Can you "Tell" after you have "Shown" ?

Can you "Tell" after you have "Shown" ?

I started to re-read a book I really enjoyed recently. The main reason was to see if I read it in a different way from the 1st time, bearing in mind all I had read here.

I felt I did read more in to certain things and I was looking at what was being said in more detail. Is that good?

Anyway, the good old "Show don't tell" thing has always got to me, so when I read this part:

"tugging at a belt that had no hope of ever making it up to his belly button"

I thought - Ok, a good way to show he's fat, has a beer belly etc.

Then, 10 lines later, it says "[Name] stuffed his fat hands into his jacket pockets.........."

Is the above line Telling me he has fat hands?, and if so, is it OK because I have already worked out he is fat from the "Show" above?

Or, am I reading to much into it?

Help!?!?!?!

Re: Can you "Tell" after you have "Shown&quot

You're reading too much into it. Ask yourself this: Did you enjoy the book more or less the second time?

Re: Can you "Tell" after you have "Shown&quot

"He shoved his fat hands in his pockets" is showing. You can, of course, cut out the "fat," so to speak. But the "fat" adds flavor. It's not the same as "telling" us that the guy is fat. You've already shown us the guy is fat, so later on you can simply say his fat hands, his fat toes, his fat ass...

Re: Can you "Tell" after you have "Shown&quot

Some tell is fine and necessary, but in this case, it is showing. Showing is an action, and the act of shoving his hands into his jacket pockets is show.

Fat Belly and More!

I agree, the second example is another incidence of showing. Yes, the author already presented the fact that the guy's fat by showing us his fat belly, but to show us he's got fat hands, too... What a visual that creates! You've got to be quite overweight to have your hands become recognizeably fat, and I can just see them stuffed into pockets.

This writer got a lot of mileage from a single word, IMHO. I should do so well!

Maryn

Re: Fat Belly and More!

I'm not so sure "He shoved his fat hands into his pockets" is showing. It seems a bit tell-ish, like "He combed his blond hair." Whose point of view is this? Is it the POV of another character who has the fat guy's fatness on his mind for some reason?

.

There is such a thing as being overly nitpicky when it comes to the show/tell mantra. It's useful advice, particularly for writers who are just starting out, but like grammar it can be broken. The one and only true rule that is hard and fast is that, whatever it is you are doing, it has to work.

Re: .

I also think it's more showing, but Reph has a great point. It's really difficult to describe your POV character without breaking POV.

Unless the character is self-conscious of how fat his hands are, it's not something he'd be thinking of when he stuck them in his pocket. And if you really want to bring the nitpick meter to extreme levels, putting hands in your pocket tends to be one of those subconscious things people do, like biting on nails or pulling on their hair--something they wouldn't even know they were doing unless someone else pointed it out.

Re: .

It's out of context. It's not really out of POV since the POV character could be aware and see that he's fat. Unlike "he smeared his bloody face with mud" where the POV probably couldn't tell his face is bloody...

I do agree that you can go overboard if you obsess over show vs. tell. If you find yourself doing an elaborate choreography just to tell us the woman has blond hair, you may have gone too far.

Re: .

Generally speaking, it sounds like the author wants you to dislike the man, and it isn't about being "fat", rather, being contemptible in some way.

Even though he is overweight, you've heard, "Get your big fat hands off of me..." Well, it gives a visual image of someone who is a bit self absorbed and over-indulgent.

Re: Fat Belly and More!

I'm not so sure "He shoved his fat hands into his pockets" is showing.

Click to expand...

Can you rewrite it in a way you would think of as showing?

As for point of view, if it's right, it's the POV of someone other than the man shoving his hands in his pockets.

Re: Fat Belly and More!

Slightly off topic but can you get around the rule of "show don't tell" if you incorporate the stuff you need to tell, into dialogue?

Re: Fat Belly and More!

Can you rewrite it in a way you would think of as showing?

"Sam squeezed his hands into his pockets, where they created a pair of unsightly bulges in the grease-stained fabric. George tried not to laugh."

That's telling, too, of course. Everything is telling, when you come down to it, unless illustrations carry part of the story.

. . . can you get around the rule of "show don't tell" if you incorporate the stuff you need to tell, into dialogue?

"Sam shoved his hands into his pockets. He grunted with the effort. 'I need bigger pockets or thinner hands,' he told George. 'I guess it's back to Weight Watchers for me.' "

Re: Fat Belly and More!

I think the 'show V tell' issue is a lot more important on the level of a paragraph, or a chapter.

For instance, you could write:
"Gerry was a man who'd gone insane. He stood every morning on the corner, directing traffic as though he were conducting an orchestra. He talked aloud to the voices in his head, and never changed clothes. But not so many years ago, he was a perfectly sane man. He'd been driven insane by losing all his stocks in the stock market. bla bla bla bla bla"

That would be telling. Telling is when you cram pack the entire story of Jerry into three dense paragraphs, spoiling all the intrigue the guy might've had.

Telling is more like:

Gerry waved his baton and the idling cars rolled forward. "Perfect! Brilliant," he thought.

and then you slowly roll out the picture of this freaky guy boy showing his actions, thoughts, etc over the course of... maybe even a whole book.

Re: Fat Belly and More!

I think "show vs. tell" is one of the hardest concept for storytellers to grasp. It's a matter of level of details.

1. "He is angry" -- the ultimate case of "telling."

2. "He put on his jacket and huffed." -- a little more "showing."

3. "He shoved his fat hands in his pocket and ground his teeth" -- more details, showing what he's doing, conveying a few things along the way.

4. "He shoved his hands in his pockets, only the lumpy tip of his breadstick-like fingers fit. Then he ground his teeth. 'F***,' he uttered." -- more showing, more details, more characterization.

There are times when either one of these would be fine. More details, slower pace, but more vivid.

Re: Fat Belly and More!

I think mostly what people mean by "show don't tell" is "describe what happens from the viewpoint of one of your characters". If the viewpoint character in the scene describes above is likely to notice that the character's hands are fat, then this is fine. If he isn't, leave it out -- or, if it's important to the story, find a way to draw his attention to it.

Telling is useful when it would be boring to show. That's a tough one to call, but as a rule of thumb you can tell anything that has no conflict in it.

Re: Fat Belly and More!

Telling is more like:

Click to expand...

I think you meant showing---

Shawn

Re: Fat Belly and More!

I think the main thrust of the "show don't tell" school is aimed at all of those amateur writers who will tell you how strong, smart, and loyal a character is -- But in the entire novel the character never does one single solitary thing that demonstrates strength, intelligence, or loyalty.

If you want the reader to believe something about your character you have to show the character doing it -- Otherwise the reader will not believe.

If you show the character doing it then you don't have to tell it -- Telling it is just being redundant.

But if you tell one aspect of something and then show its effect in the character's actions, then you can both show and tell to good effect:

You mention that your main character's father got in drunken stupors every Saturday night and whipped the child without mercy -- Then when you show the man being able to survive a beating that would cower most men and still retain his defiance -- You have made what you told believable with what you have shown.

Telling Vs. Showing

I think there's both less going on in the two examples, and more.

Less, because taken out of context, there's no way to evaluate the cumulative effect of each phrase on the whole story, or even on the paragraphs they appear in. These are both fragments of sentences.

More, because they complement each other. They both describe the same character, and they both describe his size. There are implications in each regarding his character--I interpret it as a sort of haplessness, because he tugs on the belt and fails to hold his gut in, and because non-aggressive people tend to hide their hands. Whether I'm right, and the author is using these images to support his contention that this character is not as competent as he might like, or whether he is using these images as contrast (one tighten's one's belt to emphasize one's gut and size, and one puts one's hands into one's pockets to go for a weapon) is not clear from this tiny sampling.

In both cases, I would class them as 'showing', because they are physically descriptive of a character. I also agree with the poster who commented that most people do not have 'fat' hands; this may be an important detail for that character.

However, going into too much detail is as bad as not giving enough. Descriptive passages slow the pace down and they can distract the reader from the real point of a paragraph, scene, or story. Where is the focus in each example? The original, belt-tightening bit is long and detailed; I get the impression it may have been part of the character's introduction to the reader. A mannerism such as how he tugs on his belt may therefore have been important. Later, the simple adjective 'fat' reminds the reader of the character's size while the main focus of the scene is somewhere else--say, on what he is saying.

Bah. Too much analysing. I'm going back to lurking.

Re: Telling Vs. Showing

Thanks to everyone for their replies.

Regarding POV, can someone show a few lines with this being done properly and then alter it to show it being done wronlgy?

The reason I ask for this is that, when I read a chapter in SYW, I think it reads ok and then one of the more experienced people here, finds some problems in it. I can understand some of the problems, and do learn from them, but I never see the problem with the text that they have typed "Whose point of view is that", against.

Help......please!!!

Cheers

Ned

Re: Telling Vs. Showing

Neddyf, let me try...

Consider John is the POV character.

"John shoved his fat hands in his jacket pockets. His face was flushed with tiny red dots. "Damn it," he muttered."


At first glance, the passage sounds fine. But if you consider a 3rd limited POV narration, when much is filtered through the POV character, you can see some problems (albeit minor):

1. "fat" -- that would only mean John knows he's fat and is self-aware and maybe even a bit self-loathing. As in "look at my fat hands" or "Lord, I am fat."

2. "tiny red dots" -- there's no way John would know his face is flushed with tiny red dots. An omniscient narrator would know, but not the 3rd limited POV.


If you really want to do it "right" (albeit anal about POV), you could write it such way:

"John shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. He could feel his face all flushed, itchy at places. "Damn it," he muttered."

Here, everything is filtered through the POV character.

Re: Telling Vs. Showing

" 'Fifty-two! Who the hell wears size fifty-two jockey shorts?' Ethel asked" is showing.

"He shoved his fat hands in his pockets" is quasi-showing.

"John was fat" is telling.