Show and Not Tell Technique?

I like reading and have the luxury of time to indulge, but does anyone else have the problem of getting to wrapped up in the work and forgetting to study how the author paints a scene or moves the story forward? I am sure that some of it will flow into my writing, like osmosis, but I also feel like I am not getting the full benefit of learning about writing techniques.

+1

I find it much easier to spot where and how an author has done something clumsily*, than I do to dissect and analyse the good stuff.

* a category that ranges from 'oops' to 'hurl at a wall'

I've found that if you read a lot of good stuff your writing improves even if you don't analyse what you're reading as you go along. I've seen it happen so many times. Analysis helps, of course: but the reading is the key.

"Show vs tell" is quite possibly the biggest concern facing every beginning writer and is close to number one in every writing group out there. Many people are unsure how they can relay details about characters if they can't tell the reader them and it gets even more confusing when they hear someone say "Well, some telling is okay, but not all telling".

That being said, it's way overstated in the writing community. To actually tell an entire novel or even a few pages is exceedingly difficult. It's a lot more simple to avoid than many people think and therefore a lot more rare. I've read lots of SYW posts here and on other websites and most adults who read often are able to either consciously or subconsciously recognize what "show, don't tell" means and avoid it in their writing. I'd say the vast majority of them do. It's primarily an age-related thing which teenagers often fall prey to.

All that "show, don't tell" means is that we have to be experiencing the novel right along with your characters. This is different from being told a story- "Sally's hair was dark and curly". That's telling. "Sally's hair was the color of night and often curled around her shoulders like the many tails of some strange and exotic beast"= showing. The former is bland and boring while the latter is more interesting to a reader. That's really all there is to it.

Chazemataz said:

All that "show, don't tell" means is that we have to be experiencing the novel right along with your characters. This is different from being told a story- "Sally's hair was dark and curly". That's telling. "Sally's hair was the color of night and often curled around her shoulders like the many tails of some strange and exotic beast"= showing. The former is bland and boring while the latter is more interesting to a reader. That's really all there is to it.

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Doesn't this start to stray into the dreaded purple prose arena?

I actually think the latter counts as telling, too. If I wanted to show someone having curly hair I would mention it when they tangle a finger in it while they're thinking, or something.

I took a workshop a few weeks ago called Tell, Don't Show, about when and how to use telling. The teacher gave us a handout of examples of really beautiful, evocative, voice-y telling. The one I remember off the top of my head was from Brokeback Mountain. And it was the kind of thing that would be workshopped into oblivion by most groups, lol.

The main thing I try to keep in mind is avoiding what TV Tropes calls Informed _____. This is where the story tells the reader that a character is a certain way, but it just doesn't play out in the story. I mean, sometimes this is done intentionally for irony, but mostly not. So my advice is if you're tempted to tell the reader something about a character, wait and ask yourself if the reader will make that determination on their own throughout the story.

Callegro said:

Doesn't this start to stray into the dreaded purple prose arena?

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Oh yes. I would be really rolling my eyes at that. But I like my writing sparse.

Callegro said:

Doesn't this start to stray into the dreaded purple prose arena?

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It was a quick example & not meant to be perfect!

lenore_x said:

I took a workshop a few weeks ago called Tell, Don't Show, about when and how to use telling

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The "Show don't tell" advice has been wrongly interpreted to mean that telling is somehow evil. There are several reasons why you might decide to tell something. For instance, it would be silly to show every one the million steps of a trek of a thousand miles if nothing important happened during the trek. Also, the blandness of most telling can be used to orchestrate the tension in a long section of a book, much the way comic relief is used to defuse tension.

CAMueller said:

Thanks, Sage!

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Yeah, thanks, Sage! I just ran over to Chelsea's blog. *eyepop* So that's how you write a good blog.