Comments on: Show and Tell

By: Ruth Feingold

Ruth Feingold — Mon, 14 Jul 2003 15:23:37 +0000

“Show, don’t tell” was a maxim of the New Critics, and a principle valued at mid-century (that would be the 20th). Flannery O’Connor, for example, used it as her mantra. The point is not only that different kinds of writing work well in different contexts, but that both literary AND critical styles change. What’s considered good literature now may not be “good” in 50 years. So saying what authors should or shouldn’t do is a tricky proposition. Oh dear—I’m sound pretty Postmodernist, aren’t I?

By: derrida derider

derrida derider — Mon, 14 Jul 2003 12:07:46 +0000

Why all the fancy analysis? People are wired to be curious – and “show, don’t tell” caters for this. People enjoy using their mental models of the world to fill gaps – it’s just going with the flow of their neurology.

By: Andy

Andy — Sun, 13 Jul 2003 16:13:46 +0000

Bringing in other rules would definitely do the trick, but to the extent that I’ve got intuitions about this, it seems like there’s just no pressure at all to run all your descriptions in absolutely bottom-level terms. Not clear how much weight that ought to have, but it’s something. Matt’s right about what the claim was supposed to be- the right level of description’s pretty clearly not constant. There’s actually a pretty nice explanation of that if what’s going on is multiple-rule-interaction type stuff, but it’s harder to explain on my (ripped off from Ishani) not-yet-a-theory. And we have to cash out “level of description that our imaginative faculties operate at”, which I happily admit is a pretty appalling hand-wave as it stands. Still…

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Sun, 13 Jul 2003 15:32:43 +0000

Richard Johnston, posting after I stopped typing, demonstrated his superior grasp of one of those other maxims: “Be concise, dammit.”

By: Angus

Angus — Sun, 13 Jul 2003 14:53:40 +0000

Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve always assumed that “show don’t tell” was a reference to the distinction in classical poetics between mimesis (“showing,” ie what drama does) and diegesis (“telling,” ie what narrative does). All fictional narrative is, strictly speaking, diegesis (except for quoted speech), but the “show don’t tell” maxim seems to me to express the realist view that fiction should. as far as possible, approach the condition of drama by making the mediating voice of the narrator as “invisible” as possible. (As such, of course, it’s a highly tendentious and disputable maxim.)

By: Shieva

Shieva — Sun, 13 Jul 2003 08:01:30 +0000

Here’s my thought: Perhaps the “Show, Don’t Tell” rule is grounded in the subjective paradigm (which, as far as I understand it, is the idea that the truth cannot be communicated, or that a person cannot learn the truth from someone else, but rather must experience it for themselves, and therefore the best way to teach someone is to create a situation conducive to their having such an experience). If the rule is based on this, then perhaps what an author needs to do in order to follow it isn’t to express propositions by stating other propositions which entail what they wish to express. Instead, it would be by doing whatever they need to within the writing to allow the reader to experience the truth of the proposition they want to communicate. So if they want to convey that ‘the woods are dangerous,’ some bad ways to do it would be to simply state the proposition, or to describe the ways in which the particles composing the wood and those composing the characters stand in relation to one another. But perhaps a good way to do it would be to create suspense, by drawing out descriptions of events, or giving the reader plot-relevant knowledge that the characters lack, or by making the descriptions of the characters stand in stark contrast with those of their surroundings . . . the use of symbolism, foreshadowing, and also manipulation of the medium of communication (altering sentence length, or using assonance, alliteration, etc.) are some other ways an author might create an experience for readers, rather than simply telling them about it. This is what I think the “Show, Don’t Tell” rule is getting at.

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Sun, 13 Jul 2003 00:01:59 +0000

Brian, I think you’ve quantifier-shifted Andy’s conclusion. It’s not that there’s a single appropriate level of description at which all fiction should operate—it’s that, for each bit of fiction, there’s an appropriate level at which it should operate. So you could say something like, “Mauritania and Ruritania had been at war for three years, and the 17th regiment had been bivouacked in town for a week. A soldier was sitting outside Laura’s door. He jabbed his bayonet into the ground, pulled it out, and jabbed it into the ground again. The front lawn was covered in uprooted flowers and dirt.” (Of course, you would want to make it much better.) This has some very high-level description of countries and regiments, and some low-level description of the soldier’s actions and the state of the lawn. It skips the intermediate-level description of the soldier’s boredom and the chaos inflicted on Laura’s tidy existence by the occupation. This is appropriate—well, it would be appropriate if this were actually good fiction—because the reader’s imagination operates at these different levels. We can imagine Laura sitting in her house, thinking about the war, and watching the soldier. Incidentally, it’s worth noting that rules for good fiction are incredibly loose. “Show don’t tell” is really writing-workshop talk for “Move to a lower level of description.”

By: Richard Johnston

Richard Johnston — Sat, 12 Jul 2003 23:43:24 +0000

It’s a lot simpler, isn’t it? ‘Show, don’t tell’ always strikes me as a handy way of helping writers to remember to not treat the reader as a fucking moron. (sic., but I split my infinitives without any guilt.)

By: Avram

Avram — Sat, 12 Jul 2003 19:34:31 +0000

I think a better phrasing, rather than “always use the lower-level stuff”, is “rather than telling your audience what you wish them to observe, tell them what you think will enable them to deduce what you wish them to observe”. This implies a different level of detail for different assumed audiences. If you’re writing for people who can deduce human-level activities from observation of subatomic particles, fine, but most books aren’t written for that audience.