How do you show-don't-tell thoughts?

The reply was two sentences long (edit: unless you count that short little fragment). It's not absolutely crucial that "dead" be spoonfed to the reader within the first two sentences (which I thought implied a cancer-death on their own nicely anyway; most readers are smarter than you seem to be giving them credit for). They were still more evocative unchanged, and either way, it was just a quick example someone gave you--no need to go about "correcting" it, as it does indeed come across as trying to show off.

Isn't "the dead part" being omitted the point of the exercise? If this is in fact an exercise?

Anna Spargo-Ryan said:

Isn't "the dead part" being omitted the point of the exercise? If this is in fact an exercise?

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Sure, but sometimes saying someone is dead is just better. Without any context for how the line given as an example would fit into an actual story, it is nearly impossible to judge if the sentence should be unpacked or not. Not every sentence need be unpacked, and unless it is needed unpacking just makes for flabby prose.

what? said:

How do you show the craving for chocolate when you write from a first person perspective, without using any words that refer to the craving? How do you show that someone loves to think (instead of doing other things), without refering to those thoughts?

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You don't, and I don't think anyone, not even Chuck P, has advised writers not to.

To take your particular examples, you can have your character think about chocolate in a very visceral, sensual way. Or you can take us a brief tour through one of John's daydreams (but only if it's relevant; you wouldn't do this just to be doing it because it would be boring for the reader), rather than just explain (tell) that he likes to daydream.

Lillith1991 said:

Sure, but sometimes saying someone is dead is just better. Without any context for how the line given as an example would fit into an actual story, it is nearly impossible to judge if the sentence should be unpacked or not. Not every sentence need be unpacked, and unless it is needed unpacking just makes for flabby prose.

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Oh, I completely agree. I am a big fan of succinct prose. I just mean in the context of this (strange) thread.

sportourer1 said:

Show don't tell is an obsession of Saturday morning creative writing classes. Don't get hung up on it as 99.9999% of readers have never even heard of the concept and care even less as long as the story grips them

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How right you are. A good story will overcome shortness of everything.

dda27101 said:

How right you are. A good story will overcome shortness of everything.

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Wrong. The art of story telling is a delicate balance, and some things like adequately painting a picture of cast and setting are intergral to story telling. If characterization is off or one thing is good but the other story components aren't there, the story won't be an enjoyable read. A good story is one where the mistakes aren't in peoples faces, allowing them to enjoy it. Maybe plot isn't as strong but character and everything else is etc.

Seconding Lilith. I can think of some good general examples from the exotic romance genre. If you read the one and two-star reviews of a *lot* of short erotic romance novels, you'll find a common complaint of not enough depth in character, plot, and worldbuilding. Short is not necessarily better.

what? said:

"It is late, the shops are closed, and I am overwhelmed by a strong craving for chocolate. I try to suppress it, but I can't sleep, so I get up out of bed and walk across town to the gas station to buy chocolate."

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It's late and hot, and what with everything I can't sleep worth a damn. I wipe the sweat away, trudge the mile to the all nighter, and spend an hour deciding what my twenty quid is going to go on. Galaxy caramel eggs. They don;t have any, and I consider throttling the guy behind the counter but it ain#t his fault.

"Last night she dreamed of her dead mother."

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I woke up screaming, as usual, mouth full of cotton and fear. Even dead, my mother still dominates my life





I think you're overthinking in some respects

Often, (if you do it right) even by telling one thing you can be showing something else. It's always worth considering if you can show it better though (sometimes the answer will be no, and that is fine)

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderlay again."

I guess sometimes that construction works.

sportourer1 said:

Show don't tell is an obsession of Saturday morning creative writing classes. Don't get hung up on it as 99.9999% of readers have never even heard of the concept and care even less as long as the story grips them

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And one way to make sure the story grips them is to use show don't tell. So what if they've never heard of it? That's like saying I can't tell the difference between engine performances in different cars because I don't know the technical term for cylinder. A reader knows they're engaged with one story and not another, and I know when a car is taking a hell of a time to climb a hill.

I just don't see much wrong with the line, "Last night, I dreamed of my dead mother." I would probably change it to, "Last night, I dreamed about my dead mother," but I think adding too much too it makes it sound like you're trying too hard.

Besides that, without any context, it's hard to know whether it was a good dream, a nightmare, an indifferent one, etc. Whenever I dream about my grandmother who is also dead, it usually falls into either a good dream where we're all happy because she's still alive or a sad one because we miss her. Reading the line above, I wouldn't necessarily think nightmare.

what? said:

Please regard this as a an exercise in style. Just as Walt Disney drew nudes for recreation, I'm trying to write show-don't-tell where it does not apply.

?

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..

Originally Posted by what?
Please regard this as a an exercise in style. Just as Walt Disney drew nudes for recreation, I'm trying to write show-don't-tell where it does not apply.

you had me at nudes.


*typing at half-speed....



I'm also aware that show-don't-tell isn't a law. Not even Chuck Palahniuk always heeds his own advice:

"I know this because Tyler knows this." ~ from the second page of Fight Club.

1. right off: this line of logic is a rabbit-hole and a time- and confidence-suck. Or, worse, justification for snowflakery. ALL rules get broken. But a lot of new writers detail everything through heavy filtering, and ten pages of

He thought Beth was pretty. Her hair was like the wings of a raven, that jet-black, only more hair-like, like if a raven had a baby with a horse and then you felt its mane, after washing and conditioning it, and her breasts were like big, lovely water balloons, and he thought her areola were like lovely slices of pepperoni. He loved pepperoni. He thought they might taste sort of like pepperoni, if you took pepperoni and sprayed it with some exotic lavender-scented perfume and then kissed and licked it, and the thought made him stiffen.

He thought maybe he should ask her to bed. "Would you like to go to bed with me? not to sleep, I mean," he asked shyly.

"that's good," Beth replied, "I am not tired."

He thought she looked flattered, and maybe a touch aroused. She would be very skilled in the intercourse arts, he thought.

...is mind-numbing. Chuck isn't saying if you do this one thing, on the rare occasions it is appropriate, ninjas will come steal and chop up your baby. he is saying it is often over-used, so avoid it. And to that end, I agree with him. People still think, but it is often enough to cut the "he thought" as implied and just tell us what he thought.

She had a cute butt, Bill thought = She had a cute butt. We really don't need the "Bill thought."

Harry hated policemen. They were all fat, corrupt, and lazy, he thought. = Harry hated policemen--they were all fat, corrupt, and lazy.
* * *

....

"It is late, the shops are closed, and I am overwhelmed by a strong craving for chocolate. I try to suppress it, but I can't sleep, so I get up out of bed and walk across town to the gas station to buy chocolate."

there's nothing wrong with that. You COULD change it to "It is late, shops are closed, and I'd kill for a chocolate. Christ, maybe I could sleep then." or similar, and tidy things up a bit, but there's nothing wrong with it as is, either. Like I said, I took chuck's advice to mean "avoid an entire string of lines which all and or begin with "Larry thought," which is an unneeded tag to whatever makes up the rest of the sentence in most cases."

"It is late, the shops are closed, and I am overwhelmed by a strong craving for chocolate. I try to suppress it, but I can't sleep, so I get up out of bed and walk across town to the gas station to buy chocolate."

there's nothing wrong with that. You COULD change it to "It is late, shops are closed, and I'd kill for a chocolate. Christ, maybe I could sleep then." or similar, and tidy things up a bit, but there's nothing wrong with it as is, either. Like I said, I took chuck's advice to mean "avoid an entire string of lines which all and or begin with "Larry thought," which is an unneeded tag to whatever makes up the rest of the sentence in most cases."

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Then there is always cutting to the chase: I stood outside the all-night BP station on the sketchy side of town, cramming Twix after Twix down my gullet and wearing nothing but polka-dot boxer shorts and a too-tight sweater vest. Damn these middle of the night cravings. Damn them all to hell.

Maybe it's just me but I find that sort of thing more engaging than the stair-steppy "I couldn't sleep, so I got up, and I walked across town and then, and then ..."

you can show craving without mentioning it

The essayist's style is by nature slow-moving and laborious, more wide then deep. It tends toward abstraction and precision without much power, as we see instantly when we compare any two descriptions, one discursive one poetic.
ln the essayist's style we might write, for instance," The man in the doorway was large and apparently ill at ease--so large that he had to stoop a little and draw in his elbows."
The poetic style can run harder at its effects:"He filled the doorway, awkward as a horse."
Both styles, needless to say, can be of use

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.
John Gardner, the Art of Fiction

Show don't tell is one of the more widely misunderstood pieces of writing advice out there, imo. It seems to be used in two different ways, one to encourage the writer using narrative to "show" story events as they unfold, rather than writing something that reads as a summary of events.

But this does not mean there's never a place for narrative summary. Imagine if we detailed every detail of a journey from point A to point B where nothing much happened.

The other way it's used is to encourage writers to provide narrative description. Instead of simply saying "my thumb hurt," describe the way it throbs with each heartbeat, sending spikes of pain up my arm.

And this gets to a common misconception: that "showing" (in a literary sense) is just about visual description. I've seen people insist that you can only show what the hurt thumb looks like from without, or describe what I do as a consequence of my banged thumb (howl and dance around, cursing).

Rot, in my opinion. Totally depends on who is perceiving my banged thumb. Unless I'm having an out of body experience, my focus will be on how my sore thumb feels. I might not even know that I'm yelling foul words right away.

Another misconception about showing and telling is that it's all or nothing. Somewhere on the continuum between "The girl was pretty" and an in-depth description of every strand of her hair, the exact shade of her eyes, her smooth skin etc., may lie your oyster.

So how to "show" thoughts? There are tons of ways. The main thing is to put them in the context of what's happening and not to neglect the emotions of the person experiencing them.

Want to drive yourself crazy? Try writing a MS in which some, but not all, characters have evolved to thought and memory perception. Not a whole ton of fun when it comes to editing.

I would start by not writing in present tense.

The only problem I have with show-don't-tell is that it runs counter to the ideal of simple writing. Often, showing a single thought might take 20 words where one or two would do. That happens 100 times a chapter and we have an extra 2000 words in the manuscript and probably a bulky, unpleasant read.

But writing can also be too sparse, and many beginning writers need the show-don't-tell advice mainly to remember to slow down and internalize, especially when a writer is more used to visual media than prose media.

This is a balance. Extremes exist for artistic and stylistic reasons. Most books fall somewhere in the middle and the problem with applying both pieces of advice (show-don't-tell and efficient wording) is that they are, at the extremes, contradictory. Our art is in making them co-exist, not in simply re-stating or re-hashing the rule. We balancing on the monkey bars in the playground. One arm and then the other. Occasionally we fall.

I agree that sometimes it's easiest, and simplest to summarize. We don't need to show every step of a character's drive home from work, or describe every single minor character she encounters in loving detail. Flow, pacing, point of view, and yes, voice, will all play a role in what you describe and how.

However, I think it's possible to show things most of time without writing bloated sentences. Think what it is your pov character would actually notice in that situation, and what sort of effect the things they notice might have on them. Then think of how to put it the way he or she would.

VeryBigBeard said:

The only problem I have with show-don't-tell is that it runs counter to the ideal of simple writing.

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Since when is "simple" writing the ideal?

Clear writing, compelling writing, yes. "Simple" is a style, not a goal or an ideal, except in particular circumstances, such as fiction for young children.

IMO.