Show the reader what is happening don't tell them...Everywhere I turn today I see criticism of creative writing along this line of thinking.

I am of the other opinion, and a seemingly rarer one at that, that stories need to be told. That they have survived the test of time because they were (are) told; going back to that first campfire prehistoric man sat around.

Now, don't get me wrong, I understand a good writer should strike a balance, and they often do. What I am getting at is it seems to this wannabe that "show don't tell" has become the modern writer's albatross. I can't tell you how many published books I pick up that "tell more than they show" and they're published. Is the publishing industry playing tricks with my creativity?

I believe that "show don't tell" has come into writing as a direct result of the mediums of stage and film, where everyone is shown what is happening and aren't told. Writing cannot be the same way. Here's one example, I would rather be the one of many millions who read "The Lord of the Rings" BEFORE the movies and has a unique image of Frodo Bagins in my head than those who have read the books for the first time after the films and see only Elijah Wood. No, show don't tell is not always the best advice or the best way to write.

Orson Scott Card said in his "Characters and Viewpoint" that sometimes (and I paraphrase) showing is time consuming, and at times it's just wrong for a story when telling is the right thing to do.

Not to be argumentative, but I believe I tend towards the opposite point of view to the one you have outlined. I personally think that showing engages the reader's imagination far more than telling does.

This may have more to do with how I interpret show vs tell.

For example, in a simple form (and this is my imperfect example, because I'm trying to nut out my position as I write this):

Showing:
"Absolutely not!" Mack slammed the door in her face.

Telling:
He shouted her down, refusing her request vehemently. Hoping to cause the biggest affront to Sally he could think of, he furiously slammed the door at her.

In this example, the Telling takes all the work away from the reader. The reader knows exactly why Mack is doing what he is doing, but isn't necessarily shown the actions as action. By contrast, the Showing example shows the actions, but leaves the character's motivations to be imagined and experienced by the reader as subtext.

The result in this example, I feel, is that the experience of reading the Showing example is stronger - as far as character goes - than the experience of reading the telling example.

And I'm pretty sure this is what most people mean (even if they don't realise it) when they suggest to Show Don't Tell. Because as you've pointed out, and as OSC and others have also noted, somtimes it's necessary to Tell. You really want to Tell in this example:

Telling:
The forty mile drive seemed to sap Mack's strength. By the time he arrived home he could barely keep his eyes open.

Showing:
Mack started the car and backed it out onto Liverpool Street. Checking his mirror, he slipped it into first gear... etc etc etc

which is a bit of an extreme example, but at least that's how I apply it. And as cantgetnosleep mentioned - mostly this is done subconsciously while writing.

For example, when seeing the creepy monster for the first time, telling would be "Bob was really scared." Showing would be more along the lines of "Bob's heart began hammering in his ears so hard he couldn't even hear himself think. Sweat popped out of every pore and he only realized his hands were shaking when his gun slipped out of his hands and clattered to the ground, going off with a bang that made him scream like a little girl." Or whatever.

Pretty much every story that takes place over more than a few minutes of time is going to have huge omissions and/or sections of telling. If the story takes place over several days, I don't need to be shown every time someone going to the bathroom or fixing breakfast. (Actually, I don't particularly want to be told about it, either, unless it's important for some reason.)

My concern has been that there is too much emphasis on the "show" rather than the "tell" in the publishing world today. In my experience at least, too much showing leads to too much dialog to the point where you wonder if the author is able to describe a setting, or situation, or events outside the confines of his character's POV, etc...

Whereas, in "telling", more often than not, I get an engrossing detail that helps me imagine the peoples, places, and things better than showing could. For example, if one has never been to Rome it is important for an author like Dan Brown to describe in detail the landmarks his characters visit and not brush over them.

(On movies and show-and-tell...movies often change things 'round from the books, usually in service of this show-vs-tell doctrine, but often for other reasons. I remember buying Richard Matheson's I Am Legend when I was a kid, having just seen The Omega Man (on TV)...then being disgruntled that it wasn't like the movie. It was maybe twenty years before I read it again and realized it was better than the movie, that the movie didn't really capture the mood of the novel.)

I find it easy to describe things through my POV character. I'm sure there are things he won't and will like about his life and the world he lives in. From there it's a simple matter to get into his head and let the reader know the POV character's view about his own world and the people who live there. His world can truly come alive using this technique, and it's worked well for me.

In one of my novels, a young boy is my POV, and he's imagining what it would be like to live on the world where his mother lived and comparing it to where he lives now. I could bring out a lot of detail in the comparison, and both worlds were important to the story. This technique can also be used in a discussion between characters. Almost everyone has some kind of opinion on where they live and what's going on at the time.

The narrower definitions of telling I've encountered have to do with author voice passages or narrator voice passages directly addressing an implied or otherwise real audience. Readers become conscious of being directly addressed outside the frame of a story. Among an abundance of deprecated writing principles used to good effect in Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, telling--implied author's direct address to an implied audience--is a dominant narrative voice in the story.

Several WOTF winning stories tell their stories. Of note, the epistolary novelette The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom by Andrea Kail, volume XXIII, a Nebula preliminary ballot nominee 2008. The story is entirely told directly to the recreated Abraham Lincoln by the recreated Tutankhamun in a series of letters.

Showing as I've seen it narrowly defined is a narrative voice that indirectly addresses an implied audience or altogether avoids targeting of an addressee. Where on a spectrum a story or passage's narrative voice occurs in relation to showing and telling falls where who's most apparently telling a story to an apparent audience. Real Author, Implied Author, Narrator >>> Implied Narrator, Implied Narratee, Narratee, Implied Reader, Real Reader. In contemporary fiction, the implied narrator-implied narratee interface seems to be widely preferred.

My guiding principle to address show and tell for my writing tool box: Writing principles come from the cloud consciousness of the writing collective. Writing rules come from self-imposed strictures writers impose upon our writing selves.

I then found out I had no idea what the whole show v. telling thing was anyway.

Showing means telling in a subtle, more in depth way. Instead of saying, "Carol didn't know how to handle her teenager." You could say... "A teenage couple sat in a darkened corner making out, while Carol, the girl's mother, read a parenting magazine article on breastfeeding. There had to be something in here, she thought, about teenagers."

Showing is just telling more successfully. I focus on the inside working of the character and try to show why a character does something, instead of telling what it is they are doing.

I don't know, I'm still learning. I always think when someone says "show don't tell" to me, that my character motivations are lacking and try to fix that.

And showing the world to the reader in the author's job. People have imaginations, but we need to write in a way that those who don't have one can still see the world we created. Not everyone is an author and can create worlds in their minds. But that doesn't mean they can't read, or can't shell out twenty bucks for a book.

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Whereas, in "telling", more often than not, I get an engrossing detail that helps me imagine the peoples, places, and things better than showing could. For example, if one has never been to Rome it is important for an author like Dan Brown to describe in detail the landmarks his characters visit and not brush over them.

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Um, I think you have a different interpretation of "show, don't tell" than I (and many others here) do. I haven't read Dan Brown, but there is nothing wrong with going into detail about the landmarks of Rome - indeed, that is "showing" us Rome, rather than "telling" us that someone went to Rome.

You also seem to be contradicting your own initial points where you sad you wanted your imagination to create things, rather than the writer to supply you with everything.

Everyone WILL have a different version of what "show, don't tell" means. Most of them, however, will overlap a lot. There was a perfect example in a recent post in the "Novels" section here. The line was

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Horrifically it spoke with her boss’s voice, telling her that if she didn’t report to the new office chamber in the heights he was going to fire her.

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Frankly, I think you're setting up a bit of a straw man here - claiming that "everyone else says X, I say Y, and I'm right" when most people were never saying X in the first place.

Declaring: He was angry. "You bastard!"
Demonstrating: His face flushed, and he balled his fists while speaking through gritted teeth. "You bastard!"

I rename this technique precisely because the word 'tell' is already used in our job title of Storyteller (as others have already mentioned).

Are there times when declaring is more appropriate than demonstrating? Of course. Others have already provided good examples. Generally, declaring is good when you need to sumarize the passage of time, extremely mundane activities, etc.

Declaring also comes in handy when writing the Motivation half of Swain's Motivation-Reaction Units. The trick is to avoid EVER using declaration when writing the Reaction half of the MRU. That is the time for exclusive demonstration.

Now, maybe there are some semantic differences between what I see as "show don't tell" and what others see, but I never suggested my way was right. In fact, I went to extraordinary lengths not to offend or insult anyone's method of critique. And I did stress a need for balance. I am not alone, professional authors I follow have shared similar concerns.

I never said I want my imagination to create things, I just want my imagination to be allowed to work. There is no contradiction in my statement when I mention Dan Brown describing landmarks in Rome, in fact, it supports my original premise, that a good writer can tell the reader something enough to allow the reader to see what the author is describing without having to go to a picture book for example, and he can do this as the narrator without dialog. Personally, I find over reliance on dialog just as uninteresting as an over reliance on narration. Today I don't see a balance in what I pick up to read, I see an imbalance towards, choppy sentences, short paragraphs, constant and often unnecessary dialog, and so on...just as an effort to "show" me something. And, what's even more frustrating is that I find myself falling into the trap of "showing rather than telling", when what I want to do is tell the story and I end up bogged down in the minutia. As I brought up OSC earlier, it can get time consuming.

My personal take on it is that the advice should be know when to show and when to tell. Both are great tools to use. Telling moves the plot along quickly and help with clarity. Showing draws the reader in and helps create emotional resonance. Every story uses both.

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but I never suggested my way was right.

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Why the heck not? What's the point in posting anything if you aren't declaring what you believe is right. Why are you sharing with us something you think is wrong? (By right I don't mean the one true meaning of life type of right.) I think your trying so hard not to offend people that you are couching your language way too much. Be confident in your opinion. (That doesn't mean you should be overbearing, just believe in what you are saying.)

There are some people who need show don't tell because they write things like, "Frodo climbed up the mountain" instead of chapters and chapters of story.

I agree with tchernabyelo in that you seem to have showing and telling a little confused. Dan Brown going into detail about the landmarks is showing them. Telling them would be, "And there is the colloseum, and there is St. Peter's basillica. And there is a Michelangelo statue, and there is some guy sitting at a gelato stand."

Which is why I prefer scene and summary to show and tell.

It boils down to preference, and no, I don't think I have the two confused.

Telling is narration by the author.

Showing is using only a character's POV, which can leave some details out and have dialog run on and on and on. More often than not I prefer to write a vivid scene narrated using colorful prose (the omniscient approach) than using a bunch of back and forth POV dialog.

When Dan Brown is describing the monuments of Rome he is NOT showing he is telling, by narrating to the reader. By definition, showing can ONLY happen through a character's POV, not an author's.

Open a book off the shelf today and flip through it's pages. There are more than likely page after page of short sentences full of quotation marks and very few long passages of descriptive creative prose. I usually don't by those books. That's all.

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Everywhere I turn today I see criticism of creative writing along this line of thinking.

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Part of Edward's frustration is that it is used as a cure-all when critiquing. It is a mantra that is often quoted, but worse, quoted as an absolute. In a lot of writing, there is no such absolute rule. It's a bit like the English spelling rule of i before e, only to find that the number of exceptions is nearly as high as those that follow the rule. However, it is also often an easy target - beginner writers can tell at inappropriate times, get critiqued for it, and begin to critique other works for doing it.

There are lots of stories where much is told, either as a narrator giving some spin, or directly as a participant with the reader. OSC talks about a contract being set up between a writer and reader, and I think the directness of telling is part of that contract. It will seem out of place if the reader hasn't been prepared for some forms of telling early.

I also think that the balance between telling and showing depends on the pacing. A key part of learning to write is learning how to pace a story.

The second fascinating point was

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I believe that "show don't tell" has come into writing as a direct result of the mediums of stage and film, where everyone is shown what is happening and aren't told.

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I'll both attack this view and support it. Films (which is the medium that reaches more people than stage) and television still do a lot of telling. Voice-overs, cuts to telling the audience, background telling are all done. Anyone watched the start of Star Wars lately? Or an episode of My Name Is Earl? Some even do it when it clearly doesn't work, like the end of the movie Unbreakable. Even such things as cuts to the name of a building, or the lift numbers going up, are subtle forms of telling.

To support it, I think that film forms part of a greater societal context which determines what is accepted as a worthwhile story. The expectation of being shown and not told has become part of western culture, complementary with elements of scepticism, reliance on proof (scientific or otherwise) and the essence of free speech. It is almost a cultural cringe to be told what to do, with the directness of story telling reducing as one grows up. And this can lead to an over-reliance on alternatives such as showing as a method of reducing the cringe in the audience. It one of those ironies that being told to show and not tell is actually producing that same cringe.

Looking back over your posts I think what you are actually addressing is the difference between a limited 3rd person perspective and the traditional "imniscient" storyteller voice. This is not the same thing that I (and I believe others here) mean by "show don't tell". I will accept that most people here prefer a limited 3POV to omni, and I have stated more than once on these boards that sometimes writers are too hung about POV in a way that readers aren't - some (many?) readers don't object to "head-hopping" although it can be taken to extremes.

For me, "show don't tell" is about the difference between telling us someone is angry, and displaying their anger; the difference between telling us someone is popular, and showing their popularity. That is not a function of POV.

I hate to give examples, but let's see if I can use both 3P limited and Omni viewpoints for the same scene, and display how either can "show" or "tell"...

3P limited tell:

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Kwame felt angry with Nyanga, but he said nothing as Nyanga walked off.

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3P limited show:

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Kwame bit back the sharp retort. How dare Nyanga say such things! He glared at Nyanga's broad back, a wall of indifference.

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Omni tell:

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Kwame felt angry with Nyanga, but said nothing. Nyanga walked off, happy to ignore Kwame as insignificant.

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Omni show:

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Kwame bit back the sharp retort. How dare Nyanga say such things! He glared at Nyanga's broad back, a wall of denial. Nyanga smiled as he walked away. Let Kwame rage; it wasn't as if the child mattered.

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POV itself, of course, is an arguable thing; it's easy to interpret the omni viewpoint here as simply head-hopping from Kwame to Nyanga, but then much of the time omni IS about knowing the thoughts of multiple characters, rather than only one.

But in each case here, the "tell" simply makes assertions. The "show" gives us an idea of the actual thoughts/motivations of the characters, so we are more likely to "believe" that Kwame is angry and that Nyanga thinks he's irrelevant.

You are absolutely right in that "telling", by your definition of it, is an important writerly tool; I just think, despite your denials, that you are misinterpreting the advice about what "show vs tell" generally means.

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Telling is narration by the author.

Showing is using only a character's POV, which can leave some details out and have dialog run on and on and on. More often than not I prefer to write a vivid scene narrated using colorful prose (the omniscient approach) than using a bunch of back and forth POV dialog.

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I have to say that this is a new definition of "show" and "tell" for me, and I've seen lots of definitions--I've even contributed one of my own.

What I am seeing here is a topic about narrative exposition versus character dialog as means of conveying the story--not a topic on "show, don't tell."

Not that Wikipedia is the only authority, or even the best authority on this subject, but it's entry on "Show don't tell" and more importantly the references it sights implies this definition is not new:

You just posted,

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What I am seeing here is a topic about narrative exposition versus character dialog as means of conveying the story--not a topic on "show, don't tell."

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And the Wiki entry uses your same language in respect to my subject, namely: "Show...[is] to write in a manner that allows the reader to experience the story through a character's action, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings [POV] rather than through the narrator's exposition..."

Your definition says "using only a character's POV," and I read that as much narrower than the definition on the Wikipedia page.

I understand the importance of "experiencing" a story through a character's eyes, and the need for it. Too often, though, I find that folks don't think one can "experience" a story through narrative exposition and I disagree. Seeing a story through one set of eyes gets awful boring awfully fast, that includes those of the narrator. Thus the need to strike a balance and not weigh a story in favor of one [show] or the other [tell].

This is a no win scenario, and I didn't mean to offend you, your opinion, or anyone else here. [Sigh]

P.S., I would really like to know how you define "Show, don't tell" BTW.

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I find that folks don't think one can "experience" a story through narrative exposition and I disagree.

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Now that comment makes sense.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Arthur C. Clarke: The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended.

Charles Dickens: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

C.S. Lewis: Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy.

The Hobbit: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Of course, some authors open in dialog. Louisa May Alcott and Lewis Carol for starters, but I struggle to remember more. And I read "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" once years ago, and have never read passed the beginning of "Little Women", even though it was in my library growing up.

You are also talking about starting with dialog, and if you will read some of the comments in the Fragments and Feedback areas, you will see that most people here discourage starting with dialog BECAUSE it DOESN'T provide point of view--and unless there is some narrative exposition, it also doesn't SHOW who is talking. All you have when you start with dialog are a bunch of words someone is speaking (aka "talking heads"). No one here is advocating that, that I know of.

I think of it as a scale, or continuum, of style, that dictates how close, or distant, a reader is from a story. I see it as pretty much independent of POV. It encompasses how much detail the reader sees in a scene: setting, direct dialogue, thoughts of the POV character, and action. The more of those provided without interpretation by the author, the more "showing" is going on.

At an extreme of the telling side you could have something like this. It was a yucky day. John was in a bad mood. He went to the store and while he was there the store was robbed. When the police came he was held hostage by the robbers, which made him upset. He almost got killed a couple times and then during a gun battle he made a daring escape that helped the police take out the robbers. Afterward he realized he was happy to be alive and what put him in a bad mood before wasn't very important.

It should be pretty obvious what would happen to the above should the dial be turned more towards show. We'll see the weather (could be snowing, raining, mercilessly hot). We'll see how the weather affects the character. We'll learn why he is in a foul mood, and what he thinks about the situation. We'll see the store (maybe he's going to a sporting goods store to by ammunition for his pistol to shoot himself, maybe a liquor store, maybe just Walmart for some toilet paper). We'll see the robbers through his eyes. Watch their actions through his eyes. See his uncertainty and fear (or whatever his reaction is) to events as they unfold, etc., all the way through. The few sentences above could easily become a substantial story if a writer decided to show enough of it. It could be lengthened in a telling mode, too, full of abstractions like "he was upset" or "the robbers were mean-looking", etc.

It being a continuum, most stories have a mixture of show-vs-tell. Too much showing and a story can get bogged down in relatively meaningless details. To much telling leaves the reader feeling like they haven't experienced anything dramatic. Someone else mentioned this above, but the key artistic decision a writer has to make in this regard is to determine what is important, and "show" that material, and what is unimportant, and "tell" it (briefly)or whenever possible, omit it. At least that's the general approach most widely espoused. Luckily it's a free country and people can make that artistic decision any way they want.

I don't know that that will help anyone. To me the show-vs-tell philosophy was very intuitive when I was first exposed to it. Maybe the best thing to do is next time you are reading and find yourself at a part where you just can't put the story down, if you can remember, stop and look at what you are reading. It is probably something with a good deal of dramatic conflict being played out in "real time" and shown to the reader as it happens through some degree of POV filtering, probably a combination of witnessed action, dialogue, and character thought/reaction under duress.

Merry Christmas to all!

[This message has been edited by dee_boncci (edited December 24, 2009).]

Edward, I find it astonishing that several people on this thread can explicitly state that they do NOT agree with your definition, and you still maintain that "I think my chain of thought is on track with others".

It's all balance - as noted here and elsewhere, if you "show" everything, the signal-to-noise ratio is destroyed. Every writer "shows" some things, and "tells" others (by the definitions that other people on this board are using, not your private definitions). Things that have no emotional importance can be "told" quite simply. Things that are important from a character perspective should ideally be shown (which has NOTHING necessarily to do with dialogue - dialogue CAN be used as a component but doesn't have to be, as in my examples above, should you decide to bother reading them at some point). Telling can be a very important way of getting contextual information across. Both have their place.

It is the debate that appeals to me and I respect yours and others posts, I just don't have to agree. Please don't go by the assumption that I haven't read, or "listened" to your (or anyone elses) post. I've read through everyone of them, and I knew when I started this thread that I was going to open up a can of worms. Frankly, some people are so stuck on "showing" versus "telling" to the extent that an adverse opinion to showing doesn't count and that's okay. It works both ways. I stressed a need for balance very early on, that seems to be missed in some of the responses my post has received.

As far as it being "my private definition", well...it's not, but so what if it is.

Terry Brooks first book "The Sword of Shannara" was mostly narrative composition and sold well. It was my introduction to the genre. I read his work before I read Tolkien. Even Brooks admits that when Lester Delray told him to "show, don't tell" in his second book (The Elfstones) [emphasis on second] his instructions were to choose a character and "show" a part of the story through that character's POV. Showing outside of a character POV is by definition telling because it comes from the author's POV. Though Terry Brooks thought it his best writing, I never cared for it as much as the first book.

To paraphrase A.J. Somerset, if you want to show write a play, if you want to write a novel you better do some telling. Technically a writer cannot show he can only tell.

The examples of "telling" I often see when someone defends "showing" are usually very bland, almost as though they were manufactured that way purposefully, to stress a certain point of view, mainly that "show" rocks! Narrative exposition has to use colorful prose to work. If "showing" is as bland as these examples of "telling" have been it won't sell a book either. Who wants to read a story where the author writes by "showing" a TomTom GPS description of a character's road trip, monotony included. He got in his car, turned on the engine, pulled out of the driveway, headed left on Franklin, was told to turn right onto MLK...That can be just as dull as bland storytelling.

You actually get as far as saying "the examples of telling I often see are usually very bland" witout seeming to realise that is PRECISELY what most of us on here are saying about telling vs showing. "Telling", in the sense people here have generally been using it, is uninformative, colourless, prose. By livening it up, you turn "tell" into "show". That is exactly what people here have been meaning when they suggest "show, not tell" so you are making exactly the same points. But you seem to insist that everyone else is saying something different. And many of the responses have actually and explicitly agreed that a balance is called for - cantgetnosleep, Kitti, Robert Nowall, Crystal Stevens, extrinsic, myself... but now you say "that (balance) seems to be missed in some of the responses my post has received". This is the kind of thing that makes it hard for me to understand that you really are reading the responses.

As for "so what" if something is someone's private definition - by all means use your own private definitions for anything (though it's a pretty dangerous thing for a writer to go around doing). But you need to explain them, and why and how your definitions are different from those of others. Several people in this thread have both tried to define what they mean by "show, don't tell", with examples, and have explained why your definitions of "show, don't tell" do not jibe with theirs. I've already explained how I understand your definition and why I don't think the advice you are rebelling against is telling you to do what you think it is - you seem to be obsessed with POV and dialogue, which is NOT what I or anyone else here have interpreted as "show vs tell".

Okay tchern, I didn't comment on your examples because they were confusing and not to my point. Maybe I should have said that in the first place.

For instance, in your 3P limited show you use the phrase "a wall of indifference", and isn't that telling?

You seem to think that "showing" can happen outside of character POV and NOT be telling. That is not what I have been told, nor is that in line with what I have studied on the subject or have seen brought up in critiques.

Another point I made seems to have been missed or twisted by some. I never said "showing" only happens through dialog, I said it leads to a lot of dialog, which becomes boring. I know "show" means to use dialog, emotion, thought, smell, etc., but, as I see it, all of these come through a character POV, which for me, can limit the telling of the tale.

It amazes me that a philosphy such as "show, don't tell" with its myriad definitions is so often applied abstrusely by those editors/agents/critics who seem to me to have no common definition among themselves.

Kathleen seemed to hit on something that got me thinking even more. If opening a tale with dialog is frowned upon, then the alternative would be opening through telling. If narrative is good for the first 13 lines of a story...?

Again, an example.

"John was mad. He spat in the alley, squared his shoulders, and marched in through the back door of Rosetti's Cafe."

In the first sentence the writing is summarizing the character's emotional state and telling the reader what it is with an abstract term (mad). The second sentence is a simple showing of a sequence of action.

An alternate way of presenting the material:

"John was damn tired of running. He was even more tired of his entire family cowering over what would happen next. He decided to end it right there, with fists or guns or whatever it took. He spat in the alley, squared his shoulders, and marched in through the back door of Rosetti's Cafe."

Here the writing is revealing the character's thoughts and together with his actions, convey an anger of sorts without resorting to an abstract term to feed the reader the "answer".

When employed during the key scenes in a story, that technique (showing) generally leads to better identification between the reader and the character, the reader and the setting, and the reader and the scene. Some artistic visions might want to cut the reader off from this identification, and the visceral experience that comes with it, but most people that read for enjoyment read for that connection.

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When employed during the key scenes in a story, that technique (showing) generally leads to better identification between the reader and the character, the reader and the setting, and the reader and the scene. Some artistic visions might want to cut the reader off from this identification, and the visceral experience that comes with it, but most people that read for enjoyment read for that connection.

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Maybe most, but not all. And even most who do are unlikely to think of it as such. And some of us like all of the above.

Edit: I think this has to do with the issues many people around here express about the writing of people like Tolkien and Lovecraft. Essentially, that its not "personal" enough, the characters are too shallow etc. They write big picture stories, that are often not really experience through the characters...they are told, narrated stories that don't attempt to be anything else. And so some people don't "connect" to them.

But I, personally, "connect" more to them, in many cases, than I do to more recent character-focused, seat-of-the-pants type stuff. But thats just my taste...which is really what this all boils down too.

At the very least, what that connection constitutes and what helps achieve it is most definitely different for different readers, and therein lies, I think, the main crux of all of this.

"showing" is stuff that the person using the word likes, enjoys and connects too, and "telling" is either what the person using the word dislikes and/or doesn't connect to and/or just necessary but uninteresting filler for that particular person.

And thats why I dont care for shorthand like "show, don't tell." Since everyone defines it, uses it, and sees it in different ways...whether slightly or majorly...it because almost useless as shorthand. Except between any two or more given people whose definitions and meanings and expectations of the words/concepts are the same, or nearly so.

It's much better to say something like "don't tell us that the characters got into a fight, let us see what the fight involved--who said what, who threw the first punch and after what remark, how they felt with each blow, and so on" than to just say, "show the fight, don't tell it."

By explaining what you are asking the author to do in rewrite, you make it clearer what the original scene lacked and what the author can do, in your opinion, to fix it. That way, the author can decide whether or not to make that particular change in the rewrite.

Specific feedback is much more helpful than just spouting "rules."

You say "a wall of indifference" is "telling". In Kwame's point of view, it's his interpretation. In omni, it's still Kwame's point of view, but we're not limited to that one point of view. In neutral point of view -i.e. that of a disembodied "narrator" who doesn't know the internal thoughts of a character - yes, it's "telling". This is why I tried to explain about the differences between POV (which is how everything you've written about "show vs tell" comes across to me - you see "show" as an internal POV and "tell" as external, and what I've been trying to say all along is that this is not how other people see it - that "show vs tell" is not normally advice about which POV to use, but about demonstrating rather than asserting something). I was trying to demonstrate that what you see as "telling" is not what other people see, but your response appears to be to apply your own labels once again and refuse to try and see what other people are saying about what the difference is between "showing" and "telling". But then we get these gems:

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I never said "showing" only happens through dialog.

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If opening a tale with dialog is frowned upon, then the alternative would be opening through telling.

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Is it just me, or are these two statements diametrically opposed? You clearly imply in the first that "showing" does not require dialogue per se, but you clearly imply in the second that the only possble alternative to dialogue is "telling".

Until you can see the difference that other people are using in terms of these definitions, as long as you choose to both use your own definition, then contradict it a mosment later, and for good measure apply your definition to other people's advice, despite their constant assertions that they are using a different definition to you and that is why they believe "show don't tell" to be good advice in general, you really aren't going to make any progress here, and neither am I. I'm sorry for breaking my "I'm done here" statement but I just find this thread incredibly frustrating because of your apparent inability to see that other people are using terms in a different way from you (and probably wisely, given your self-contradictions as noted above).

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I'm with you, Merlion-Emrys (please don't faint).

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Too late.

If this discussion is to continue we need to abandon the words 'show' and 'tell,' because it seems that Edward can't accept that other people have a different definition than him, while asking for the same privilege. Edward I feel like you didn't read our posts because you asked for our definitions of the words after we went blue in the face giving our definitions. If you'd like it more simple: when PYRE DYNASTY says 'Show' he means going into depth into a scene, regardless whether your doing author narration or third deep character penetration or, for that matter, non-narrative description; and when he says 'Tell' he means short summary of events. He usually uses tell to gloss over a long boring walk through the desert so he can spend his pages showing the interesting scene at camp when their world turns around.

So, Howard if you've made it this far and want to discuss author narration vs deep character point of view I'm up for it. I accept your points about Tolkein et al. I just finished Dickens's A Cristmas Carol and enjoyed it greatly, it was all author narration, with which I include dialog since the narrator is reporting what was said.
But I also really like Orson Scott Card who tries to stay as close to the Point of View of his characters as possible. And yes that is the more recent trend. Indeed it's how I tell most of my stories. If you want to write in the narration style do it, and do it well.

Edited to add a Merry Christmas.

It's also related to POV.