What do you think of “Show, don’t tell” rule?

[BlackKnightX]

For me personally, I love both. When the writer ”tell” their story instead of “show”, it makes things progress much faster and easier to digest the informations. Especially in the boring but necessary part in the story, it’ll be quite tedious to read all of that in the “showing” form.

I’m quite a visual person but I have no problem with “telling”. When there are “tellings” in the story, I usually slow down my speed and imagine the scene in my head instead.

Though, when it comes to “showing”, it’s fun if it’s a fight scene, an emotional scene, or a scene with fun characters’ interaction, but other than these scenes, I think “telling” is fine because it’s just speed things up.

What about you guys? What do you think about “showing” and “telling” in a story?

 

[LostLibrarian]

As with many writing "rules", I really like the core idea behind it, but I dislike what some writer( communitie)s make out of it. You can have wonderful stories with mostly tell, and sometimes 2 pages of "show" is worse than one paragraph of "tell".

Those are often good "guidelines" to help new writers. But believing in them too much can also destroy a lot of cool writing styles or stories.

I mean, we would probably never have gotten stories like the Lord of the Rings or other "classics", if those authors had followed all those really important rules...

 

[CupcakeNinja]

For me personally, I love both. When the writer ”tell” their story instead of “show”, it makes things progress much faster and easier to digest the informations. Especially in the boring but necessary part in the story, it’ll be quite tedious to read all of that in the “showing” form.

I’m quite a visual person but I have no problem with “telling”. When there are “tellings” in the story, I usually slow down my speed and imagine the scene in my head instead.

Though, when it comes to “showing”, it’s fun if it’s a fight scene, an emotional scene, or a scene with fun characters’ interaction, but other than these scenes, I think “telling” is fine because it’s just speed things up.

What about you guys? What do you think about “showing” and “telling” in a story?

I'm a trend setter, mate, not a rule follower

 

[ElijahRyne]

This is mainly a film rule, but it is somewhat useful in writing. In addition to what OP said, you can also show exposition. In example, you are writing a magic system, and you want to describe how to cast a spell, you can just have a giant explanation

Spoiler

“To cast a spell, you you need to let your mana flow through your fingertips forming a shape between them. The shape and your elemental talent decide what spell you cast. If you make a circle you will have an elemental ball. You can throw this, as an attack.”

or, you can intertwine your telling with showing.

Spoiler

“To cast a spell, you let mana flow through your finger tips in a particular shape.” As she said this her hands glowed as strings of red light danced in between her fingers. “The shape and your elemental talent decide what spell you cast. Let’s try a circle.” she said as a vague ball of fire appears in her hand.

Like this you can keep the flow of the story going.

 

[K5Rakitan]

The trick is to let readers read between the lines, but sometimes, a little "tell" is necessary. In my first release, readers thought Marc's actions were controlling, so I had to add a little more to show that Joan wanted him to act that way, that he was being supportive rather than controlling.
My friend, who actually met the person Marc is based on, knew without having to be told, but too many of my readers were confused.

 

[KoyukiMegumi]

I just go with the flow. I don't restrict myself to one way. Both ways can be effective, I guess.

This is the true way.~

 

[BlackKnightX]

This is mainly a film rule, but it is somewhat useful in writing. In addition to what OP said, you can also show exposition. In example, you are writing a magic system, and you want to describe how to cast a spell, you can just have a giant explanation

Spoiler

“To cast a spell, you you need to let your mana flow through your fingertips forming a shape between them. The shape and your elemental talent decide what spell you cast. If you make a circle you will have an elemental ball. You can throw this, as an attack.”

or, you can intertwine your telling with showing.

Spoiler

“To cast a spell, you let mana flow through your finger tips in a particular shape.” As she said this her hands glowed as strings of red light danced in between her fingers. “The shape and your elemental talent decide what spell you cast. Let’s try a circle.” she said as a vague ball of fire appears in her hand.

Like this you can keep the flow of the story going.

That’s pretty cool. It’s like watching a movie or anime.

 

[ElijahRyne]

That’s pretty cool. It’s like watching a movie or anime.

Thank you!

 

[Deleted member 45782]

You need to mix show and tell. Mostly good to show, with some dabs of tell.

Storywriting is pretty much a grey zone. As with any writing rules and guidelines, anything can work but it depends on how its done.

Like I mentioned before in another thread,

If you info dump on the first chapter before I can even immerse into the story, I am more likely to drop it. I'm not here to listen to someone go on and on about who is who, who did what and why are they so special. The narration becomes too prominent, and not the story itself.
* Unless your narrator is unreliable or plays a pivotal part in the story.

If you unintentionally leave out too much that readers are confused and have to guess where is the missing link that connects major things in your story, then you need to maybe drop a hint or tell a bit more. Particularly if its very, very significant to the plot.

 

[BlackKnightX]

You need to mix show and tell. Mostly good to show, with some dabs of tell.

Storywriting is pretty much a grey zone. As with any writing rules and guidelines, anything can work but it depends on how its done.

Like I mentioned before in another thread,

If you info dump on the first chapter before I can even immerse into the story, I am more likely to drop it. I'm not here to listen to someone go on and on about who is who, who did what and why are they so special. The narration becomes too prominent, and not the story itself.
* Unless your narrator is unreliable or plays a pivotal part in the story.

If you unintentionally leave out too much that readers are confused and have to guess where is the missing link that connects major things in your story, then you need to maybe drop a hint or tell a bit more. Particularly if its very, very significant to the plot.

Good point. I think telling can be interpreted in a lot of ways. For some, it might be exposition and stuff. But for me, I look at telling like a summary of events. It can be action and not just description.

For example:
Telling: They greeted each other.
Showing: “Good morning,” John said.
”Good morning, sleepyhead,” Celine said as she raised her hand up.

Something along this lines. I think it’s better to just summarize the unnecessary stuffs.

 

[LostLibrarian]

Another point to the discussion: we are writing webnovels, which also has a different target audience than the "traditional published novel". Given how many novels a lot of the readers consume at the same time, things like forshadowing or "hint without telling" can blow up in one's face, if done wrong.

There is also the fact that you have more readers with less knowledge or experience when reading in English. So a bit more telling can also go a long way to make your story more accessible. It surely isn't for everyone and every type of novel, but a good portion of the readers are the same, who'll read bad translations with a mistake in every sentence, just to get to the good parts of a story.

 

[Generic.Archdemon]

What about you guys? What do you think about “showing” and “telling” in a story?

It was something that we were brutally aware of in screen writing. Movies... Requires some level of... Brutal efficiency... I think...

While I think it is one of the corner stones of film making. Over the years, I don't think it is as important in novels.

If I remember correctly, show don't tell, is related to, Chekhov's gun, or that group of dramatic theory. Which had its basis in stage plays, and screen writing. So application in novels are... "results may vary" .

 

[BlackKnightX]

Another point to the discussion: we are writing webnovels, which also has a different target audience than the "traditional published novel". Given how many novels a lot of the readers consume at the same time, things like forshadowing or "hint without telling" can blow up in one's face, if done wrong.

There is also the fact that you have more readers with less knowledge or experience when reading in English. So a bit more telling can also go a long way to make your story more accessible. It surely isn't for everyone and every type of novel, but a good portion of the readers are the same, who'll read bad translations with a mistake in every sentence, just to get to the good parts of a story.

Exactly. I think the most important part in web novel is simplicity and quickness.

 

[Deleted member 45782]

Good point. I think telling can be interpreted in a lot of ways. For some, it might be exposition and stuff. But for me, I look at telling like a summary of events. It can be action and not just description.

For example:
Telling: They greeted each other.
Showing: “Good morning,” John said.
”Good morning, sleepyhead,” Celine said as she raised her hand up.

Something along this lines. I think it’s better to just summarize the unnecessary stuffs.

Your example simplified a lot of things which is good, because it helps cut out unnecessary wording. Like I don't need to be told what kind of lettuce you had in your sandwich when your quest is all about going to defeat a beast. Just tell me you had lunch. Unless your lettuce turns out to have green parasitic worms and you just ate it so now you're more concerned about dying than fighting a beast.

When I mean people do unnecessary summary is like those who like to give a rundown of who the character is before, where they are now, what class they're in now, etc., sometimes too early in the story I feel. It sounds more like listing details of the characters and events, not slowly building up a character/event. And a lot of times I've seen writers write sentences that are either too long, and should have been split into smaller sentences when they are trying to describe something (see green worm sentence). Or short choppy sentences.

Which is also why this partly deters me from reading stories like...

Meet name of character, a description of character, who list cause of death, and is now isekaied/reincarnated/transmigrated into name of world. Join on their quest to (a. save world/something important), (b. defeat the demon king or something), and/or (c. survive/go on an adventure).

I have now read the story's main premise. Why should I read it any further now that you just gave all the details of what it is?

I don't need to "meet" or "join" the character. Certain words can be removed if they're supposed to be invisible and the reader will know anyways.

 

[scribesaga]

Sometimes I’ll intentionally toy with the reader. I’ll tell them some of the stuff they need to know, then show them things that might contradict what they’ve been told.

 

[BlackKnightX]

Sometimes I’ll intentionally toy with the reader. I’ll tell them some of the stuff they need to know, then show them things that might contradict what they’ve been told.

Twist is author’s friend~

 

[Derin_Edala]

I don't like the rule because people keep parrotting it without knowing what it actually means. It's good general advice if your story needs some life in it, *if* you know what "showing" and "telling" actually is. I've met so many critics who can't actually tell the difference between those things.

It also has its limits, in like... you're supposed to show AND tell. People say "show don't tell" because when writers get the balance wrong, they usually err on the side of telling too much, so the correction is to show more and tell less. But you're supposed to have some of both, depending on the story.

 

[yansusustories]

I do agree with what others have already said about there needing to be a balance. I'd like to add that, personally, especially when it comes to shorter stories, I actually love just having it told/telling it! As in, I love stories with actual storytellers that are present in the story and narrate it. I also happen to be a lover of fairy tales where telling the story is much more normal than showing it so I guess that might be a reason. If it's a whole novel, that would likely be too much but I can still get behind big stretches of a story being told like that. The caveat for me is that it's told nicely though. Like, if you have an awesome writing style, I'll gladly read through that. If your writing style isn't really to my liking, it wouldn't work as well.

 

[Snusmumriken]

There are things you need to show most of the time.

Good examples of that are emotions feelings, and characteristics of other characters, unless you are writing in 3rd person omniscient - the POV simply has no means to look at someone and say something like "the person that entered the room was energetic smart and sad because his pet bird died" It feels like info dump rather than character description.

In general, the story flows better if you make readers figure out things for themselves. it promotes immersion. Does it have to be done all the time? Not likely, but the reason why you want to limit telling is not to provide information in a dry emotionless tone. Written media shines in descriptions of emotions and evocations of them inside the reader via giving them hints about something rather than telling them what it really is.

Relying on telling too much is like having too much movie being cast in the dark and relying only on sounds and music.

 

[Derin_Edala]

There are things you need to show most of the time.

Good examples of that are emotions feelings, and characteristics of other characters, unless you are writing in 3rd person omniscient - the POV simply has no means to look at someone and say something like "the person that entered the room was energetic smart and sad because his pet bird died" It feels like info dump rather than character description.

In general, the story flows better if you make readers figure out things for themselves. it promotes immersion. Does it have to be done all the time? Not likely, but the reason why you want to limit telling is not to provide information in a dry emotionless tone. Written media shines in descriptions of emotions and evocations of them inside the reader via giving them hints about something rather than telling them what it really is.

Relying on telling too much is like having too much movie being cast in the dark and relying only on sounds and music.

This is true, but even this depends on the story, genre, tone and length. For example, the book series Animorphs was fantastic with characterisation and very immersive, but every book would start with a couple of pages where the characters meet up and the POV character straightup tells us who's the funny-but-ruthless one, who's the violent-but-conflicted one, who's the red-tailed hawk/bully magnet with depression, etc., and this was the correct choice for the series. Applegate could pull it off because a) it wasn't inconsistent with what was shown later (the smart guy tended to make the smart decisions, the moral treehugger tended to question the morality of their actions, etc.), and b) it was an action series and we had like 90 pages to tell an action story, with absolutely no guarantee that the reader had read any of the previous stories in the 60-ish-book series. So a straightforward, explicit explanation of "here is everyone's relationships and primary character traits" thrown in with the general explanation of the ongoing alien war made perfect sense in that context.

In the majority of cases, if you're dithering between 'showing' and 'telling' something, the correct choice is usually to not be lazy and to 'show'. But there are situations where 'tell' is the right way to go for just about anything, even things where 'show' is the correct choice 99% of the time.