Show, Don't Tell: What it Is and Isn't

[Naomasa298]

Show works by providing the reader with context to infer not baldly stating a conclusion ( telling via dialogue) then throwing in ambiguous direction

It's not ambiguous if the context makes it clear. The only context I gave in the micro-example is the line of dialogue. In this case, the dialogue is not telling. It's someone stating a deduction. I couldn't be arsed to write a whole paragraph for it. Your paragraph just provides what (presumably) would have come beforehand in the story. It doesn't change the dynamics of how the text interacts with what came before it.

You understood from reading my two lines that the glance was meant to imply accusation. I never told you that. You replaced a glance with a longer line and some dialogue, which makes it clearer, but the effect is still the same.

 

[Naomasa298]

Another thing about "show" is that it makes a more complete image in the mind of the reader than does "tell"

Sometimes. Not always. Sometimes it keeps a question more open, while tell shuts out any possibility of it being anything other than what you just told the reader. You may want that.

 

[Naomasa298]

Anyway, my example was just one example. It isn't the only way to do it.

 

[Trish]

Well no

Show works by providing the reader with context to infer not baldly stating a conclusion ( telling via dialogue) then throwing in ambiguous direction

For example

Bob looked closely at the wounds on Dave’s arms they were ragged at the edges as if clawed by a big cat. He sniffed the dead man’s hair and wrinkled his nose “ he smells of perfume, guerlian if I’m not mistaken and has defensive wounds caused by an assailant with long nails… mostl likely the murderer was a woman”

He looked at Jane’s shiny pink talons and raised an eyebrow “ anything you’d like to tell us?”

Better still would to have already established that Jane has log nails and is wearing scent on a previous paragraph so the reader can add two and two before bob does

Unless that's a red herring, it's the shortest mystery in history. Like Banespawn said (and Nao implied), ideally, inference is better in cases like this than beating the reader over the head with it. In my opinion.

 

[big soft moose]

But there does have to be enough information to infer from

Unless it’s a high lit project where the lack of certainty of what is happening is part of the art

 

[Trish]

But there does have to be enough information to infer from

Unless it’s a high lit project where the lack of certainty of what is happening is part of the art

There is.

"I guess the murderer must be a woman." Bob turned to look at Jane.

Bob thinks the murderer is a woman, and he looked at Jane. One would assume (I very much hope) that this single sentence is not the entirety of the story. He looks at Jane - to confer? To accuse? You don't know and you don't NEED to know unless it's a one-sentence story. What we do know is that Jane is going to be part of what's coming in some way because we were shown that when he turned to look at her.

And high lit? It's one sentence. It could be a mystery, a thriller (Bob is the killer and he has dresses in his closet), a romance, a tragedy.

 

[big soft moose]

My point is that to show you do need to know, if you don’t know you can’t infer and thus nothing is being shown.

 

[Trish]

My point is that to show you do need to know, if you don’t know you can’t infer and thus nothing is being shown.

And my point is that showing does not mean spell out every detail for the readers like they're children. Unless you're writing a children's book.

 

[Homer Potvin]

Well, if there was any reason to dispute that show vs tell is the stupidest discussion in the writing world, y'all have reproved that theorem.

Anybody have anything constructive to add or have we firmly landed in the kick-each-other-in-proverbial-nuts part of the conversation?

 

[big soft moose]

if for example you inform the reader that

Moonlight glinted on the broken glass around the corpse , blood spatters black rorsatches of violent death ( John Sanford)

Then the reader can infer that someone has died that it was bloody, and that the body has been found during the night …they can also assume from the fact that they are reading a police thriller that it’s murder

That’s a show

If you say “the man was dead surrounded by broken glass and blood” then that’s a tell even though the reader still has to infer that he’s been murdered

Although both convey the same information the former enables the reader to imagine it more vividly

The other point that there’s nothing wrong with some telling a book where absolutely everything was shown would be tiresome

 

[Trish]

Moonlight glinted on the broken glass around the corpse , blood spatters black rorsatches of violent death

the man was dead surrounded by broken glass and blood

I'm sorry, but these are both show. If anything the first one is the tell, because of the word "violent". If you dropped that word, they're nearly identical in information given. One is more purple, the other more direct, but NEITHER is making deductions FOR the reader (if you trust the reader and remove the word violent).

I do agree that BOTH showing and telling are required in every story though. All of either is too much.

 

[Rigor Mortis]

Around the time I joined the first iteration of us, I encountered my first discussions about show and tell. Soon after, I read a book by a highly regarded contemporary author and found myself stopping every so often and thinking "that's pure telling." We're not supposed to do that!

I didn't like the book, but that's not the reason.

Where there's wide discrepancy over what exactly constitutes showing and telling, I'd suggest there's not much to be gained in arguing about which is better in which circumstances. Many (most?) situations don't fall neatly into one or other box anyway, even if we agree on what those boxes look like.

Both can be subtle and require working out by the reader. I think I've done this one before:

John experienced profound sadness at his mother's funeral.
John experienced no sadness at his mother's funeral.

Both are similarly telling. If you're telling something that is easily compartmentalised, that's what the reader does. If you're telling something that seems a bit off, the reader is left to work it out. You could show it with tears or dry eyes but, most likely, it all gets blended into something that is sometimes more one than the other, but not entirely exclusive. Unless you're Cormac McCarthy.

The best bet is to make whatever it is interesting.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Cormac McCarthy.

I downloaded Blood Meridian today - reading it right now - powerful opening. So what's the breakdown in it between show/tell?

See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire. Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves. His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are now lost. The boy crouches by the fire and watches him.

Night of your birth. Thirty-three. The Leonids they were called. God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens. The Dipper stove.

The mother dead these fourteen years did incubate in her own bosom the creature who would carry her off. The father never speaks her name, the child does not know it. He has a sister in this world that he will not see again. He watches, pale and unwashed. He can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.

 

[Louanne Learning]

See the child.

This direction puts you there

 

[Rigor Mortis]

I downloaded Blood Meridian today - reading it right now - powerful opening. So what's the breakdown in it between show/tell?

I have Blood Meridian on the shelf but not read it yet, waiting 'til my loins are more fully girded. It's rough, I believe.

In The Road and No Country for Old Men, McCarthy gives nothing directly of inner thought/emotional condition, just objective descriptions. Yet, Chigurh is possibly the most menacing character I've read and he manages to evoke an emotional reaction in the reader without naming it for his characters. It's quite brilliant.

 

[Naomasa298]

The Leonids they were called.

Passive voice, bad, make it active, pick a stronger verb, etc.

His folk are known for hewers

Filter word.

 

[Louanne Learning]

It's rough, I believe.

Yeah, I heard it was dark, and I hesitated, but I kind of felt - I dunno - an obligation? - to read it, because of the subject matter

gives nothing directly of inner thought/emotional condition, just objective descriptions.

That's what I have heard about his writing. But I have heard it called "show" because he uses prose as a camera

 

[Homer Potvin]

But I have heard it called "show" because he uses prose as a camera

I'd be inclined to say that his objective POV is neither because it ignores all the show/tell grey areas by pretending they don't exist. There are no emotions or interior monologue that would normally declare themselves as either/or, if only for a little piece or two. You could say that because the POV is incapable of transcending the visual aspect, it would be incapable of telling you anything even if it wanted to. But on the other hand, the god voice is so disembodied and so displaced temporily, that nothing it says could be anything other than telling because there's often nothing in its lens to show.

It's also impossible to discuss Cormac without touching upon Faulkner, so I suppose the corollary would be whether the Faulknerian style of stream of consciousness is more show-y or tell-y. Cormac doesn't do that exactly, but I think you could argue for either. Or neither. Or both simultaneously. But I personally reject the premise that we live in a binary world where every element of the story must declare itself as either show or tell. Or moreover, that every element of a story could somehow be altered from one to the other as if were a simple matter of color. I seem to be the only one carrying that torch, however.

 

[Naomasa298]

Or moreover, that every element of a story could somehow be altered from one to the other as if were a simple matter of color.

I don't think it's so much that you can alter an element, although it depends on what "an element" is. With most passages, you'd have to rewrite the whole thing to make more showy or telly. But it doesn't have to be either, really. I mean, how do you "show" someone that's a big, grey, concrete building? At least in a way that makes any sense - I guess you'd want to show how the character feels when he touches the walls or have him reflect on the architecture, and that's going to bore the pants off a lot of people.

I guess it's more that many things can function as show or tell, depending on the context and surrounding text.