6 ms·

I think "Show, Don't Tell" is excellent advice and not just in writing: it's even more valuable for filmmakers. You should be able to watch a movie with no sou

I think "Show, Don't Tell" is excellent advice and not just in writing: it's even more valuable for filmmakers. You should be able to watch a movie with no sound and follow the plot. Of course there aren't actual rules and the best writers break the not-actual-rules all the time. But a lot of really bad writing does seem to involve telling rather than showing. And isn't the goal of writing classes the elimination of really bad writing? I'm very skeptical of the idea that someone can be taught to be a (good) novelist. I don't think that someone can lend you their model; I think you have to develop your own. Cormac McCarthy explained his use of punctuation with "There’s no reason to blot the page up with weird little marks. I mean, if you write properly you shouldn’t have to punctuate." I find that quote hysterically funny. I don't have a strong opinion about whether he's right. Rather, I think the whole point is that he has a strong sense of what good writing is and it's his.

goto11 7y ago
> You should be able to watch a movie with no sound and follow the plot Why?
- inetknght 7y ago
  In my experience, movie plots are usually so shallow that sound doesn't really add to the plot.
  - glitchc 7y ago
    You need to watch better movies.
- olah_1 7y ago
  Because visual storytelling is the whole point of the medium. Yes, there should be a symphony of sound and visual working together. But the whole point of the medium of Motion Pictures is to tell stories through... motion pictures.
  - the_af 7y ago
    Modern cinema is not just visual storytelling. It also has sound, which is just as vital.
    - shantly 7y ago
      Even most silent films, including those considered among the best, had inter-titles, and it'd be a lot harder to follow the plot without them. The important exceptions are almost all niche art films. They also used scoring to set mood and convey emotion.
  - goto11 7y ago
    That is just begging the question. Why can't sound and dialog be an integrated and necessary part of the storytelling? What about musicals? Disneys Fantasia? The voice overs in Goodfellas? The dialogue in Pulp Fiction? Who even decides what the "point" of a media is beside the people creating stuff in the media?
    - olah_1 7y ago
      What do motion pictures offer that no other medium offers? The answer is moving images. What I'm saying is that a medium should play to the strengths of the unique thing that it offers over other mediums. What do video games uniquely offer? Interactivity. Therfore, the video game medium should focus on offering interactivity that would be impossible to get in any other medium.
      - latexr 7y ago
        > What do video games uniquely offer? Interactivity. Therfore, the video game medium should focus on offering interactivity that would be impossible to get in any other medium. To the Moon[1] and Dear Esther[2] won awards and high praise from critics and players alike, despite lacklustre interactivity. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_The_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_The_Moon [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Esther https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Esther
- earthboundkid 7y ago
  You're on an airplane and you don't really want to watch a movie but you can't stop looking at someone else's screen.
the_af 7y ago
> You should be able to watch a movie with no sound and follow the plot. As universal advice, I don't think this is true. This is essentially saying "sound in this movie is merely window dressing, it plays no essential role", and while this can be true of some good movies, it can't be true of all good movies. Surely sound plays a vital role in at least some movies, a role which is essential to understanding the movie...
- leftyted 7y ago
  There aren't any hard and fast rules for how to make a good movie (or how to write a good novel). But, in my opinion, movies are fundamentally visual and everything else is a layer on top. Maybe not "window dressing," but not too far from that. There are certainly movies where the music/sound/dialogue left a lasting impression on me, but I think movies live and die by their visuals. To put it another way, you can have a visually compelling movie that is competely silent but I don't think the reverse is true.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Surely the visuals are important. But not as an end in themselves. The story in a movie should be propelled by visuals (instead of mostly dialog or, gad, title cards). I'd go so far as to say, any time a movie resorts to backstory-monologues or text, the director has failed.
    - mlyle 7y ago
      > The story in a movie should be propelled by visuals (instead of mostly dialog or, gad, title cards) Obviously both radio plays (no visual-- too bad we don't have more of these lately, and we're stuck with audiobooks as a mediocre facsimile) and silent films (no sound) can work extraordinarily well. Good film uses both to its maximal advantage. > I'd go so far as to say, any time a movie resorts to backstory-monologues or text, the director has failed. I disagree. You can find lots of bad examples of this, but you can also find masterful tricks of unreliable narration (Memento); you can find simple context-setting for a foreign environment (Star Wars); you have stories that leap through time that would be impractical to show all of the events and require some text or narration so the viewer knows what's up. Basically all of the rules of thumb really mean "this is often misused" and are not prescriptive.
glitchc 7y ago
How terribly boring such a movie would be. No snappy dialogue? Witty repartee between protagonist and antagonist? No deep thoughts on the moral corruption of society? Godfather without dialogue? Joker without dialogue? I guess you only like watching Michael Bay specials, explosions convey destruction really well I hear.
- leftyted 7y ago
  Petty gibes aside, Michael Bay is a good example of what I'm talking about. You can listen to his movies without watching and understand, more or less, what's going on because the characters explain everything they're doing. His movies would be better if he only showed explosions and opted out of dialogue explaining what the explosion meaans to the plot.
  - glitchc 7y ago
    How dare you insinuate... Of course I picked Michael Bay on purpose for exactly this reason. His characters frequently devolve into expository prose that’s quite superfluous.. to adults. Kids on the other hand really appreciate the characters telling them what they’re about to do. He’s just catering to the audience. What’s annoying for us is essential for them to follow the plot.
- pwinnski 7y ago
  Think bigger! One of the best episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was almost entirely silent, and yet still featured the cleverness the show is known for. Some of the most evocative scenes in recent movies are largely dialog-free, such as several scenes in Roma, or Gravity. It isn't just Cuaron, either, remember Castaway? Imagine a movie that can be watched with no sound but still tells the whole story. Now imagine the same movie can be listened to without seeing the screen, and again, tells the whole story. The point of "show, don't tell," is to keep lazy or beginning writers from relying too heavily on assumptions about their readers. It doesn't mean "make things explode and don't worry about the plot making sense."
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
yoz-y 7y ago
Although I agree that visuals are the most important part of the movie, I don't think that there is any necessity to try to eliminate the importance of sound. However, I think movies are indeed the best piece where "show, don't tell" works. There are some easy examples, like instead of writing the place and time on screen, introduce a short scene with some memorable monument, a newspaper, a dialogue causally mentioning the place. Make the scene time obvious. Rather than reflecting some internal dialogue explaining the protagonist's mood, use music and facial expressions.
- leftyted 7y ago
  > Although I agree that visuals are the most important part of the movie, I don't think that there is any necessity to try to eliminate the importance of sound. I think most great movies are (perhaps surprisingly) very watchable without sound. That might have been a better way to phrase my original comment.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> You should be able to watch a movie with no sound and follow the plot. I disagree that this is true, and more I disagree that it reflects “show don't tell”, which isn't about visual-over-audio but demonstration-over-exposition.
lz400 7y ago
Can't imagine Woody Allen, Tarantino or Billy Wilder with no sound/dialog.
greggman2 7y ago
> You should be able to watch a movie with no sound and follow the plot. There are many famous and great movies for which this isn't true. 12 Angry Men, Glengarry Glen Ross, Her, to name a few off the top of my head.
prawn 7y ago
McCarthy is my favourite author, but I find that I have to approach his work (and the dialogue) in one of two ways. It might be a personality thing, but I find myself choosing between reading casually, letting it flow over me, having understanding enough of what's happening to enjoy the book. Or I can read and re-read sentences to make sure I comprehend the detail, every word, etc. With his conversations, I can read through at speed with a decent but imperfect feel of who has said what. But I find myself wanting to get it exactly right and re-read counting the odd and even lines of dialogue to make sure I know who has said exactly what. It's rarely critical because the conversation in many cases is such a minute* part of the story (Spanish sequences in the Border Trilogy, for example). Maybe he's counting that as sufficiently well written, but maybe he's not the sort to want to read it exactly right. Like I said, could be a personality/spectrum thing. *I'm talking about the quick incidental conversations more than the extensive speeches, such as from Judge Holden, where the speaker is almost easily discernible and the content is certainly a key part of the experience.

goto11 7y ago

> You should be able to watch a movie with no sound and follow the plot Why?

inetknght 7y ago
In my experience, movie plots are usually so shallow that sound doesn't really add to the plot.
- glitchc 7y ago
  You need to watch better movies.
olah_1 7y ago
Because visual storytelling is the whole point of the medium. Yes, there should be a symphony of sound and visual working together. But the whole point of the medium of Motion Pictures is to tell stories through... motion pictures.
- the_af 7y ago
  Modern cinema is not just visual storytelling. It also has sound, which is just as vital.
  - shantly 7y ago
    Even most silent films, including those considered among the best, had inter-titles, and it'd be a lot harder to follow the plot without them. The important exceptions are almost all niche art films. They also used scoring to set mood and convey emotion.
- goto11 7y ago
  That is just begging the question. Why can't sound and dialog be an integrated and necessary part of the storytelling? What about musicals? Disneys Fantasia? The voice overs in Goodfellas? The dialogue in Pulp Fiction? Who even decides what the "point" of a media is beside the people creating stuff in the media?
  - olah_1 7y ago
    What do motion pictures offer that no other medium offers? The answer is moving images. What I'm saying is that a medium should play to the strengths of the unique thing that it offers over other mediums. What do video games uniquely offer? Interactivity. Therfore, the video game medium should focus on offering interactivity that would be impossible to get in any other medium.
    - latexr 7y ago
      > What do video games uniquely offer? Interactivity. Therfore, the video game medium should focus on offering interactivity that would be impossible to get in any other medium. To the Moon[1] and Dear Esther[2] won awards and high praise from critics and players alike, despite lacklustre interactivity. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_The_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_The_Moon [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Esther https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Esther
earthboundkid 7y ago
You're on an airplane and you don't really want to watch a movie but you can't stop looking at someone else's screen.

the_af 7y ago

> You should be able to watch a movie with no sound and follow the plot. As universal advice, I don't think this is true. This is essentially saying "sound in this movie is merely window dressing, it plays no essential role", and while this can be true of some good movies, it can't be true of all good movies. Surely sound plays a vital role in at least some movies, a role which is essential to understanding the movie...

leftyted 7y ago
There aren't any hard and fast rules for how to make a good movie (or how to write a good novel). But, in my opinion, movies are fundamentally visual and everything else is a layer on top. Maybe not "window dressing," but not too far from that. There are certainly movies where the music/sound/dialogue left a lasting impression on me, but I think movies live and die by their visuals. To put it another way, you can have a visually compelling movie that is competely silent but I don't think the reverse is true.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Surely the visuals are important. But not as an end in themselves. The story in a movie should be propelled by visuals (instead of mostly dialog or, gad, title cards). I'd go so far as to say, any time a movie resorts to backstory-monologues or text, the director has failed.
  - mlyle 7y ago
    > The story in a movie should be propelled by visuals (instead of mostly dialog or, gad, title cards) Obviously both radio plays (no visual-- too bad we don't have more of these lately, and we're stuck with audiobooks as a mediocre facsimile) and silent films (no sound) can work extraordinarily well. Good film uses both to its maximal advantage. > I'd go so far as to say, any time a movie resorts to backstory-monologues or text, the director has failed. I disagree. You can find lots of bad examples of this, but you can also find masterful tricks of unreliable narration (Memento); you can find simple context-setting for a foreign environment (Star Wars); you have stories that leap through time that would be impractical to show all of the events and require some text or narration so the viewer knows what's up. Basically all of the rules of thumb really mean "this is often misused" and are not prescriptive.

glitchc 7y ago

How terribly boring such a movie would be. No snappy dialogue? Witty repartee between protagonist and antagonist? No deep thoughts on the moral corruption of society? Godfather without dialogue? Joker without dialogue? I guess you only like watching Michael Bay specials, explosions convey destruction really well I hear.

leftyted 7y ago
Petty gibes aside, Michael Bay is a good example of what I'm talking about. You can listen to his movies without watching and understand, more or less, what's going on because the characters explain everything they're doing. His movies would be better if he only showed explosions and opted out of dialogue explaining what the explosion meaans to the plot.
- glitchc 7y ago
  How dare you insinuate... Of course I picked Michael Bay on purpose for exactly this reason. His characters frequently devolve into expository prose that’s quite superfluous.. to adults. Kids on the other hand really appreciate the characters telling them what they’re about to do. He’s just catering to the audience. What’s annoying for us is essential for them to follow the plot.
pwinnski 7y ago
Think bigger! One of the best episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was almost entirely silent, and yet still featured the cleverness the show is known for. Some of the most evocative scenes in recent movies are largely dialog-free, such as several scenes in Roma, or Gravity. It isn't just Cuaron, either, remember Castaway? Imagine a movie that can be watched with no sound but still tells the whole story. Now imagine the same movie can be listened to without seeing the screen, and again, tells the whole story. The point of "show, don't tell," is to keep lazy or beginning writers from relying too heavily on assumptions about their readers. It doesn't mean "make things explode and don't worry about the plot making sense."
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

yoz-y 7y ago

Although I agree that visuals are the most important part of the movie, I don't think that there is any necessity to try to eliminate the importance of sound. However, I think movies are indeed the best piece where "show, don't tell" works. There are some easy examples, like instead of writing the place and time on screen, introduce a short scene with some memorable monument, a newspaper, a dialogue causally mentioning the place. Make the scene time obvious. Rather than reflecting some internal dialogue explaining the protagonist's mood, use music and facial expressions.

leftyted 7y ago
> Although I agree that visuals are the most important part of the movie, I don't think that there is any necessity to try to eliminate the importance of sound. I think most great movies are (perhaps surprisingly) very watchable without sound. That might have been a better way to phrase my original comment.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> You should be able to watch a movie with no sound and follow the plot. I disagree that this is true, and more I disagree that it reflects “show don't tell”, which isn't about visual-over-audio but demonstration-over-exposition.

lz400 7y ago

Can't imagine Woody Allen, Tarantino or Billy Wilder with no sound/dialog.

greggman2 7y ago

> You should be able to watch a movie with no sound and follow the plot. There are many famous and great movies for which this isn't true. 12 Angry Men, Glengarry Glen Ross, Her, to name a few off the top of my head.

prawn 7y ago

McCarthy is my favourite author, but I find that I have to approach his work (and the dialogue) in one of two ways. It might be a personality thing, but I find myself choosing between reading casually, letting it flow over me, having understanding enough of what's happening to enjoy the book. Or I can read and re-read sentences to make sure I comprehend the detail, every word, etc. With his conversations, I can read through at speed with a decent but imperfect feel of who has said what. But I find myself wanting to get it exactly right and re-read counting the odd and even lines of dialogue to make sure I know who has said exactly what. It's rarely critical because the conversation in many cases is such a minute* part of the story (Spanish sequences in the Border Trilogy, for example). Maybe he's counting that as sufficiently well written, but maybe he's not the sort to want to read it exactly right. Like I said, could be a personality/spectrum thing. *I'm talking about the quick incidental conversations more than the extensive speeches, such as from Judge Holden, where the speaker is almost easily discernible and the content is certainly a key part of the experience.