invoke the Chekhov's Gun principle with regard to infodumping: Why does that background info need to be told? More importantly, WHEN does it need to be told? You seem to have decided that a lot of it didn't even need to be told at all.

Does a particular fact really have to be told before it becomes important to the story? Or could it be told right at the exact moment when that fact becomes relevant and necessary? Chekhov wasn't saying you have to mention the gun in advance. In some particular story, maybe there was no need at all to mention the gun before it was fired. And then, when you need that gun, there it is. No sooner. Same with practically anything which would be in a backstory or an infodump.

There are some possible technical reasons why one would choose to tell the fact before it becomes relevant and necessary. The technique of "foreshadowing" is probably the major one. So if it isn't a deliberate foreshadow, if it isn't something which you would want or expect the reader to react to with an awareness of the foreshadowing technique, then, in my opinion, it doesn't have to be told until the information is actually needed.

There's also what I will call "stealth foreshadowing." Where it IS a foreshadow by definition because it becomes relevant and necessary later, but, you don't want the reader to recognize it as a foreshadow. You don't want their attention to be drawn to that particular fact until you reveal later that it is relevant and necessary and why you wrote it previously.

But a big slab of infodump isn't the ideal way to do that.

So where's the intersection of show-vs-tell and infodumping? Some of what you're telling in the backstory/preamble/establishment scenes could be shown along the way instead. You don't need any paragraphs in chapter 1 about the MC's previous college career if instead you deliver that information with brief statements and embellishments in the actual plot events showing that MC took 5 years or that MC knows marine biology or that MC hasn't ridden a motorcycle since junior year.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Pacing is really what should drive show vs tell.
If your pace seems to be dragging, if it's taking too long to move the story forward, then dial back show and give a little more tell.
Or vice versa if it starts to feel to rapid fire.

 

[caleb35]

I think for erotica telling can be quite hot. It really depends on your writing style. I reject prescriptive advice with regards to convention and grammar in general. If it works, it works. Personally I love reading direct expressions of desire. Obviously work up to it but people can be very coy and quiet about sex; it's refreshing to read it so naked in erotica.

I agree with a lot of this, but my trepidation comes from reading other works where I think that the writer has relied on "tell" too much; they're relying solely on tell and not showing or describing anything.

 

[caleb35]

You have to pick and choose what to show and what to tell. So, to me, it's just a matter of being aware and making thoughtful choices while doing the writing.

Keep in mind:
You can't show anything without telling something else, and anything you tell will show something. So you have to just be thoughtful about everything you tell - what is it showing? Am I telling something I would rather show?

Your scenario is about infodumping, which I consider to be a different matter. I would invoke the Chekhov's Gun principle with regard to infodumping: Why does that background info need to be told? More importantly, WHEN does it need to be told? You seem to have decided that a lot of it didn't even need to be told at all.

Does a particular fact really have to be told before it becomes important to the story? Or could it be told right at the exact moment when that fact becomes relevant and necessary? Chekhov wasn't saying you have to mention the gun in advance. In some particular story, maybe there was no need at all to mention the gun before it was fired. And then, when you need that gun, there it is. No sooner. Same with practically anything which would be in a backstory or an infodump.

There are some possible technical reasons why one would choose to tell the fact before it becomes relevant and necessary. The technique of "foreshadowing" is probably the major one. So if it isn't a deliberate foreshadow, if it isn't something which you would want or expect the reader to react to with an awareness of the foreshadowing technique, then, in my opinion, it doesn't have to be told until the information is actually needed.

There's also what I will call "stealth foreshadowing." Where it IS a foreshadow by definition because it becomes relevant and necessary later, but, you don't want the reader to recognize it as a foreshadow. You don't want their attention to be drawn to that particular fact until you reveal later that it is relevant and necessary and why you wrote it previously.

But a big slab of infodump isn't the ideal way to do that.

So where's the intersection of show-vs-tell and infodumping? Some of what you're telling in the backstory/preamble/establishment scenes could be shown along the way instead. You don't need any paragraphs in chapter 1 about the MC's previous college career if instead you deliver that information with brief statements and embellishments in the actual plot events showing that MC took 5 years or that MC knows marine biology or that MC hasn't ridden a motorcycle since jun or year.

Thanks and I think you're hitting at the heart of my concern. I like a lot of the stuff that I had in the first draft; it's during re-reading that I'm realizing that, while I still like it, it's not necessary for the story.

 

[Britva415]

I'm giving a lot of information (background, context, feelings, etc.) via statements about what the main character is thinking about as the story progresses

Can you describe what it is you were trying to show, with these statements? Did you delete them because they turned out to be facts not relevant and necessary to the story?

I sort of think that one should be able to answer the question "what is this showing" for every sentence one writes (tells). Then during revision, one can judge among the options, "does that need to be shown or could it be simply told," versus "does that even need to be shown OR told at all," versus "could/should this be told or shown at a different place in the story."

 

[Britva415]

Another way I regard "show don't tell" is to recognize that what this is saying-without-saying is that to show something rather than to tell it is... wait for it... "saying something without saying it."

So the technique of saying-without-saying something should be a very deliberate one. It's when you want to show it because you don't want to tell it, and, you can explain why that choice is the right one.

 

[caleb35]

Can you describe what it is you were trying to show, with these statements? Did you delete them because they turned out to be facts not relevant and necessary to the story?

I sort of think that one should be able to answer the question "what is this showing" for every sentence one writes (tells). Then during revision, one can judge among the options, "does that need to be shown or could it be simply told," versus "does that even need to be shown OR told at all," versus "could/should this be told or shown at a different place in the story."

It's a little difficult to adequately describe without posting the actual text in question, which I don't want to do nor was that my goal in starting the thread. I will say that the stuff in question is the protagonist in an encounter with the antagonist and thinking back to previous encounters and things and statements that occurred between them in those previous encounters. As you were saying, upon my re-reading, it occurred to me in several places that, while they were not bad bits in and of themselves, they did not need to be shown or told to move the particular story along -- each was something that the reader could probably guess on their own.

 

[designatedvictim]

This thread came along at just the right time for me.

A piece of a story I was working on needed expansion. So I expanded it.

What should have been a modest piece of exposition blew up into it's own stand-alone story. In under a week it's gone from about 1.5K to just over 9K.

The show vs. tell debate smacked me in the face earlier today.

I think I'm a bit more than serviceable writing scenes, but hardly great. Writing scenes start to bog down.

I'm putting a recent college-grad into a (contrived) situation where he sleeps with his sister's roommate (and the sister is catalyst/peripheral participant).

The women are older than the MMC, but not greatly so, only six years older.

The MMC is expected to be the sole POV character.

I currently have one primary sex scene in a threesome centering on the roommate. I intend to add one for each of the other characters. I don't really want to write too much sex.

That's the 'show' part.

But to get the point abundantly across that it was a long, sex-filled night, I have the two siblings 'talk it over' the next day. The sister telling the brother what she liked and questioned about how things panned out.

It's written as a conversation, where she explains what she liked, what she thought was arguably too far, and what she thought did go too far. Nebulous, undefined, sometimes skirted or stretched boundaries are replaced with fairly concrete boundaries after the first encounter.

That's the 'tell' part.

I find that I enjoy writing character dialog, direct character interaction, so I've followed this approach to do both.

This is why my stories read with the charcaters being 'talky.'

Only time will tell if it's likeable.

 

[StillStunned]

My question is -- where do you all end up on the "show vs. tell" spectrum? We're all told that it's better to show than tell, but we also all know that some amount of tell is always in play. How much tell is too much telling? I'm interested in opinions and thoughts; thanks in advance for any feedback.

Use "show" for the immersive bits, where you want to engage the reader. Use "tell" for the bits in between, when you want to move the story along.

My thoughts on giving information (to use a more neutral term than infodumping): only share what the reader needs to know *in that moment*. Just enough details to visualise a scene, for instance. Just enough background to understand what's happening there and then.

 

[caleb35]

Some good comments in this thread, thank you all for weighing in.

 

[MrHereWriting]

I thought it was time to start a thread on writing techniques. I imagine that this subject has come up before so my apologies in advance if I'm retreading any old ground for those who have been around the Authors' Hangout longer than me (I did see where @AG31 had a thread on this topic back in October 2024 but that seemed to be approaching it from the use of first person narrative, which is a tad different than what I'll be discussing).

So I wanted to ask something... I'm working on a draft right now, third person limited narrator, where I'm giving a lot of information (background, context, feelings, etc.) via statements about what the main character is thinking about as the story progresses. It's working well and in a few places I'm quite happy with the prose. However, as I'm going back through and making edits, I'm cutting a lot of that out, because I worry that I'm doing it too much. I want to make sure that I'm not hitting the reader over the head with stuff, or slowing down the pace of the story.

My question is -- where do you all end up on the "show vs. tell" spectrum? We're all told that it's better to show than tell, but we also all know that some amount of tell is always in play. How much tell is too much telling? I'm interested in opinions and thoughts; thanks in advance for any feedback.

The quality of the writer decides how good their Showing & Telling are and it doesn't matter how much of either there is.

I've read books that skew one way or the other and I've read books that have both and good is good, there's no perfect formula for these tools.

I've found, on average, stories that are mostly Tell have weaker writing, but that doesn't mean people won't like the writing. Being critical of something and being entertained by something are two different things.

 

[SyleusSnow]

Similar to what @StillStunned said, James Scott Bell (author of some of the best writing guides) says he does this:

"I have a little “intensity scale” in my brain which measures the intensity of a moment. When it’s relatively low, I tell. When high, I show."

He then describes a woman waiting for her husband to come home. If he's only a couple of hours late, she'd only slightly worried so you tell it. Doesn't show up for a day? Show her emotions: trembling hands, frantic calling, throat clenched.

 

[Voboy]

It depends.

There are many reasons why I don't write in TP omniscient; the main one is that I don't really enjoy reading it, but I also think it has a tendency to lead inattentive writers to tell instead of showing.

FP or limited TP has a tendency to self-limit: you're writing from the standpoint of someone who CANNOT "tell" everything, because he or she doesn't "know" everything. So they're forced to show, sometimes, simply because they're unable to do otherwise: they are learning about story events at the same time the reader does.

Those who have trouble with this get the same advice from me: put yourself in your narrator's shoes, make sure that narrator doesn't know much, and then KEEP YOURSELF IN THOSE SHOES. You'll find there's only so much "telling" you're able to do, and that's usually good for the story.