
‘Show, Don’t Tell’ Almost Ruined Me as a Writer - samclemens
https://lithub.com/the-three-words-that-almost-ruined-me-as-a-writer-show-dont-tell/
======
ehutch79
My understanding of 'show, don't tell' is that instead of just telling the
reader;

he was nervous

you show it through the prose like this;

He hesitated. Wringing his hands together, shifting from foot to foot. "I... I
don't think you're right. Maybe not about that."

You shouldn't be keeping the stuff you're not telling secret. It's not about
not letting the reader know things, it's about not being fucking boring about
it.

~~~
vidarh
I agree with that you should show when you can.

But at the same time a lot of the time people in real life _don 't show_
nearly all of what is going on with them.

In that case "tell" either gets contrived - you end up with convoluted
attempts at externalizing thoughts in way that bears no relation to how the
character would act in real life, or you ignore the story. The former often
leads to lots of monologues or contrived props to make the character show you
things in ways that makes no sense. In the right setting that can work, but
often it is just jarring to e.g. have a character talk out loud to themselves
or otherwise act out things they'd be more likely to just have thought about.

This seems to be why she is bringing up abuse, for example. An abuse victim
writing about their experience can certainly "show" the abuse, but how do they
show how it made them feel and what it made them think about, when they've
often worked hard to keep a mask and not show the world how they were
affected?

It's good advice to show, not tell, on the basis that most people who haven't
written much tell way too much and show too little. The problem is that it is
then sometimes overdone. It doesn't _always_ makes sense to show instead of
telling. Either because showing becomes contrived, or for example because
showing commands attention, and sometimes you want to tell to avoid drawing
attention away from the main thrust of a scene or a work to some detail
necessary to understand what is going on, but not important enough to show.

~~~
Ntrails
Show doesn't necessarily mean _show_ right? The subject might not wring their
hands and shuffle from foot to foot. Instead they might feel their pulse start
to race, or feeling sweaty palmed or whatever. It's about describing a thing
and allowing the reader to understand why without always explicitly telling
them everything.

~~~
jfengel
As an actor, we'd call that kind of thing "indicating", which is more telling
than showing. Rather than actually feeling something, you put on the
indicators of that feeling: "There is water leaking out of my eyes, therefore
you know I'm sad". Which misses the whole rest of the performance. It's better
than saying "I am sad", but not by much.

What you really have to do, in both writing and acting, is more subtle and
difficult. It has to become an organic part of the narrative/performance Any
example you give is always going to sound like indicating, since it is
extracted from that overall flow. If you've crossed out "he was nervous" and
wrote instead "his pulse raced", you haven't improved it by much, if anything.
But if you're fully visualizing the scene, from whatever POV you've been using
so far, you can seek out the next detail and write that as the next sentence.

The essence of "show don't tell" is to be active rather than passive. Talking
about feelings, or even indicating feelings, is less active than saying how
they act on those feelings. The more specific their actions, the more the
reader will internalize the feelings as they live it with the character, even
-- or perhaps especially -- when being told from a viewpoint that wouldn't
give them access to internals like pulse rate. Movies are exciting without
getting any of that information directly.

------
kieckerjan
Many great writers tell and don't show, if that is what the situation calls
for. Read a couple of pages of Tolstoy and you will notice.

What is the reason this mantra became so engrained, most notably in creative
writing courses? I think the reason is that it is very hard if not impossible
to teach people how to write beautifully, but it is relatively easy to teach
them how to write acceptably. The main trick is to teach them to avoid common
pitfalls and mistakes. Among this is the basic stuff like: don't switch
perspective or time midsentence, be wary of adverbs and adjectives, etc. It
also includes the tricky stuff that can easily go sideways. A fledgling writer
had better stay away from sex scenes, to mention an obvious one.

"Show, don't tell" fits this category as well. The idea is that "telling" done
badly is a sure way to bore the reader out of her skull. And it often is. It
invites lazy characterization. "Amy was nervous," does not sound very
exciting.

The problem however is that "showing" can get quite boring as well. There is,
for instance, this whole hackish vocabulary of observations that signal
emotional states, which has become a drop-in replacement for telling. Instead
of nervous, Amy is now fidgetting, her heart is pounding and her palms are
sweating. These are the worst examples of course. Better writers go out of
their way to avoid cliches like this, but they are still beholden to the idea
that Amy shall not be described as nervous. That can become problematic if
working around it ruins the pacing of a text or diverts the attention from
what the writer is getting at. Tolstoy often feels so wonderfully to the point
because he dispenses with the obvious stuff by just telling it.

Showing and telling are tools. Like in many other endeavours, you should use
the best tool for the job.

~~~
spats1990
Chekhov (possibly apocryphal): "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the
glint of light on broken glass."

You can tell things. You just have to tell the _right_ thing.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'd assume the "broken glass" is actually relevant to the story, so this way
"show, don't tell" is actually the way to _compress_ information.

------
danso
I agree with other commenters that the author’s interpretation of “Show, Don’t
Tell” seems off, and/or contrived. In any case, maybe the piece is meant to be
meta, like Alanis Morrisette’s “Ironic”, because it seems the author went out
of their way to not show any actual examples of how “Show, don’t tell”
resulted in inferior writing.

------
yoz-y
I've only skimmed the article. However I can't help myself but thing about the
recently posted article: [https://barryhawkins.com/blog/posts/the-myth-of-
commoditized...](https://barryhawkins.com/blog/posts/the-myth-of-commoditized-
excellence/)

Blog posts complaining about a "concept reduced to a few words" that did not
help them would make more sense if the author first explained how they
approached "the thing", what they expected to get out of it and what were they
ready to sacrifice.

------
alan-crowe
I think of "Show, don't tell." as a mnemonic name, comparable to the mnemonic
names for instructions in assembler language.

Obviously LDA loads the accumulator, but does it also clear the carry bit? You
cannot divine from the name. You have to be familiar the details of the
instruction from the manual.

Similarly, can you ever "tell"? You go to the "Show, don't tell." chapter in
the "learn to write novels" book, and re-read the section "Sometimes you have
to tell.".

You cannot work it out from the three word phrase. It is not just that it is
too short. The internal structure is merely mnemonic. "show" doesn't mean
"show". "tell" doesn't mean "tell". They are just reminders of the more subtle
concepts explained in the chapter.

------
mlthoughts2018
> “For some of our students, “Don’t tell” repeats the abuse they will have
> endured along with its highest commandment: secrecy.”

This is way too extreme. Surely people who have experienced abuse shouldn’t be
treated like they are too frayed to understand the difference between a
literary tactic and oppression of their suffering? Surely it’s not healthy to
cast trauma victims and survivors in this kind of way? They can think for
themselves like everyone else.

------
Animats
It's all about me, Me, ME!

Better article about "Show, Don't Tell" on TV Tropes.[1]

[1]
[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShowDontTell](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShowDontTell)

------
idlewords
This is written so incoherently that no one should be taking writing advice
from this person, whatever that advice is.

~~~
oska
Agree. Indeed it reads like a parody of (self-obsessed & pretentious) bad
writing.

~~~
Accujack
Agreed.

I think the problem is likely that neither this teacher nor any students
really understand what "show, don't tell" means, and tend to overuse it when
they think they do.

That's just a guess, though. This article is a pretentious mess.

------
CareyB
This is what happens when pretentious literati feverishly search for something
novel to expound on. There is no magic spell with which to entrance your
readers. Pick a method, practice, and develop your own style. If you’re
really, really lucky, your style will coincide with the shopping lists of our
various editors, and publishers, and you might make a living. Write on!

------
arandr0x
Well yeah "show don't tell" is terrible memoir advice, but memoir isn't
fiction, and memoirs about abuse, your own thoughts, or crying a lot are
terminally boring (but important). "Show don't tell" is how to write
entertaining fiction, which is not to say that you can't write dry non-fiction
about weighty subjects. That said, this:

> When I was taking a sculpture class in college, I sewed a

> kind of wall hanging about secrets I had to keep. I wrote

> things on pieces of paper and tucked them into bumps and

> layers in the fabric. I sewed pockets shut.

is showing.

This is not to discourage those authors whose favorite subject is themselves
and their feelings. As an avid reader of fiction, however, if you really must
write about your inner feelings, I would suggest making it magical realism or
using plot devices where your inner thoughts influence real events, and not
subjecting the reader to two hundred pages of your thoughts. Make it a therapy
session or a deposition if you must. Or gimmicks. _Trainspotting_ is boring
life stuff and the dude going on about how life sucks without heroin, but it's
written in a Scottish accent, so it's interesting. (And to be clear it also
has plenty of showing. A lot of the scenes of the family life of his friends,
etc are pretty indicative of their social environment without going "we were
all poor and disenfranchised".)

~~~
chachachoney
>> Or gimmicks. _Trainspotting_ is boring life stuff and the dude going on
about how life sucks without heroin, but it's written in a Scottish accent, so
it's interesting.

If all you got from Trainspotting is that it's 'boring life stuff' save for
being written in multiple patios, you probably shouldn't be giving advice to
fledgling authors.

~~~
arandr0x
The author of the original article is lamenting that "show don't tell" is
making people reluctant to write about the personal traumas of their life, and
instead have to write "action-packed" scenes. There are like three action-
packed scenes in Trainspotting and they're all well within the lived
experience of the average first worlder. It's "boring life stuff" in the sense
of being about on the other extreme from a Michael Bay movie. Sometimes people
don't talk in precise terms about art they consume.

I was using it as an example of a novel about life that has nothing action-y
happening and where many scenes don't directly advance the plot, but remains
both a page turner and not particularly preachy.

~~~
chachachoney
Seems like you're reading the word action in a narrow blockbuster hollywood
sense, which isn't the context that it's used within the article.

------
geebee
I've been enjoying Stefan Zweig lately. I suppose Zweig figured he could show,
not tell by writing scene where the first person narrator meets someone in the
lobby of an expensive hotel, who then relates the bulk of the story. In short,
Zweig shows someone telling a story ;)

Zweig's style to me is almost like a friend retelling a movie or long novel,
but to a very high level of detail and with excellent recall for relevant
descriptions and quotes, when needed. Sometimes he sets this up through brief
shell of a traveling narrator meeting the subject of the story (who then
provides the main narration), sometimes he dispenses with this and just
relates the story.

This technique is used here and there - now that I think of it, "interview
with a vampire" works this way. This sort of writing can be very effective. At
times, I have to wonder if it isn't a way to break through writer's block or
free yourself from the difficulty of writing fiction - you, as a writer, place
yourself in the position of a stranger meeting an interesting person, and then
you imagine the story being narrated to you. You could keep the shell, or
discard it and just keep the inner story as first person narrative.

------
sramsay
"Write what you know" \-- while not exactly _bad_ advice -- is also better
when not taken too rigidly. "Write what you believe" is better, I think.

~~~
dawg-
This is true for most rules of thumb. "Show, don't tell" is great advice for
beginning creative writers since most people struggle with that aspect of
writing. But as you gain experience you learn how to break the rules
gracefully.

------
impalallama
I always considered as something that applies to filmmakers more than writers.
Sure you could through natural storytelling demonstrate that a hobbit hole is
comfortable place to live Or you could use your greatest strength as a writer
and just tell me

"Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy
smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to
eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."

~~~
vidarh
I think this demonstrates the opposite of what you want. Saying "a hobbit hole
is comfortable" would be telling. It's not explaining or showing what makes it
comfortable, or why it is comfortable - it's one abstraction up and just
declares it comfortable. For what we know at that point in the story, a hobbit
likes worms and oozy smells and finds that comfortable.

But instead he evokes those images, and gets you to imagine something
different; something probably closer to our idea of comfort, because the
reader now has seen that hobbits ideas of what isn't comfortable is at least
somewhat aligned with ours even though the live in a hole.

I'd consider this a fantastic example of how to show without having to be
boring and prescriptive about just describing what you might see, but how you
can also show through creating emotional response and through exclusion.

That said, good writers will know when to break the rule and tell. Tolkien
certainly does tell a lot even if I don't agree that is an example of him
telling. A lot more than many, if anything. But of course he gets away with
that because he was a fantastic writer. The advice to show is beginner advice
more than anything.

------
leftyted
I think "Show, Don't Tell" is excellent advice and not just in writing: it's
even more valuable for filmmakers. You should be able to watch a movie with no
sound and follow the plot.

Of course there aren't actual rules and the best writers break the not-actual-
rules all the time. But a lot of really bad writing does seem to involve
telling rather than showing. And isn't the goal of writing classes the
elimination of really bad writing?

I'm very skeptical of the idea that someone can be taught to be a (good)
novelist. I don't think that someone can lend you their model; I think you
have to develop your own. Cormac McCarthy explained his use of punctuation
with "There’s no reason to blot the page up with weird little marks. I mean,
if you write properly you shouldn’t have to punctuate." I find that quote
hysterically funny. I don't have a strong opinion about whether he's right.
Rather, I think the whole point is that he has a strong sense of what good
writing is and it's _his_.

~~~
goto11
> You should be able to watch a movie with no sound and follow the plot

Why?

~~~
olah_1
Because visual storytelling is the whole point of the medium.

Yes, there should be a symphony of sound and visual working together. But the
whole point of the medium of Motion Pictures is to tell stories through...
motion pictures.

~~~
goto11
That is just begging the question. _Why_ can't sound and dialog be an
integrated and necessary part of the storytelling? What about musicals?
Disneys Fantasia? The voice overs in Goodfellas? The dialogue in Pulp Fiction?

Who even decides what the "point" of a media is beside the people creating
stuff in the media?

~~~
olah_1
What do motion pictures offer that no other medium offers? The answer is
moving images.

What I'm saying is that a medium should play to the strengths of the unique
thing that it offers over other mediums.

What do video games uniquely offer? Interactivity. Therfore, the video game
medium should focus on offering interactivity that would be impossible to get
in any other medium.

~~~
latexr
> What do video games uniquely offer? Interactivity. Therfore, the video game
> medium should focus on offering interactivity that would be impossible to
> get in any other medium.

To the Moon[1] and Dear Esther[2] won awards and high praise from critics and
players alike, _despite lacklustre interactivity_.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_The_Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_The_Moon)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Esther](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_Esther)

~~~
olah_1
I adored Dear Esther. The interactivity was amazing.

It enhanced the story and immersed me.

Thanks for the great example.

~~~
latexr
> I adored Dear Esther. The interactivity was amazing.

Anecdotal report of what you thought doesn’t advance the conversation. I can
just say it was a boring game for me (it was) and we’re back to square one.

I feel that if you call Dear Esther’s interactivity “amazing”, you either
haven’t played enough games to be able to expound judgement, or have a
definition of “interactivity” different from most players. Some quotes from
the Wikipedia page, based on multiple published sources:

> The gameplay in Dear Esther is minimal, with the only task being (…)

> Despite questioning whether it truly constitutes a video game (…)

> (…) critics were divided by the suitability of the video game medium for
> conveying the story of Dear Esther.

> (…) stating that the game "would be better as a short film" (…)

> The limited interactivity between the player and the narrative (…)

The _consensus_ is that it’s a good work of art, with a good story, visuals,
and sound design, but that there isn’t much to _interact_ with.

~~~
olah_1
>Anecdotal report of what you thought doesn’t advance the conversation.

I don't know what this means. If it is an insult, I am too stupid to
understand it.

>I feel that if you call Dear Esther’s interactivity “amazing”, you either
haven’t played enough games to be able to expound judgement, or have a
definition of “interactivity” different from most players.

You could not experience the game without interacting with it. It's in first
person. You move the story along as you discover new story elements. You
experience emotions and perspectives first-hand.

>The consensus is that it’s a good work of art, with a good story, visuals,
and sound design, but that there isn’t much to interact with.

Dear Esther would not work in any other medium. It would be extremely boring
without the interactivity.

So if we're circling back to the original comment that spawned this
discussion: Interactivity is what makes the medium of video games unique. Dear
Esther focuses on interactivity by making the entire story unravel as you
choose to explore it yourself... interactively.

Your point would stand if Dear Esther put you on rails and you barely pushed
any buttons (like a Hideo Kojima cutscene). But that's not how the game is
designed.

------
geoka9
> In the real world, watching our action would be akin to constant
> dissociation. Instead, we feel things, we say things to ourselves, and
> eventually we come upon subject matter and then to the scenes.

I think that's why writing "I felt scared" is usually fine. But 'show, don't
tell' is more about avoiding things like "she felt scared".

~~~
hnick
I'm always reminded of Futurama.

"You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me
feel angry!"

------
dragonwriter
> In fiction, internal narration—the telling

 _Internal_ narration, done well, is showing—demonstration of the character
and their relationship to and the effects they experience from the context and
events—not telling. External narration is telling.

------
xaedes
Recently bought "Self-editing for fiction writers" as it was recommended as a
good book about not only editing but also writing itself.

The first chapter is named "Show and tell".

Here the authors also state the "show, don't tell" rule. They also show the
difference between the two and give the advice to alternate both styles and in
which context which style would be appropriate.

So yea "Show, don't tell" isn't a law you must strictly follow, but a rule, a
guideline. As all rules it can be broken. At some point you should ask
yourself "But when?" And this is how the rule invites to do further research
on the "Show and Tell" styles.

------
mdemare
It’s in IKEA assembly instructions that this maxim shows itself in its most
harmful form.

~~~
bonoboTP
Not sure why this meme exists that IKEA furniture is difficult to assemble.
I'm no genius when it comes to handiwork for sure, but I never had issues with
IKEA stuff.

~~~
ThePadawan
I recently assembled my first piece of non-IKEA furniture.

I think the misconception might stem from the fact that

* IKEA instructions for even very simple things like shelves are often up to 20 pages long. A lot of steps are very simple, but there are lots of them.

* IKEA furniture parts often have many markings on them to make them unique. This is necessary for reuse across products, but also identifiability for above-mentioned instructions.

The shelf I recently assembled had none of these "problems". In fact, it only
had 2 types of structural metal bars that were identical except for length,
and boards to go on top of those bars.

The instructions were 2 pages of text. Full paragraphs worth of text. It
included sentences like "Connect the vertical corner pieces such that the
second-to-last lower peg of the top piece connects to the topmost peg of the
lower piece".

That one sentence takes around 10 seconds to parse, 30 seconds to visualize
and then 1-2 minutes to lay out with the physical pieces in front of you.

I would estimate around 80% of that time is waste, compared to just printing
those instructions using one IKEA-style diagram.

~~~
bonoboTP
Also, text may skip some things that the visualization will have to show
explicitly.

If I'm unsure which screw they really mean here, which orientation I should
have that piece in etc., I can just look really closely at the drawing and
identify exactly what they mean. See the different layers of depth and how
they cover each other to see the exact order of things. See the the exact
drill holes or other marks to disambiguate things.

Maybe it's just that some people think more in words others more in images and
prefer instructions of the corresponding type.

------
jamesrom
It's not those three words that almost ruined you. That much is clear.

------
friendlybus
The telling behaviour is falling out of our culture. The dispassionate army
Sargent basically relaying information without care or cause for it's impact
is telling. The kid made to get through class by doing an oral presentation
and focuses on rapidly getting through the content that needs to be said
without caring about it's delivery is telling. Telling is the most basic form
of communicating. Most of the information we used to "tell" each other is done
over computers now, there's no need to boringly recite football scores or
updates on the weather. The communication we do in real life is more focused
now.

I don't know in what places a formal and functionary 'telling' mode still is
common. Asking a person who 'tells' to show more encourages them to see the
words as if they describe a visual. Show the reader the details in a way that
the mind's eye could reconstruct it. It's not the end all or be all of
writing, for sure. If you're going to use 'show, don't tell' to silence
yourself, then yeah that's not going to work.

------
aazaa
1/2 of the way in and the premise in the title still hasn't been explained.
Not going to stick around for the next 1/2.

~~~
steev
Agreed. I didn't finish the article. I was hoping the author would tell me
what "show, don't tell" means, why it is said, and maybe even an example. I
have a guess of what it means, but as this is the first time I have
encountered the phrase I'd like a concrete definition or description.

I am always trying to improve my writing and most of the books I have read on
the topic of writing well have a common theme: write clearly and simply. For
someone who appears to think of themselves as a writer, I did not find this
writing very clear and had to re-read many sentences. I also didn't know what
"mimesis" meant, and although it sounds fancy I don't think it added anything.
I guess I am not the intended audience of this article.

------
jkmcf
_The way I was taught to write, with a hostile reader glaring at me, implied
that nobody would care what I had to say anyway._

This is far more disturbing than the main premise. I can also relate.

------
darepublic
I was given this advice but could never follow it, I would take the reader by
the shoulders and shout into their face.

