When to Show and When to Tell
Jul 25, 2024 12:53:03 GMT -6
Post by saintofm on Jul 25, 2024 12:53:03 GMT -6
Links to videos I am quoting from on the bottom. As usual, what are your thoughts and where do we writers try to do this.
As for my thoughts:
Show don’t tell is one of the oldest and most commonly used maxims in writing. Yet it is confusing to say the least on where and how to use it. Should we avoid telling all together or are there actually moments when we SHOULD just tell our audience what is going on.
To quote Jenna Moreci’s video “Show vs Tell-When to Show,”
“Showing means evoking emotion through your storytelling and making the reader feel as though they are right there in the scene. You’re painting clear visuals, and getting their senses Activated.
Telling is in informative, you’re simply stating facts.”
The term is accredited to famed Russian Playwright and author Anton Chekhov, the guy we get “Chekhov’s Gun” from. Specifically this quote:
“Don’t tell me the moon in is shining; show me the light on broken glass.”
On the showing side of things, you use metaphor, simile, and interesting word choice to get your point across. To make a scene come to life. Its an area one should focus on as this holds a reader’s attention. This keeps them wanting more. By making them relate to someone that may not even have ever existed in the case of most fiction.
Is a character angry? How mad are they?
Upset? Miffed? Annoyed? Heated? Raging? Wrathful? Radiating hate?
Are they in love? At what stage or how in love are they?
Hand Holding? Twitterpated? Devoted? Lustful? Their beloved’s presence alone melts away the horridness of the day?
Fight scenes, and by extension love scenes, live and die from how well you use “Show”. For all intensive purposes there are only so many ways to swing a sword, throw a punch, pull a trigger, and so on in a fight. There are only so much fun things to do in the bedroom that I probably can’t describe outside of the Erotica and Arena of Controversy pages without getting flagged by a mod beyond a lot of back and forth motions.
The show wins out because you get the emotion of the events. Telling risks being too clinical or treating everything as high important when you can just skip a lot of the more detailed aspects of it. Also try to assume that the person reading this is not a historian or martial artists, or in the case of bedroom fun, medical personel that specialize in this area as being too clinical can ruin the pacing and take one out of the moment.
However by using more creative uses of words, or focusing on elements of great import, we can cut out the fat and get to the meat of it. To get you emotionally invested.
Good examples that are brought up in this regard are brought up in Hello Future Me’s “On Writing Fight Scenes! [Saderson I GoT I The Shining I Dragon Tattoo].” In it he describes the use of using short, not complete sentences used by Lee Child (Jack Reacher) and RF Kuang (The Poppy War). With Child, its to never let a moment linger. That the very act of fighting leaves one little time to think; only act and react. The latter’s use of it reflects the “brutal and sharp movements of martial arts.” Either way it reminds me of the Mike Tyson quote: Everyone has a plan until they get punched.” Once the action starts, you do not have time to think what you’ll do next.
Romance, likewise. Focusing on the emotions, the physical reactions to the positive sensations of the moment. Maybe its because I haven’t read it in a while and I read it in my early 20’s, The Book The Wolf’s Hour (a spy novel during WW2 where the British spy is also a werewolf) the love scenes felt all the more loving and intense because of the Showing. Compare this to the telling in The Dinosaur Knights, and I was left with a feeling of “that’s it?”
In both cases telling would get too clinical. While a detailed look at things can help you dissect how to make a fight work, or to improve your own prowess to study the movements if you are learning the fighting style. But as someone looking for entertainment, you don’t need to go over every blow by blow like a commentator at a fight. You can focus on the parts that make it interesting. To keep it flowing. You are to be as Bruce Lee says: be water. At no point does he say be be the dam.
To use a film example of where its done well, look at the end of the fight between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi. Spoilers for this section, but I am assuming most of us are either old enough to have seen this as kids, and if we have not: You poor child.
In all seriousness, Luke has Vader at his mercy and with Vader meekly falling down, Luke lops off his hand. As the Emperor walks closer, cackling all the way, and the Music plays the Emperor’s theme, Luke has a revelation. Nothing is said, but the look on his face says it all. The scene cuts to Vader’s stump, the melted wires and gears that once operated the prosthesis left open to the air. Luke then looks at and squeezes his corresponding hand, once lopped off by Vader and too is mechanical. Both hands taken when both men were enraged and fallen to the Dark Side of the Force. Luke realizes he is becoming his father. All without words.
Or another is in two of the big fights Alita has in the film Alita: Battle Angel. Again some spoilers, but leaving out most of the details. In her initial fight against the three serial killers, and during the Sports arena, all her foes have in some way or another discarded their humanity. Many of them look more machine or insectoid than human. While she, anime eyes aside, looks very human. She maintains a humanity she hasn’t had in literally hundreds of years, while they discarded theirs to become monsters for power and glory.
Or lets look at the final Fight Between Wing Zero and Epyon in Mobile Suit Gundam Wing. While both machines are weapons of mass destruction, with Zero practically having the finger of God for a cannon, there is a clear divisions between the two mechs. Wing Zero is more angelic, even more so in the Endless Waltz OVA. Its White, with some blue and gold to break up its outline. Its travel mode is more bird or jet like in design. Epyon on the other hand is red, and black, with a wickedly sharp whip attacked to one arm, and a beam saber that can cut space stations in half (and literally does at one point). Its flight mode looks like a two headed dragons. Its wings in both more draconic in comparison as well.
It’s a fight between an angel and a devel, a clear battle good vs evil.
The examples could keep going. However Showing and Not Telling is not the be all-end all its cracked up to be. It has its problems. If you do too much of the colorful languages, you risk purple prose. This is when the descriptors take away from the scene, usually be dragging the pace to a halt. There are times when you just need to get to the point. To be short and sweet. Not all details are needed, and when showing you must do the ones that mean the most to the story. You are making a serious moment but melodramatic. Melodrama has its time and place, but unless you are trying to evoke it can take away from the intent of a scene. THis is one of the areas Brandon Sanderson has a problem with the Show Don't Tell maxim. Also, some scenes are better suited to getting to the point as fast as possible than stretching it out with the lots of descriptives.
Some areas Alyssa Matestic says could work in this area in her video “The Most Misunderstood Writing Advise,” where I get the Chekov quote above, include:
Transitions, such as a character going from one location to another, or its been some time between events. We don’t need to go overboard with describing all the details of what happened from point A to B.
Some background info on a character. Example is someone is a best friend of a character since highschool.
A scene that uses tell pretty well, but the more I think about it has elements of show, happens after the inciting incident. So lets go over the tell part of It as that is the strongest: The scene in the first John Wick film in which Russian Mob Boss Viggo Tarasov tells his son, Iosef, how screwed he is.
Spoilers ahead I mean heavy spoilers the film changes course heavy, but Iosef has broken into the house of our protagonist John Wick. He beats him up, killed his puppy, and stole his car. All while he is mourning the loss of his wife who not only died recently but knew he would be too heart broken to do anything if left to his own devises. So prior to her death she gotten him the puppy so he could love something again. So we are already on his side to rip unholy hell on Iosif.
Then his dad, Viggo, finds out what happens and while stoic is scared shitless for his son. So much so that sends him to the ground with a gut punch before telling the story of what kind of man Iosif attacked. Back when he was part of their organization, John was called “Babayaga,” something Ioseph says is the Boogeyman (which more or less in Russian folklore is correct). His father then uses this line:
“He wasn’t exactly the Boogeyman. He was who you sent to kill the F**king Boogeyman.”
This is further by one story his father tells of seeing John kill four men with a pencil. Just a simple pencil.
The show part of this is when scene goes from the perspective of the three mobsters in a well-lit, very comfortable room with books and artwork lining the walls, and a well-stocked bar. We cut quickly to John Wick descending a flight of stairs to his basement, with the hall light being the only illumination. As if he is literally descending into darkness.
Or later on when Vigo describes John’s character as a Man of focus, commitment, and sheer will, those three descriptors are punctuated by John breaking the concrete floor with a sledgehammer. This drives home a point the sheer destructive willpower the man has.
One that could easily go both ways on how well it mixes is when Vigo says that one day John wanted out, “over a woman of course,” so he gave him an impossible task that no one could humanly be able to do. A task he not only completed, but says “the bodies he buried that day laid a foundation of what we are now.” Metaphor made obvious: A good foundation keeps a building standing after years, and allows even the tallest ones to stand strong against some of the worst storms nature can throw at them. And John’s actions made a very strong foundation for them.
Another that utilizes both is a scene from Yarick: Chains of Golgotha. It’s a Warhammer 40k book following an encounter between two of 40k’s more popular characters: One, The human Commissar Yarrick, a old man that has done so many heroics even the inhuman Space Marines love and respect him. The Other, the Ork Ghazghkull, the greatest ork warlord in generations. You don’t need to know much about the setting to get into, but the uninitiated: Orks live for war (they actually physically start starving in a way if they are not fighting or getting into a fight). Is what they were literally made for long before human ancestors were little more than rodent like animals.
Haven’t red the book so relying on one of the Astartesanonymous shorts “Ghazghull’s RESPET for Yarrick.”
When describing his situation, Yarik uses show words like “strode” instead of walked up, but uses the tell in he stopped before him. However the rest shows where to put the Show part that indicates his hatred of the ork. He has cold hatred, while Ghaz Radiates delight. Instead of saying huge and super strong, Yarrik indicates this with “Colossus” and “Bestial” to give a kind of nature to that armored and powerful build of his.
The terrors he faced while a POW, did not so much damage his state of mind but “Left scars” on his soul. That his waking hours this moment is a "goad" to a “Call to action” by this one moment on the day he is set free. A moment that doesn’t just keep him unable to get a good night sleep but to “Murders” it.
However its when Ghaz speaks to him, that it all tell, and it is terrifying enough. While Orks are beloved by the fans for being the comic relief race in the game (yes, really look up Mr. Potato Stompa or Orkimus Prime for how the fans kit bash stuff), with a personality and vehicles that can best be described as all the bad guys of a Max Max Movie combined and taken to 11. Their biggest weakness if they are, to quote Tremmor’s Two: “so smart because they are So stupid.”
Ghaz is showing a moment of intelligence. As far as orks are concerned, he just found his best friend because Yarrik gave him a good fight, and he doesn’t want to waste this moment. So he is letting him go, to an apply named planet of Armageddon for the next wave of Orc attacks because its going to be fun for them.
Ghaz. Is. Being. SMART. And for an ork to act intelligently by a conventional standard while still acting like an orc is on par with the daemons of the Warp that leak into reality, and or the Tyranid Hive fleets that consume all life and resources of a planet before moving on to another. Doing nothing but Tell is enough to get the point across.
So, what are your thoughts on the matter? Areas to focusus on, the strengths and weaknesses of both, and examples you personally like?
ANd for funsies, the John Whick Scene and the seccton from Yarrik
As for my thoughts:
Show don’t tell is one of the oldest and most commonly used maxims in writing. Yet it is confusing to say the least on where and how to use it. Should we avoid telling all together or are there actually moments when we SHOULD just tell our audience what is going on.
To quote Jenna Moreci’s video “Show vs Tell-When to Show,”
“Showing means evoking emotion through your storytelling and making the reader feel as though they are right there in the scene. You’re painting clear visuals, and getting their senses Activated.
Telling is in informative, you’re simply stating facts.”
The term is accredited to famed Russian Playwright and author Anton Chekhov, the guy we get “Chekhov’s Gun” from. Specifically this quote:
“Don’t tell me the moon in is shining; show me the light on broken glass.”
On the showing side of things, you use metaphor, simile, and interesting word choice to get your point across. To make a scene come to life. Its an area one should focus on as this holds a reader’s attention. This keeps them wanting more. By making them relate to someone that may not even have ever existed in the case of most fiction.
Is a character angry? How mad are they?
Upset? Miffed? Annoyed? Heated? Raging? Wrathful? Radiating hate?
Are they in love? At what stage or how in love are they?
Hand Holding? Twitterpated? Devoted? Lustful? Their beloved’s presence alone melts away the horridness of the day?
Fight scenes, and by extension love scenes, live and die from how well you use “Show”. For all intensive purposes there are only so many ways to swing a sword, throw a punch, pull a trigger, and so on in a fight. There are only so much fun things to do in the bedroom that I probably can’t describe outside of the Erotica and Arena of Controversy pages without getting flagged by a mod beyond a lot of back and forth motions.
The show wins out because you get the emotion of the events. Telling risks being too clinical or treating everything as high important when you can just skip a lot of the more detailed aspects of it. Also try to assume that the person reading this is not a historian or martial artists, or in the case of bedroom fun, medical personel that specialize in this area as being too clinical can ruin the pacing and take one out of the moment.
However by using more creative uses of words, or focusing on elements of great import, we can cut out the fat and get to the meat of it. To get you emotionally invested.
Good examples that are brought up in this regard are brought up in Hello Future Me’s “On Writing Fight Scenes! [Saderson I GoT I The Shining I Dragon Tattoo].” In it he describes the use of using short, not complete sentences used by Lee Child (Jack Reacher) and RF Kuang (The Poppy War). With Child, its to never let a moment linger. That the very act of fighting leaves one little time to think; only act and react. The latter’s use of it reflects the “brutal and sharp movements of martial arts.” Either way it reminds me of the Mike Tyson quote: Everyone has a plan until they get punched.” Once the action starts, you do not have time to think what you’ll do next.
Romance, likewise. Focusing on the emotions, the physical reactions to the positive sensations of the moment. Maybe its because I haven’t read it in a while and I read it in my early 20’s, The Book The Wolf’s Hour (a spy novel during WW2 where the British spy is also a werewolf) the love scenes felt all the more loving and intense because of the Showing. Compare this to the telling in The Dinosaur Knights, and I was left with a feeling of “that’s it?”
In both cases telling would get too clinical. While a detailed look at things can help you dissect how to make a fight work, or to improve your own prowess to study the movements if you are learning the fighting style. But as someone looking for entertainment, you don’t need to go over every blow by blow like a commentator at a fight. You can focus on the parts that make it interesting. To keep it flowing. You are to be as Bruce Lee says: be water. At no point does he say be be the dam.
To use a film example of where its done well, look at the end of the fight between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi. Spoilers for this section, but I am assuming most of us are either old enough to have seen this as kids, and if we have not: You poor child.
In all seriousness, Luke has Vader at his mercy and with Vader meekly falling down, Luke lops off his hand. As the Emperor walks closer, cackling all the way, and the Music plays the Emperor’s theme, Luke has a revelation. Nothing is said, but the look on his face says it all. The scene cuts to Vader’s stump, the melted wires and gears that once operated the prosthesis left open to the air. Luke then looks at and squeezes his corresponding hand, once lopped off by Vader and too is mechanical. Both hands taken when both men were enraged and fallen to the Dark Side of the Force. Luke realizes he is becoming his father. All without words.
Or another is in two of the big fights Alita has in the film Alita: Battle Angel. Again some spoilers, but leaving out most of the details. In her initial fight against the three serial killers, and during the Sports arena, all her foes have in some way or another discarded their humanity. Many of them look more machine or insectoid than human. While she, anime eyes aside, looks very human. She maintains a humanity she hasn’t had in literally hundreds of years, while they discarded theirs to become monsters for power and glory.
Or lets look at the final Fight Between Wing Zero and Epyon in Mobile Suit Gundam Wing. While both machines are weapons of mass destruction, with Zero practically having the finger of God for a cannon, there is a clear divisions between the two mechs. Wing Zero is more angelic, even more so in the Endless Waltz OVA. Its White, with some blue and gold to break up its outline. Its travel mode is more bird or jet like in design. Epyon on the other hand is red, and black, with a wickedly sharp whip attacked to one arm, and a beam saber that can cut space stations in half (and literally does at one point). Its flight mode looks like a two headed dragons. Its wings in both more draconic in comparison as well.
It’s a fight between an angel and a devel, a clear battle good vs evil.
The examples could keep going. However Showing and Not Telling is not the be all-end all its cracked up to be. It has its problems. If you do too much of the colorful languages, you risk purple prose. This is when the descriptors take away from the scene, usually be dragging the pace to a halt. There are times when you just need to get to the point. To be short and sweet. Not all details are needed, and when showing you must do the ones that mean the most to the story. You are making a serious moment but melodramatic. Melodrama has its time and place, but unless you are trying to evoke it can take away from the intent of a scene. THis is one of the areas Brandon Sanderson has a problem with the Show Don't Tell maxim. Also, some scenes are better suited to getting to the point as fast as possible than stretching it out with the lots of descriptives.
Some areas Alyssa Matestic says could work in this area in her video “The Most Misunderstood Writing Advise,” where I get the Chekov quote above, include:
Transitions, such as a character going from one location to another, or its been some time between events. We don’t need to go overboard with describing all the details of what happened from point A to B.
Some background info on a character. Example is someone is a best friend of a character since highschool.
A scene that uses tell pretty well, but the more I think about it has elements of show, happens after the inciting incident. So lets go over the tell part of It as that is the strongest: The scene in the first John Wick film in which Russian Mob Boss Viggo Tarasov tells his son, Iosef, how screwed he is.
Spoilers ahead I mean heavy spoilers the film changes course heavy, but Iosef has broken into the house of our protagonist John Wick. He beats him up, killed his puppy, and stole his car. All while he is mourning the loss of his wife who not only died recently but knew he would be too heart broken to do anything if left to his own devises. So prior to her death she gotten him the puppy so he could love something again. So we are already on his side to rip unholy hell on Iosif.
Then his dad, Viggo, finds out what happens and while stoic is scared shitless for his son. So much so that sends him to the ground with a gut punch before telling the story of what kind of man Iosif attacked. Back when he was part of their organization, John was called “Babayaga,” something Ioseph says is the Boogeyman (which more or less in Russian folklore is correct). His father then uses this line:
“He wasn’t exactly the Boogeyman. He was who you sent to kill the F**king Boogeyman.”
This is further by one story his father tells of seeing John kill four men with a pencil. Just a simple pencil.
The show part of this is when scene goes from the perspective of the three mobsters in a well-lit, very comfortable room with books and artwork lining the walls, and a well-stocked bar. We cut quickly to John Wick descending a flight of stairs to his basement, with the hall light being the only illumination. As if he is literally descending into darkness.
Or later on when Vigo describes John’s character as a Man of focus, commitment, and sheer will, those three descriptors are punctuated by John breaking the concrete floor with a sledgehammer. This drives home a point the sheer destructive willpower the man has.
One that could easily go both ways on how well it mixes is when Vigo says that one day John wanted out, “over a woman of course,” so he gave him an impossible task that no one could humanly be able to do. A task he not only completed, but says “the bodies he buried that day laid a foundation of what we are now.” Metaphor made obvious: A good foundation keeps a building standing after years, and allows even the tallest ones to stand strong against some of the worst storms nature can throw at them. And John’s actions made a very strong foundation for them.
Another that utilizes both is a scene from Yarick: Chains of Golgotha. It’s a Warhammer 40k book following an encounter between two of 40k’s more popular characters: One, The human Commissar Yarrick, a old man that has done so many heroics even the inhuman Space Marines love and respect him. The Other, the Ork Ghazghkull, the greatest ork warlord in generations. You don’t need to know much about the setting to get into, but the uninitiated: Orks live for war (they actually physically start starving in a way if they are not fighting or getting into a fight). Is what they were literally made for long before human ancestors were little more than rodent like animals.
Haven’t red the book so relying on one of the Astartesanonymous shorts “Ghazghull’s RESPET for Yarrick.”
Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka awaited me beside the ship’s access ramp. I did not hesitate as I strode towards the monster. I stopped before him. I met his gaze with all the cold hatred in my soul.
He Radiated delight. Then leaned forward. A colossus of armor and bestial strength, our faces mere centimeters apart.
My soul bears many scars from the days and months of my defeat and captivity, but there is one memory that above all others haunts me. By day it is a goad to action, and by night it murders my sleep. It lives with me always the proof there could hardly be a more terrible to the Imperium than this one ork.
Thraka spoke to me, not in orkish, not even in Low Gothic; in High Gothic.
“A good Fight.” He said, extending a huge clawed fingertip, tapping my chest. “My Best enemy. “ He stepped aside and gestured to the ramp.
“Go to Armageddon.” He said. “Make ready for the greatest fight!”
He Radiated delight. Then leaned forward. A colossus of armor and bestial strength, our faces mere centimeters apart.
My soul bears many scars from the days and months of my defeat and captivity, but there is one memory that above all others haunts me. By day it is a goad to action, and by night it murders my sleep. It lives with me always the proof there could hardly be a more terrible to the Imperium than this one ork.
Thraka spoke to me, not in orkish, not even in Low Gothic; in High Gothic.
“A good Fight.” He said, extending a huge clawed fingertip, tapping my chest. “My Best enemy. “ He stepped aside and gestured to the ramp.
“Go to Armageddon.” He said. “Make ready for the greatest fight!”
When describing his situation, Yarik uses show words like “strode” instead of walked up, but uses the tell in he stopped before him. However the rest shows where to put the Show part that indicates his hatred of the ork. He has cold hatred, while Ghaz Radiates delight. Instead of saying huge and super strong, Yarrik indicates this with “Colossus” and “Bestial” to give a kind of nature to that armored and powerful build of his.
The terrors he faced while a POW, did not so much damage his state of mind but “Left scars” on his soul. That his waking hours this moment is a "goad" to a “Call to action” by this one moment on the day he is set free. A moment that doesn’t just keep him unable to get a good night sleep but to “Murders” it.
However its when Ghaz speaks to him, that it all tell, and it is terrifying enough. While Orks are beloved by the fans for being the comic relief race in the game (yes, really look up Mr. Potato Stompa or Orkimus Prime for how the fans kit bash stuff), with a personality and vehicles that can best be described as all the bad guys of a Max Max Movie combined and taken to 11. Their biggest weakness if they are, to quote Tremmor’s Two: “so smart because they are So stupid.”
Ghaz is showing a moment of intelligence. As far as orks are concerned, he just found his best friend because Yarrik gave him a good fight, and he doesn’t want to waste this moment. So he is letting him go, to an apply named planet of Armageddon for the next wave of Orc attacks because its going to be fun for them.
Ghaz. Is. Being. SMART. And for an ork to act intelligently by a conventional standard while still acting like an orc is on par with the daemons of the Warp that leak into reality, and or the Tyranid Hive fleets that consume all life and resources of a planet before moving on to another. Doing nothing but Tell is enough to get the point across.
So, what are your thoughts on the matter? Areas to focusus on, the strengths and weaknesses of both, and examples you personally like?
ANd for funsies, the John Whick Scene and the seccton from Yarrik
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