6 ms·

My understanding of 'show, don't tell' is that instead of just telling the reader; he was nervous you show it through the prose like this; He hesitated. Wrin

My understanding of 'show, don't tell' is that instead of just telling the reader; he was nervous you show it through the prose like this; He hesitated. Wringing his hands together, shifting from foot to foot. "I... I don't think you're right. Maybe not about that." You shouldn't be keeping the stuff you're not telling secret. It's not about not letting the reader know things, it's about not being fucking boring about it.

vidarh 7y ago
I agree with that you should show when you can. But at the same time a lot of the time people in real life don't show nearly all of what is going on with them. In that case "tell" either gets contrived - you end up with convoluted attempts at externalizing thoughts in way that bears no relation to how the character would act in real life, or you ignore the story. The former often leads to lots of monologues or contrived props to make the character show you things in ways that makes no sense. In the right setting that can work, but often it is just jarring to e.g. have a character talk out loud to themselves or otherwise act out things they'd be more likely to just have thought about. This seems to be why she is bringing up abuse, for example. An abuse victim writing about their experience can certainly "show" the abuse, but how do they show how it made them feel and what it made them think about, when they've often worked hard to keep a mask and not show the world how they were affected? It's good advice to show, not tell, on the basis that most people who haven't written much tell way too much and show too little. The problem is that it is then sometimes overdone. It doesn't always makes sense to show instead of telling. Either because showing becomes contrived, or for example because showing commands attention, and sometimes you want to tell to avoid drawing attention away from the main thrust of a scene or a work to some detail necessary to understand what is going on, but not important enough to show.
- ehutch79 7y ago
  I agree with the last bit about how writing advice can be overdone. The slavish adherence to the hero's journey, aka the monomyth, is painful sometimes. When you start recognizing 'the rejection of the call' when the main character has no reason to reject the call to action, it kills any kind of enjoyment. In the end it's a matter of communicating what you want to the intended audience. 'show don't tell' is a tool to do it. but you're right, not everything is a nail you need to hit with that hammer.
  - smogcutter 7y ago
    Yeah, I think there’s a certain amount of tail wagging the dog with use of structures like the hero’s journey. Campbell’s work was observational, not proscriptive. Using it as a template is missing the point.
    - CuriouslyC 7y ago
      Certain story structures are more engaging than others. Hero's journey is one of the most engaging well known story structures. Also, many elements of the hero's journey are "optimal" from a psychophysical standpoint.
      - smogcutter 7y ago
        I’m not saying the hero’s journey is bad or something, just that it gets misunderstood and falls into flat paint by numbers. As Campbell set it out, it’s less a singular structure than a catalog of common scenes and archetypes in heroic myths, not all of which might appear in any given story. It’s the overall arc of “hero enters magical world of story -> overcomes trial -> returns with power to grant boons” that’s constant. In Campbell’s observation, these stories have a cultural function - they’re usually about resolving psychological tensions and navigating liminal spaces. Just using it as an outline to fill in the blanks without understanding why and how those scenes function is going to fall flat every time.
- Ntrails 7y ago
  Show doesn't necessarily mean show right? The subject might not wring their hands and shuffle from foot to foot. Instead they might feel their pulse start to race, or feeling sweaty palmed or whatever. It's about describing a thing and allowing the reader to understand why without always explicitly telling them everything.
  - ehutch79 7y ago
    You are correct.
  - vidarh 7y ago
    Yes, but that is not going to tell you what they think or even how they feel with any kind of fidelity. If someone is a true literary master they may come closer to bridging that gap, but you always leave a lot of ambiguity on the table that way. Sometimes that ambiguity is fine, and allows the reader to add their own interpretations and the outcome may well be better for it, but if you have specific things you want to convey, it can be incredibly hard to convey even very simple things without telling. I got incredibly cynical of that after going through literary analysis at school and seeing just how contrived a lot of the attempts at analysis were. Even when trying to analyse works line by line the outcomes are often extremely dubious (or directly contradicted by the author); I don't think even most world renowned authors are capable of unambiguously putting through particularly complex messages without telling. Often it's hard enough to get the message through when it is incredibly explicit.
  - jfengel 7y ago
    As an actor, we'd call that kind of thing "indicating", which is more telling than showing. Rather than actually feeling something, you put on the indicators of that feeling: "There is water leaking out of my eyes, therefore you know I'm sad". Which misses the whole rest of the performance. It's better than saying "I am sad", but not by much. What you really have to do, in both writing and acting, is more subtle and difficult. It has to become an organic part of the narrative/performance Any example you give is always going to sound like indicating, since it is extracted from that overall flow. If you've crossed out "he was nervous" and wrote instead "his pulse raced", you haven't improved it by much, if anything. But if you're fully visualizing the scene, from whatever POV you've been using so far, you can seek out the next detail and write that as the next sentence. The essence of "show don't tell" is to be active rather than passive. Talking about feelings, or even indicating feelings, is less active than saying how they act on those feelings. The more specific their actions, the more the reader will internalize the feelings as they live it with the character, even -- or perhaps especially -- when being told from a viewpoint that wouldn't give them access to internals like pulse rate. Movies are exciting without getting any of that information directly.
- jerf 7y ago
  "Show, don't tell" strikes me as a video proscription more than a writing one, even if it has worked its way into writing since. It's fine for it to be more complicated in a writing medium. You probably don't want "just tell", but "show and tell" can work fine there. Dune is definitely a "show and tell" book and it works great.
bobloblaw45 7y ago
I think 'show, don't tell' is a mostly meant for inexperienced story tellers since it's an easy trap to fall into that can kill the story. There's a bunch of other rules like not mixing tenses or sticking to a single perspective that when they're broken by a writer that has some serious writing chops make for some really great stories.
cryptonector 7y ago
But actually, "he was nervous" is much more economical than the alternative, and works for me. Perhaps "he was nervous, and it showed". Showing can make things vivid, but telling lets me use my imagination even more. I've taken "show, don't tell" to mean "don't have a character explain things for the reader", which is easier to agree with.
- beatgammit 7y ago
  Telling is lazy and ruins the immersion, so it should be avoided where practical. That being said, rules are meant to be broken, and one of the marks of a good reader is knowing when to break them. For the "nervous" example, I think it's far better to make the prose make the reader feel how nervous the character is. It may be more verbose, but it'll leave a bigger impact on the reader if you do it properly. I really like Cormac McCarthy, and he does a fantastic job of using prose to create a feeling in the reader. When there's an intense action scene, words become simpler, sentences sometimes become longer (I've seen sentences span nearly half a page), and the prose moves along faster. When there's reflection/boredom, the opposite happens, with more complex words and sentence structure and generally slower moving prose. He's a master of using prose to convey emotion. When I read something like this: > He was nervous. Not the waiting in line to get your picture taken kind of nervous, but the first day at a new school in a new city kind of nervous. He'd been on dozens of dates, why was this one tying his stomach in knots? I just think the writer was too lazy to paint a picture of the scene and instead expects me to do that for myself. I would much prefer something like this: > He glances at his watch. 5 minutes to. He motions for another round. Sir, your table is ready. Thanks ma'am. Right this way. He checks the clock by the front door. 3 minutes. Plenty of time. He starts for his napkin, thinks better of it, then adjusts the vase. 2 minutes. He takes a sip, rolling it around with his tongue, and checks his watch. Still two minutes... Or something like that. I much prefer to experience a story than read about it.
  - watwut 7y ago
    I strongly strongly prefer the first version, the one you called lazy. The other is dawning the story in too many details that don't matter except for telling me he is nervous. It is the sort of stuff you skip over or stop reading entirely. It also kills joy of story, because the story is hidden behind too many irrelevant details. ------ On that matter, I think that "it is lazy" argument does not make sense and on itself is lazy. I care about how it reads and feels. I honestly don't care whether author worked hard. As far as I am concerned, author could write an hour a day sunbathing the rest if I like the result. Authors don't have to do things the hardest way possible for me. If it was easy to write I am ok with it assuming it is easy to read.
greggman2 7y ago
Maybe it's different for movies. I thought show don't tell was at a higher level than "he was nervous". It's more you can tell "James Bond is a super spy, he's super fit, and he's super suave" or you can show him early on doing things that demostrate he's fit, he's suave, and he's a spy and so no need to tell. I'm no longer a Star Wars fan and these are not good movies IMO but this video essay on The Force Awakens vs Rouge One is a good example of show vs tell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsIQa7sH5_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsIQa7sH5_Y
anonytrary 7y ago
A conspicuous hatch in the ground isn't that interesting, but when you cover it with leaves and twigs and give it a weathered look, it suddenly becomes the most interesting thing in the world.
watwut 7y ago
I think that in this example, I prefer the "tell" version. The whole "Wringing his hands together, shifting from foot to foot" just to tell "nervous" makes for a boring reading. It is dawning what is important in too many details. I can instantly imagine nervous person and change how I perceive rest of communication and move on with story. The whole foot shifting is too indirect and I will likely ignore the nervousness when interpreting the rest of story.
- dmitriid 7y ago
  If all people in the book are only described as “nervous” when they are nervous, “angry” when they are angry etc., that would make a boring book. Varied descriptions are what makes a character. There’s a huge difference between “shuffling feet” and “clenching jaws”, for example.
  - watwut 7y ago
    > There’s a huge difference between “shuffling feet” and “clenching jaws”, for example. What is the difference between the two? It may boil down for why you read, but this is really not what makes character interesting to me.
    - dmitriid 7y ago
      It makes character behavior and the character themselves believable. An otherwise stoic character who shows little to no emotion is nervously shuffling feet? This either breaks the character (and immersion) or speaks volumes about what’s coming next. Of course, this could be described as “uncharacteristically nervous”, but if we don’t even know what is characteristic of a character, such a description will not work. Language is a set of tools, and good writers wield all of them.
      - watwut 7y ago
        Not to me, really. It could be just described as "nervous" which is not at all in contradiction with stoicism. Internal state and what people show is not the same. The uncharacteristically is not present in descriptive version either, no reason to add it here. Whether the character is shuffling feets or have different tells is just a detail - effectively just synonym of nervous. Anyway, real world people don't do that, you usually notice different voice, speed of talking and subtle differences. It is a bit offtopic maybe, but shuffling feets is a bit distracting exmple because people nowdays don't do it. Just telling that emotio where it fits is one of tools that can be used.
mcv 7y ago
I actually prefer "he was nervous". It gets to the point and keeps the story going. There are a lot of books that are unreadable to me because they refuse to get to the point and want me to dig up the point through layers of prose. I guess I like books that have a point, rather than just spend some time surfing on prose. Both are probably valid experiences, but I have a clear preferences. I tend to prefer older SF writers like Clarke and Asimov, which were pretty good at getting to the point. With modern writers I tend to prefer their older books from before they learned to bury the point under layers of prose.
- AndrewKemendo 7y ago
  They're not trying to get to the point, they want to "paint a picture." Fiction authors are creating escape and entertainment just the same as movie and TV writers. So getting to the point is the opposite of what they want to do. This imo is the thing that distinguishes fiction lovers from everyone else.
  - mcv 7y ago
    I tend to love the plot more than the painted picture. Also, I'm a slow reader, and digging through that kind of prose slows me down a lot, because I keep digging for a point that it's probably trying to get across to me. This may also be why I prefer writers like Asimov and Clarke: they usually do have an actual idea they're trying to get across, rather than just fill some time with prose.

vidarh 7y ago

I agree with that you should show when you can. But at the same time a lot of the time people in real life don't show nearly all of what is going on with them. In that case "tell" either gets contrived - you end up with convoluted attempts at externalizing thoughts in way that bears no relation to how the character would act in real life, or you ignore the story. The former often leads to lots of monologues or contrived props to make the character show you things in ways that makes no sense. In the right setting that can work, but often it is just jarring to e.g. have a character talk out loud to themselves or otherwise act out things they'd be more likely to just have thought about. This seems to be why she is bringing up abuse, for example. An abuse victim writing about their experience can certainly "show" the abuse, but how do they show how it made them feel and what it made them think about, when they've often worked hard to keep a mask and not show the world how they were affected? It's good advice to show, not tell, on the basis that most people who haven't written much tell way too much and show too little. The problem is that it is then sometimes overdone. It doesn't always makes sense to show instead of telling. Either because showing becomes contrived, or for example because showing commands attention, and sometimes you want to tell to avoid drawing attention away from the main thrust of a scene or a work to some detail necessary to understand what is going on, but not important enough to show.

ehutch79 7y ago
I agree with the last bit about how writing advice can be overdone. The slavish adherence to the hero's journey, aka the monomyth, is painful sometimes. When you start recognizing 'the rejection of the call' when the main character has no reason to reject the call to action, it kills any kind of enjoyment. In the end it's a matter of communicating what you want to the intended audience. 'show don't tell' is a tool to do it. but you're right, not everything is a nail you need to hit with that hammer.
- smogcutter 7y ago
  Yeah, I think there’s a certain amount of tail wagging the dog with use of structures like the hero’s journey. Campbell’s work was observational, not proscriptive. Using it as a template is missing the point.
  - CuriouslyC 7y ago
    Certain story structures are more engaging than others. Hero's journey is one of the most engaging well known story structures. Also, many elements of the hero's journey are "optimal" from a psychophysical standpoint.
    - smogcutter 7y ago
      I’m not saying the hero’s journey is bad or something, just that it gets misunderstood and falls into flat paint by numbers. As Campbell set it out, it’s less a singular structure than a catalog of common scenes and archetypes in heroic myths, not all of which might appear in any given story. It’s the overall arc of “hero enters magical world of story -> overcomes trial -> returns with power to grant boons” that’s constant. In Campbell’s observation, these stories have a cultural function - they’re usually about resolving psychological tensions and navigating liminal spaces. Just using it as an outline to fill in the blanks without understanding why and how those scenes function is going to fall flat every time.
Ntrails 7y ago
Show doesn't necessarily mean show right? The subject might not wring their hands and shuffle from foot to foot. Instead they might feel their pulse start to race, or feeling sweaty palmed or whatever. It's about describing a thing and allowing the reader to understand why without always explicitly telling them everything.
- ehutch79 7y ago
  You are correct.
- vidarh 7y ago
  Yes, but that is not going to tell you what they think or even how they feel with any kind of fidelity. If someone is a true literary master they may come closer to bridging that gap, but you always leave a lot of ambiguity on the table that way. Sometimes that ambiguity is fine, and allows the reader to add their own interpretations and the outcome may well be better for it, but if you have specific things you want to convey, it can be incredibly hard to convey even very simple things without telling. I got incredibly cynical of that after going through literary analysis at school and seeing just how contrived a lot of the attempts at analysis were. Even when trying to analyse works line by line the outcomes are often extremely dubious (or directly contradicted by the author); I don't think even most world renowned authors are capable of unambiguously putting through particularly complex messages without telling. Often it's hard enough to get the message through when it is incredibly explicit.
- jfengel 7y ago
  As an actor, we'd call that kind of thing "indicating", which is more telling than showing. Rather than actually feeling something, you put on the indicators of that feeling: "There is water leaking out of my eyes, therefore you know I'm sad". Which misses the whole rest of the performance. It's better than saying "I am sad", but not by much. What you really have to do, in both writing and acting, is more subtle and difficult. It has to become an organic part of the narrative/performance Any example you give is always going to sound like indicating, since it is extracted from that overall flow. If you've crossed out "he was nervous" and wrote instead "his pulse raced", you haven't improved it by much, if anything. But if you're fully visualizing the scene, from whatever POV you've been using so far, you can seek out the next detail and write that as the next sentence. The essence of "show don't tell" is to be active rather than passive. Talking about feelings, or even indicating feelings, is less active than saying how they act on those feelings. The more specific their actions, the more the reader will internalize the feelings as they live it with the character, even -- or perhaps especially -- when being told from a viewpoint that wouldn't give them access to internals like pulse rate. Movies are exciting without getting any of that information directly.
jerf 7y ago
"Show, don't tell" strikes me as a video proscription more than a writing one, even if it has worked its way into writing since. It's fine for it to be more complicated in a writing medium. You probably don't want "just tell", but "show and tell" can work fine there. Dune is definitely a "show and tell" book and it works great.

bobloblaw45 7y ago

I think 'show, don't tell' is a mostly meant for inexperienced story tellers since it's an easy trap to fall into that can kill the story. There's a bunch of other rules like not mixing tenses or sticking to a single perspective that when they're broken by a writer that has some serious writing chops make for some really great stories.

cryptonector 7y ago

But actually, "he was nervous" is much more economical than the alternative, and works for me. Perhaps "he was nervous, and it showed". Showing can make things vivid, but telling lets me use my imagination even more. I've taken "show, don't tell" to mean "don't have a character explain things for the reader", which is easier to agree with.

beatgammit 7y ago
Telling is lazy and ruins the immersion, so it should be avoided where practical. That being said, rules are meant to be broken, and one of the marks of a good reader is knowing when to break them. For the "nervous" example, I think it's far better to make the prose make the reader feel how nervous the character is. It may be more verbose, but it'll leave a bigger impact on the reader if you do it properly. I really like Cormac McCarthy, and he does a fantastic job of using prose to create a feeling in the reader. When there's an intense action scene, words become simpler, sentences sometimes become longer (I've seen sentences span nearly half a page), and the prose moves along faster. When there's reflection/boredom, the opposite happens, with more complex words and sentence structure and generally slower moving prose. He's a master of using prose to convey emotion. When I read something like this: > He was nervous. Not the waiting in line to get your picture taken kind of nervous, but the first day at a new school in a new city kind of nervous. He'd been on dozens of dates, why was this one tying his stomach in knots? I just think the writer was too lazy to paint a picture of the scene and instead expects me to do that for myself. I would much prefer something like this: > He glances at his watch. 5 minutes to. He motions for another round. Sir, your table is ready. Thanks ma'am. Right this way. He checks the clock by the front door. 3 minutes. Plenty of time. He starts for his napkin, thinks better of it, then adjusts the vase. 2 minutes. He takes a sip, rolling it around with his tongue, and checks his watch. Still two minutes... Or something like that. I much prefer to experience a story than read about it.
- watwut 7y ago
  I strongly strongly prefer the first version, the one you called lazy. The other is dawning the story in too many details that don't matter except for telling me he is nervous. It is the sort of stuff you skip over or stop reading entirely. It also kills joy of story, because the story is hidden behind too many irrelevant details. ------ On that matter, I think that "it is lazy" argument does not make sense and on itself is lazy. I care about how it reads and feels. I honestly don't care whether author worked hard. As far as I am concerned, author could write an hour a day sunbathing the rest if I like the result. Authors don't have to do things the hardest way possible for me. If it was easy to write I am ok with it assuming it is easy to read.

greggman2 7y ago

Maybe it's different for movies. I thought show don't tell was at a higher level than "he was nervous". It's more you can tell "James Bond is a super spy, he's super fit, and he's super suave" or you can show him early on doing things that demostrate he's fit, he's suave, and he's a spy and so no need to tell. I'm no longer a Star Wars fan and these are not good movies IMO but this video essay on The Force Awakens vs Rouge One is a good example of show vs tell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsIQa7sH5_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsIQa7sH5_Y

anonytrary 7y ago

A conspicuous hatch in the ground isn't that interesting, but when you cover it with leaves and twigs and give it a weathered look, it suddenly becomes the most interesting thing in the world.

watwut 7y ago

I think that in this example, I prefer the "tell" version. The whole "Wringing his hands together, shifting from foot to foot" just to tell "nervous" makes for a boring reading. It is dawning what is important in too many details. I can instantly imagine nervous person and change how I perceive rest of communication and move on with story. The whole foot shifting is too indirect and I will likely ignore the nervousness when interpreting the rest of story.

dmitriid 7y ago
If all people in the book are only described as “nervous” when they are nervous, “angry” when they are angry etc., that would make a boring book. Varied descriptions are what makes a character. There’s a huge difference between “shuffling feet” and “clenching jaws”, for example.
- watwut 7y ago
  > There’s a huge difference between “shuffling feet” and “clenching jaws”, for example. What is the difference between the two? It may boil down for why you read, but this is really not what makes character interesting to me.
  - dmitriid 7y ago
    It makes character behavior and the character themselves believable. An otherwise stoic character who shows little to no emotion is nervously shuffling feet? This either breaks the character (and immersion) or speaks volumes about what’s coming next. Of course, this could be described as “uncharacteristically nervous”, but if we don’t even know what is characteristic of a character, such a description will not work. Language is a set of tools, and good writers wield all of them.
    - watwut 7y ago
      Not to me, really. It could be just described as "nervous" which is not at all in contradiction with stoicism. Internal state and what people show is not the same. The uncharacteristically is not present in descriptive version either, no reason to add it here. Whether the character is shuffling feets or have different tells is just a detail - effectively just synonym of nervous. Anyway, real world people don't do that, you usually notice different voice, speed of talking and subtle differences. It is a bit offtopic maybe, but shuffling feets is a bit distracting exmple because people nowdays don't do it. Just telling that emotio where it fits is one of tools that can be used.

mcv 7y ago

I actually prefer "he was nervous". It gets to the point and keeps the story going. There are a lot of books that are unreadable to me because they refuse to get to the point and want me to dig up the point through layers of prose. I guess I like books that have a point, rather than just spend some time surfing on prose. Both are probably valid experiences, but I have a clear preferences. I tend to prefer older SF writers like Clarke and Asimov, which were pretty good at getting to the point. With modern writers I tend to prefer their older books from before they learned to bury the point under layers of prose.

AndrewKemendo 7y ago
They're not trying to get to the point, they want to "paint a picture." Fiction authors are creating escape and entertainment just the same as movie and TV writers. So getting to the point is the opposite of what they want to do. This imo is the thing that distinguishes fiction lovers from everyone else.
- mcv 7y ago
  I tend to love the plot more than the painted picture. Also, I'm a slow reader, and digging through that kind of prose slows me down a lot, because I keep digging for a point that it's probably trying to get across to me. This may also be why I prefer writers like Asimov and Clarke: they usually do have an actual idea they're trying to get across, rather than just fill some time with prose.