Is there anyone out there besides me that cringes whenever they hear that cliche? I immediately think of my underqualified high-school English teacher and the bunch of sycophantic students in that class all of whom had absolutely no writing experience.
Personally I have found "write in point of view," to be far better advice and usually it solves any of the problems created by a lack of "show not tell."
posted
I haven't read that lesson before. Thanks! There is a lot of good insight and information in there. I've often heard the "show, don't tell" but never really listened to that advice before. It just didn't make sense to me. OSC puts it into better words than I could.
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posted
Thanks! I love to hear more qualified people make arguments to support ideas I have but just can't quite verbalize.
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posted
It is good advice, the problem is that I don't think it's explained very well when it's taught. The way it was taught to me first was overly simplistic and caused me a lot of problems.
Usually the most effective way of conveying motivation is through a character's thoughts. The word "showing" implies a visual revelation. Since you can't see thoughts, there's an inherent opportunity for confusion. The act of transcribing/relaying a characters thoughts then get confused with telling (the type of telling to be generally avoided) and is overlooked in favor of trying to reveal motivation through some physical activity.
A few authorities are careful to include the revelation of thoughts in the category of "showing" (even though there's nothing to "see"). Others, like OSC, prefer to chuck the cliche altogether.
The OSC lesson linked above was one of several concurrent things that got me over a misconception-driven hangup converning "show versus tell".
posted
The best advice I ever got was from a screenwriting text.
You "show" events in greater detail when they stir the characters (and reader) emotionally. You tell events when they don't.
What THAT means...well, you go into full realtime description for shown events. Everything happens on an action-reaction basis. No compressing the event. For told events you get through them with lots of story compression and maybe just a few lines/paragraphs of a realtime peek at the event.
posted
Generally, showing makes you believe something, involves you with the character, more than telling. Here's what I mean:
"Tom's mouth thinned into a tight line" - showing.
"Tom was angry" - telling.
The former's more convincing, though paradoxically it's less informative - the reader has to make the inference that he's angry. But having made that inference, the reader will believe it more strongly than something the writer just flat-out states. That's human nature; you believe what you have experienced, and by "witnessing" Tom's anger, rather than merely hearing about it, you are more prone to believe it.
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