Show & Tell - Writerly Words
Show & Tell
Definition:
Showing —The word used to describe a writing style that demonstrates the events of a story by using active words that communicate emotive details related to the senses. Often called “Active Voice” or “Detail Mode”. Example: Beads of sweat trickled down his forehead.
Telling — The word used to describe a passive writing style that communicates facts, ideas and concepts or summarizes the details of a story. Often called “Passive Voice” or “Summary Mode”. Example: It was hot.
Explanation: If you have hung out in writing circles for any amount of time, you have most likely heard the catch phrase “show, don’t tell”. This encapsulates the idea that it is better to Show your readers the action of a story than to simply Tell them what is going on. That sounds easy to grasp, right? Show what’s happening. Paint pictures with words. Don’t be boring. The question is… how?
What does that actually mean and how does it affect the way you write your story?
To fully understand, we must know how human brains process written words. On one side, you have the part of you that thinks in facts, concepts and ideas, things like this…
It was hot.
Long ago, Britain was divided into feudal kingdoms.
Over 55 million people die every year.
These are each examples of Telling. When reading these sentences, you may have had a few pictures pop into your brain, but they probably were not clear and left you feeling little emotion. Even when we read the raw facts of annual human death rates, we are not necessarily moved with strong feeling. After all, those are just facts, cut and dry.
The other side of your brain works with your imagination, creating mental images, sounds, scents and emotions. It is easily engaged by sentences that create movies in your mind, sentences like these…
Beads of sweat trickled down his forehead.
The stone castle rose harsh and dark against the grey sky, shadowing the surrounding land.
“Tim… Tim, please?” The child’s eyes glistened as she clutched her little brother’s cold hand, “Mommy, why can’t he hear me?”
These are examples of Showing. Notice they revolve around the same subjects used in previous examples, but the words used here paint clear images in your mind as you read them. They are more interesting because you can see everything. It is as if there is a video playing, showing us each dramatic detail and evoking corresponding emotion.
Interestingly enough, when you Show the events of a story, both sides of your brain begin to work together in harmony. The creative side recreates the images, sounds and smells written about on the page, while the analytical side of your brain deciphers them, taking sentences like “Beads of sweat trickled down his forehead” and saying “Man, it must be really hot”.
While a lot of writers loudly proclaim “show, don’t tell!”, we need to take such suggestions with a grain of salt. Showing, or Detail Mode, should be our primary mode of storytelling. It should color our pages with detail and emotion, but it should not be our only mode of storytelling. We need to be able to use Summary Mode to Tell about ideas and concepts in our stories when the time is right. We need to Show and Tell, but we need to find an appropriate blend of both styles.
Rule Breakers: Many beginning writers, and far too many experienced writers, fall into the “Telling Trap”. Without a doubt, the easiest form of writing is to simply Tell what happened next in the story. Our brains don’t want to go to the trouble of imagining the story in detail and penning a "moment by moment" mental film. After all, it is easy to say your hero was discouraged; it is hard to show what that discouragement actually looks like and how it affects his mood, his thoughts or his actions. But you can’t expect to write a gripping story by writing lazy prose. You must make your brain do the necessary work.
How do you know when you have stopped writing with an active voice, when you’ve stopped Showing the action?
First, ask yourself if you can imagine the events of the story clearly. Can you “see” what is happening? Is it like a video in your mind? If not, you are probably not Showing. [i]
Next, look at the words you used. You will usually be able to quickly tell if you have started “Telling”. Here are some examples of Telling words.
Was and were — Was and Were are Telling words. Too often they hide in our writing, weakening the images we want to portray in a reader’s mind. As often as possible, it is best to leave was and were out because excluding these words forces us to write more lively sentences and use strong verbs. It strengthens the writing as a whole.
Had been and ing combinations — When you use had been and ing word combinations, you are not Showing us what happened. You are removing your readers from the moment and Telling us what happened seconds or hours or days before. This too weakens your writing.
Saw, heard, felt, tasted and smelled —When you use words like these in your writing, it is easy to think you are doing a good job Showing the events of the story. After all, these are the five senses, aren’t they? In reality, each of these words and many like them (wanted, hoped, feared, etc.) simply mask weak prose, making them seem more evocative than they really are. Saying “He heard the train” is a much weaker word choice than “A shrill whistle pierced his ears, and the air filled with growing thunder. The train.”
Cut out “I saw” and “he heard”. Replace them with clear details.
These are only some of the ways Telling manifests itself, but they are a good starting point and a strong indication that you may be overusing Summary Mode.
What's the rule of of thumb? Use Telling only when you are intentionally summarizing a fairly unimportant and uninteresting section of the story (like a car ride or a long and boring conversation) or when briefly communicating a concept that is IMPORTANT to the story (Example: Few people here can read or write).
Examples:
Telling: What You Shouldn't Do
Sarah and I had been stuck at home all day while it rained. We weren’t very happy to be there, and I pouted. At least Sarah had an i-pod. I was jealous. I heard her humming to the music and the sound just made me more and more irritated. {1}She was the one who broke my i-pod six weeks ago, said it was an ‘accident’ and marched off to her room. Mom and Dad didn’t make her pay for a new one, and I was broke. So here I was, feeling unhappy and unlucky.} {2}But my luck was about to change… for the worse. Little did I know that something was going to happen that would make my little irritations seem like a trip to the park.}
See section {1} which is enclosed in red brackets. Here we have what is popularly called an "info dump”. The Main Character has stepped out of the story to tell us about something that happened in the past. This a bad case of "Telling" and quickly loses a reader’s interest.
See section {2}. These sentences offer us an unrealistic glimpse of the future and tell us things we should not be able to know (see Point of View). They also tend to silently say, “I’m a boring scene, but please don’t stop reading. Things will pick up soon”. Your reader needs to be interested in what is happening on every single page without having your narrator tip her hand ...And that brings up another good point: avoid clichés like the plague! They’re redundant, don’t create any mental images and dampen emotion. The only exception is when your characters naturally use a cliché in their dialogue or narration.
I think we can all agree our first narrative paragraph was awful. We don't care about Sarah or the narrator. The story was actually painful to read and created no emotion... except for boredom. It's time to redo it. We’ll turn this horrible paragraph into something stronger, a gentle blend of both Showing and Telling.
Showing: A Better Way to Write
Green = Showing
Blue=Telling
Rain beat against the window, just as it had since 6:39 am. The grey light made everything dull… everything except Sarah’s face. She glowed in the only way brats can, haloed by the light of an i-pod. I stuck out my lower lip and tapped my fingers against the end table. She shot a glance across her device as she hummed a few bars of Chapman’s Crazy then looked away, refusing to take the hint. I groaned, flopping my head back against the couch cushion, “Maybe we could share the ear buds? You take one? I’ll take the other? …You owe it to me.”
She shook her head, blonde hair swaying, “It’s not my fault you broke your i-pod.”
My jaw clenched as a million angry words swirled in my head. Sarah shot me a second glance. Her blue eyes fastened on my face, daring me to say those words, to scream that it was her fault, that all of this was her fault, that I wouldn’t be sitting here bored out of my mind if it wasn’t for her. Of course, she never did anything wrong.
White lightning erupted with blinding force, and thunder tore through the air, shaking the whole house. The lights went dark, and Sarah’s expression froze, “Meg?”
Practical Application: Print out a copy of your writing and read through it, marking every little bit of passive voice. Once you are finished, go back through it and change all of those weak sections, sentences and words. Exchange them for clear images, sights and sounds. Try to choose words that will create a clear video of the action in your reader’s mind. Not only will this make your story stronger, it will make you a better writer in the future.
[i] Showing vs. Telling in Your Writing by RoseannBiederman (http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/showing-vs-telling-in-your-writing)
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