Howdy, everyone. I have misplaced some notes on my original topic, so I am once again forced to call an audible on my Writers Bloc topic. (I am no good at sticking to plans.) Let us hope it is a Peyton Manning audible and not a Tavaris Jackson audible.[/alienating sports joke]
Show, don't tell. Creative writers have heard this advice thousands of times. Many writers consider it one of the cornerstones of great writing. However, it can be difficult to master. Scores of writers -- including this one -- must mentally torture themselves to master this omnipresent advice.
OK, maybe not all the time. But it is more dramatic that way.
But what is showing, and what is telling? The difference is easy to understand.
Telling is all in the narration. Imagine you are watching a '50s era educational movie. The narrator is telling the viewer all about what is unfolding onscreen. ("Little Billy must scrub everywhere if he is to keep up good hygiene.") The same principle manifests itself in writing.
Showing, however, is revealing that same information through action, dialogue and thoughts. Think of showing in the context of a movie. When Darth Vader uses the Force to kill admirals who have annoyed him, George Lucas is not telling the viewer Darth Vader has a short temper -- he is showing it to the viewer. That is the basic difference. Telling is the voice-over, and showing is the action onscreen (the imagination, in the case of writing).
Here is a quick example to make it more evident:
Telling: Shinmaru entered the room. He was a huge douchebag, and nobody liked him.
Showing: Shinmaru entered the room. As he walked past everyone inside, he shoved down a little girl who offered him cupcakes, and then he kicked a puppy before leaving.
". . . Dude. That guy is a prick," SomeGuy said.
See the difference? Telling lets the audience know straight off what you are trying to say, while showing allows the audience to infer the feeling for themselves (and is often much more subtle than the above example).
Here is an example of showing from Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut:
Weary told Billy about neat tortures he'd read about or seen in the movies or heard on the radio -- about other neat tortures he himself had invented. One of the inventions was sticking a dentist drill into a guy's ear.
With this bit of action, Vonnegut establishes that Roland Weary is 1) nuts, 2) a sick bastard and 3) a nutty, sick bastard. This also highlights the sometimes thin line between showing and telling. It reads a bit like telling, but the difference is the aim of the writing. Vonnegut's aim is to establish Weary's depravity; he tells about Weary and Billy Pilgrim's conversation to show the reader Weary's sickness. This is probably the most confusing part of the "show, don't tell" mantra for writers to grasp. It definitely took a while for me to fully understand.
So, now you know the difference. But why is it important? That is easy.
Showing engages the reader more. It allows him or her to think about what has been written and then draw conclusions. This keeps the reader actively involved in the story. Showing a reader something with an interesting image, action or snippet of conversation is almost guaranteed to grab his or her attention more than just telling something.
Most of the time, showing is also more subtle and more imaginative than telling. Showing gives the writer free reign to establish any number of things in interesting ways.
Which sentences would you have more fun writing?
This: Light Yagami was crazy.
Or this: Light Yagami chuckled to himself as he went over his diabolical plan in his head. So many people would die, and L would never suspect a thing.
"I'll take a potato chip," Light said, "and eat it! JUST AS PLANNED!"
Of course, as with all rules, there are exceptions. Telling is usually more economical than showing. It gets the feeling across quicker and allows the plot to move faster. Sometimes a scene is just so minor that it really isn't worth it to show the feeling instead of telling it.
Also, it is more than possible to "tell" in an artful, interesting way. Once again, I pull from Slaughterhouse-Five -- this is the beginning of the story, where Vonnegut establishes Billy Pilgrim's situation:
Listen:
Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day. He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between.
He says.
Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren't necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next.
In this case, telling was absolutely the correct choice. Showing all this would take pages and would probably bog the story down in needless action. Telling sets the scene for the story in a quick way, and Vonnegut writes the scenario in such a balanced, rhythmic manner that it grabs hold of the reader and does not let go.
There is no easy way to tell when you should show and when you should tell. The only way to find out is to try both ways and see what fits best if you are unsure. My only advice would be if you can show and tell in about the same amount of space, then you should probably show, because it is likely more interesting.
