Show and Tell. Which is better? Most Teachers will tell you, “Show don’t Tell!” And they couldn’t be more wrong. This article focuses on the importance of Telling and how writers can counterbalance Showing appropriately. For Showing examples, consider reading “Show Don’t Tell” Is a Tool, Not a Rule.”
“Showing” for a story is like SALT to mashed potatoes. Potatoes are bland and tasteless until you add salt, but too much salt makes a meal disgusting. Overly salted stories aren’t publishable because they are imbalanced. A good writer strikes a careful balance between Showing and Telling. If you are insane (as I was), you may believe “Show don’t Tell” religiously and Show everything you write. Sadly, this led me to struggle for years with prose so purple that no one could read my work for more than a page. I would Show everything with eye-popping images, tastes, sounds, colors, and smells. My stories were beautiful, but they took too long to get anywhere. My readers burned themselves out, which led me to believe I was a tormented genius that was too good for this world (yes, I was a spicy creature. Bedazzling and lost).
Show and Tell – an artful balance.
Emphasize emotions and internal thoughts/struggles
Let’s say you accidentally write yourself into a corner. You’re in good company; this happens to the best writers often. After a daring chase, your protagonist has fallen off a cliff. She’s alive, and thankfully, the antagonist thinks she’s dead. However, her left arm is broken and both ankles are severely sprained. She is alone, lying helpless on her back, on a narrow cliff ledge as night closes in. Mountain lions begin their nightly roaming, she can hear but can’t see them. For the time being, your protagonist is STUCK. She can’t see, she can’t get herself out, and no one knows she’s there. No one is coming to the rescue.
How do you move the story forward? What should the focus be? Telling is the hero of this moment. Telling will show the protagonist’s emotional state and have her face some deep-seated fears. What does that look like to you? Does she remember warnings that her pride would be her downfall? Is she calm, resigned, or panicky? What are her internal thoughts? Does she reach a moment of catharsis or epiphany? Or does she miss the point entirely? What story would you Tell? Leave me a comment using three to four paragraphs (max), and tell me what she goes through and how she gets away.
Telling eases readers from one scene to another and sums up previous events.
Introduce supporting characters
Especially characters who become important later
Supporting characters shouldn’t appear and disappear when they’re not convenient. Telling explains the appearance and exit of support roles surrounding the protagonist. For example,
“Cradling my ribs, I calmly explained to the servants why I blew up the horrid statue when a buxom medic interrupted us. She was jabbering something about me being a menace and how I should see a doctor immediately. My eyes immediately lip-locked to her. She had short dark hair, small deft fingers, long legs, a short torso, and a pouty mouth. Stunning, and she was my age. How had I never met her before?
She commanded I come with her immediately, and when I declined politely, she swore under her breath and stuffed a script for medication into my hand, then stomped away with a subdued shriek. Like all medics, her handwriting was beautiful and unreadable. I casually handed the script to my butler and watched her leave in fascination. She walked like a buxom woman when she was angry… Better yet, she was intelligent, unafraid to express who she was, and she was a nerd. All medics are nerds, every single one. I sighed. Soon I would discover her name, her family, and her abode.
I asked the butler to remind me to send her a “Thank You” card with multiple “X’s” and “O’s” scrawled dramatically at the bottom. Then I asked his thoughts on how she would feel if I appeared on a random night singing nonsense under her window. He didn’t think much of this plan. Yet, I was decided! And I would bring the butler; he was useful. He could help me sneak over the fences and avoid the dogs. Yes… there was wooing to be done.”
There is a bit of Showing here, but much of this is Telling. The audience knows the medic is a striking young woman in a short space, and the protagonist is mischievous yet insightful and amorous. Lovely.
Show and Tell – Medicine to cure your scenes
Summarizing events, accelerating tedious dialogue, and tying scenes together
Consider the following example, and if Showing or Telling would work best.
Your protagonist and company are dining with the local evil magistrate who, at best, is the minion of someone powerful. He appears only three times in the story, and he’s not a central contagonist or antagonist. There is prolonged political banter and debate amongst the guests that disgust the company; these people don’t serve society; they’re parasites. The magistrate asks the protagonist a single insightful question, tells many boastful lies, and becomes quite inebriated.
In his drunken state, he flirts with the protagonist shamelessly and spills information about a mysterious lord. There are hints this lord is pulling strings with heavy political players, and he names names, the magistrate sobs a bit when he confesses that he’s hopelessly indebted to this shadow figure. Then the scene wraps up in a transition that propels the heroes into the next scene, which has an engaging conflict.
Should this be Shown or Told? There will undoubtedly be some Showing, but judicious Telling will summarize the conversation, speed up the story along, and propel the reader to the next scene. Telling is the tool for this scene.
Why squander genius on scenes the audience won’t enjoy? Choose with balance.
If Shown – An uneventful scene can be a chapter in length, and readers yawn.
If Told – The scene is 2-3 paragraphs, and readers are intrigued.
Sidestepping unimportant details or characters
The difference between bored and engaged readers
Let’s consider another scenario. Let’s say your group of heroes go home for the holidays. Each hero has 3-8 family members who are lovely people but not central to the story, and very little conflict or growth happens. These scenes are sentimental, relaxing, and sweet; however, if these moments are Shown. What happens?
You break your reader’s trust by describing unimportant moments with stunning detail. Likewise, the moment a character is named, the reader creates a bond with them. If an adorable character appears, is named, has a single scene, and never appears again. You potentially violate the reader’s trust. Why? Because they liked that character, they want to see them again. If you do this too often, the reader disengages (your JOB is to entertain and teach). Use Telling to gloss over scenes and details, this eases readers from one scene to the next while summing up previous events.
Telling is a time machine that propels readers to any moment.
Telling the passage of time
Speed up, slow down, or even pause time
Your story can straddle any amount of time: days, years, decades, or millennia. Can you Show the passage of time? Of course, but it takes as much time as time itself. It’s easier to Tell the passage of time. Consider this Flash Fiction story.
The Vile Creature
“The old dragon fell many times as she scrambled up the sheer cliff to her secret hole. Scraping herself up the black cliff, she hobbled with broken ankles and wings hanging askew. Filled with contempt, she left reason behind and used her long neck and teeth to pull herself upwards. Sobbing, she left smears of acrid blood and chipped ivory embedded in the stone. The idiotic primate’s blade had stung her deep, and his hammer forever marred the matrix of her scales. She slipped and had to catch herself painfully with her face. Her stomach spasmed, and she vomited blood and bile down the mountain. She roared in self-pity and gagged as she tried to calm her putrid belly. She wasn’t beautiful anymore!!
With her crippled wings windmilling, she tore herself up the last overhang and flung herself into her cave. Wailing softly, she waited for days as the chill of the mountain slowly took her, and she slept too deeply, flirting with death. For three centuries, she purred in the darkness as her body gnawed on the fats of her youth, dreaming the deep memories of her kind.
Dreaming of Youth
She was a whelp again, wriggling live from the humid heat of her mother she immediately fought her siblings and battered them into subservience before her. She coveted her adolescence, living her choice moments again and again… Her first thunder of Drakes clamored to be her lovers, and she sighed as they danced, fought, and died violently for even the chance that she might notice them. Oh, how she lingered here. Memories filled with brutal flirting, fulfillment, and satisfaction.
Finally, she remembered the resourceful primate that hurt her and realized he’d have died of old age as she slept. How could the filthy primates be so deadly but so stupidly short-lived! WHY!? How could she get revenge on the vile creature if he was dead? Only the living could satisfy revenge! She convulsed with spastic lunges as she ranted in her sleep and considered her options. Wait… The thing had to have spawned children. The mammals were always breeding like boisterous pigs! And they were vain! There had to be a dynasty of his blood flung down the hall of time. Yes, she would play with them and make them ugly. They would amuse her, these beings it would have loved had it remained alive. She would coddle them, turn them, and they would kill each other… and when she tired of them, she’d devour them and pick her teeth with their sharpest bones.”
Telling Examples
OKAY, this is not a nice lady dragon, and there is some Showing here but notice these statements:
- “The old dragon fell many times as she scrambled up the sheer cliff to her secret hole.”
- This took almost two days.
- “For three centuries, she purred in the darkness as her body gnawed on the fats of her youth, dreaming the deep memories of her kind.”
- In one sentence, we skipped three centuries.
- “She was a whelp again, wriggling live from the humid heat of her mother she immediately fought her siblings and battered them into subservience before her.”
- This memory lasted ten years.
- She coveted her adolescence, living her choice moments again and again… Her first thunder of Drakes clamored to be her lovers, and she sighed as they danced, fought, and died violently for even the chance that she might notice them.
- Thirty-five years this time.
How could these examples be Shown? Frankly, they couldn’t; they must be Told.
Writers don’t need the one-sided statement, “Show Don’t Tell.” I want to offer “Show and Tell, Balanced Well.” What are your thoughts? What stories do you have inside you? Write Something Great!