{"id":1958,"date":"2021-05-06T08:53:41","date_gmt":"2021-05-06T07:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edgeverse.org\/?p=1958"},"modified":"2025-04-16T05:36:50","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T04:36:50","slug":"show-or-tell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edgeverse.org\/?p=1958","title":{"rendered":"Show or Tell?"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Show or Tell<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Seth Godwynn<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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When it comes to writing, there\u2019s one convention that generally holds true. It\u2019s common wisdom that you should show<\/i> and not tell<\/i>. Of course sometimes you have to tell<\/i>, but as sweeping generalisations go, this one does make rather a lot of sense.<\/h6>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Telling is when the author, the narrator of the story, explains what\u2019s going on, or what has led up to a situation. It\u2019s when the story is explained to you with descriptions like:<\/p>

\u2018The author lived in a small apartment, and at weekends, he stared at himself in a mirror, wishing he could turn back time.\u2019<\/i><\/p>

The narrator has just told us everything we need to know. It\u2019s relayed to us the same way somebody might regale us a witty anecdote or tale. Before, we did not know the thing, and now we do. We have information we can use, but we didn\u2019t experience it, so it\u2019s unlikely we will care about it one way or another.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Telling is sometimes unavoidable but, when it is avoidable, it should be avoided. <\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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When an author shows<\/i> you what\u2019s happening, you\u2019re pulled into the narrative as the action is brought to life around you. It\u2019s something that you experience yourself. The same information as above could be shown to you like this:<\/p>

\u2018The author awoke in his small, cluttered apartment, his phone awkwardly perched next to his bed on a pile of well-thumbed novels. \u201cSaturday,\u201d he groaned to himself. No work, no job to hide behind, two whole days to be productive with his writing. <\/i><\/p>

He sat up, rubbing his hand over his short, cropped brown hair and caught his reflection in the dusty mirror. His eyes looked bloodshot and had thick black lines under them. \u201cI think I\u2019ve made a terrible mistake,\u201d he said to himself with a sigh, as he returned his attention to his chaotically disorganised surroundings.\u2019<\/i><\/p>

In this example, rather than telling the audience the information, the narrator has shown you the events as they unfold. The information is the same, but in the second example the scene is alive, the characters are active, and the audience imagines them as if they too were in that very room with them.<\/p>

A horrible example that illustrates the point perfectly comes from the television series, Star Trek. Many times in episodes of \u2018The Next Generation\u2019 and \u2018DS9\u2019, there would be an epic space-battle rendered as icons representing the various sides engaging on a monitor screen. While a dramatic, life or death struggle was going on outside, the viewers were shown tiny avatars moving backwards and forwards on a screen, as actors pretended, often unconvincingly, to be horrified.<\/p>

The decision was clearly a result of budgetary constraints, but the hollow and empty experience leaves the audience feeling cheated. There\u2019s no personal investment, no sense of drama, no connection to these events. They may as well not be happening.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to experience it, doesn\u2019t anyone really care?<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Writing is far more critical, and you don\u2019t have the excuse of budgetary limitations to hide behind. Your job, as an author, is to avoid cheating your audience. You have to draw them in and make them feel like the story is alive, and that they\u2019re a part of the action, perhaps imagining themselves as your brilliant and well-written protagonist, or observing as an emotionally invested spectator.<\/p>

Imagine your own personal experience of life. Luckily, and hopefully, you\u2019re not a brain floating in a jar. A human-being is a complex organism with a mind, a body and consciousness. That body is full of chemicals and senses, electrical signals flowing back and forth to a mind that we can scarcely comprehend the extent of.<\/p>

The human experience is meant to involve us living in the world, doing things for ourselves, touching, tasting, seeing, smelling and hearing the universe around us. Which is more real and more vibrant in your own mind, the last really excellent meal you had, or the time someone told you about a really excellent meal they<\/i> had eaten?<\/p>

It\u2019s not as obvious as it sounds. The chances are that if someone described for you their experience of something they tried, then your immediate thought would be that you might like to try that for yourself. That\u2019s simply how human beings work.<\/p>

If we relate that to our writing, we have to engage the audience by taking them on a journey into the experience of our characters. We want them to vividly imagine what it\u2019s like to be there, feeling the world as if it was real to them.<\/p>

Telling the audience means that they know what\u2019s happening, but they have no emotional investment in it\u2014it has left no real impression on them. Showing the audience adds a dimension to the story. It makes it real, connects at an emotional level with the reader and makes the characters believable as people. The difference between the two ways of presenting the same information is obvious and noticeable, especially to the reader.<\/p>

While it\u2019s better to show the audience the action, rather than describe it, it\u2019s sometimes unavoidable to take a slight shortcut. The author must tell the audience what\u2019s happening to set a scene, and there will be times when a certain amount of exposition is preferable.<\/p>

Fairy stories and fantasies often begin with a great deal of exposition, paragraphs of dull writing that set up the imaginary world where the story is set to take place. This is lazy writing and there really isn\u2019t any excuse for it. It\u2019s just as easy to take a character and have them experience the tale, revealing the layers of the environment to the audience as they happen or the effects of them are felt.<\/p>

This is the domain of the infamous Star Wars word crawl, where long, tedious lines roll past the audience before the movie begins. A well-written narrative shouldn\u2019t need this\u2014it would be able to take the reader on a journey without having large, clunky sign-posts to mark the way.<\/p>

As an aside, the Batman TV series from the 1960s deliberately subverted this principle to humorous effect, by placing quite literal large, clunky signs on just about anything it would take too long to describe via any other technique. The show broke a lot of rules like that, because the writers knew exactly what they were doing, and they probably wouldn\u2019t have tried had it been any other show.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Did he say something bad about Star Wars? The most annoying thing about the infamous info-dump crawl is how unnecessary it was. <\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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<\/a> The important thing to master is judging how and when to utilising the different methods of presenting your story. As a simple rule of thumb, if something is happening, take the audience into it and engage them with the story. If you\u2019re taking the audience into the scene, use the art of telling them simply to set the stage and let the action take it from there.<\/p>

If there is no other way, they have a character tell another what the audience needs to know, but always keep it brief, say no more than needs to be said about it.<\/p>

Keep the story moving and keep the audience engaged.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Download a free copy of 'A Novel Approach'<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Click the pic<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Click on the book cover above to go to our download page and get your completely free copy of this book It details all you need to do know to get you started on writing your own fictional novels. <\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Many thanks for reading this article. We hope it was interesting, informative and entertaining. Follow us on social media or share our content on your own pages. It helps us grow so we can create more free content to help you. <\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Show or Tell Seth Godwynn When it comes to writing, there\u2019s one convention that generally holds true. It\u2019s common wisdom that you should show and not tell. Of course sometimes you have to tell, but as sweeping generalisations go, this one does make rather a lot of sense. Telling is when the author, the narrator […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-home-for-all-of-our-terrible-articles","category-articles-and-features-about-the-near-forgotten-art-of-writing-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\nShow or Tell? 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