5 ms·

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

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.

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.