Forum: Author Hangout

At the end of the day, everything in a text-only story is telling rather than showing.

You "tell" with words and you "show" with words.

Both use words, but they are used differently.

And "showing" isn't description. In fact, showing does away with many adjectives, something used extensively with description.

You "tell" with words and you "show" with words.

That's 'Writing Expert' orthodoxy but it's not my opinion.

AJ

That's 'Writing Expert' orthodoxy

Show, don't tell is a technique used in various kinds of texts to allow the reader to experience the story through actions, words, subtext, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the author's exposition, summarization, and description.[1] It avoids adjectives describing the author's analysis, but instead describes the scene in such a way that readers can draw their own conclusions.

The concept is often attributed to Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, reputed to have said "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." What Chekhov actually said, in a letter to his brother, was "In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you'll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball."[7]

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

That's just telling that the moonlight is glinting on the broken glass.

AJ

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

That's just telling that the moonlight is glinting on the broken glass.

But why are you telling that? It's for the reader to draw their own conclusion that the moon is shining (I don't like that example, btw).

"Show don't tell" expects the reader to have a higher reading comprehension. That's why childrens books are all telling.

I'm happy with this definition of 'show vs tell', but it conflicts with many definitions.

If something is important, by all means, it needs to be shown - an action story with 'We had a big fight, and I won' is exceptionally flat.

On the other hand, writing three pages of dialogue to cover 'I caught my friends up on what happened on the trip', when the trip itself has been 'shown', is unnecessary 90%+ of the time. Yes, I'm 'telling' people about the conversation, not 'showing,' but unless it's going to become important that I forgot to tell them about thing X that happened during the trip, there's little point in spelling out what I told them. If forgetting X is important, I have the choice of writing it out (omitting X) or simply telling the reader that X was omitted.

Similarly, 'We sat down and ordered dinner, then ate it as we continued out conversation' is very much 'telling', but describing what was ordered, how the waitress looked, how that conversation went, what the food smelled and tasted like, and so forth is likely unnecessary detail most of the time.

'Show, don't tell' applied to major events makes sense, but (like everything else) it can be overdone, and what's important can be buried in a mountain of 'showing' if one is not careful.