Write Better: Tips and tricks

Tell v Show, part one

When you're a writer, you'll inevitably come across the great show vs tell debate.
There are times when you should show and times when you should tell.

And times where someone will tell you to do one or the other and you're like "but I thought I WAS!"

So what do people want from you?

What is the difference?

My favorite show/tell example is as follows:

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."

-Anton Chekhov

Instead of the show/tell, I try to think of "show" in terms of specifics. And there are different layers of specificity.

Telling is telling. You're providing the reader with information that can't necessarily be expressed in-scene. It happens all the time in real life. You can tell your friends about the cute guy in the mall, but unless you creeped and took a pic, you can't actually show them. That's what telling's function is like in literature. 

Showing amounts to how much detail you go into about that hot guy. In general, the more basic/generic it is, the more likely it is that people will accuse you of telling.

Now let's look at an example to see when/how we decide whether or not to show or tell.

"You know the Queen?"

I put a bullet in her shoulder. "She spent part of her journey  at our ranch."

"Oh!" A blush covered Katrine's cheeks. She picked at the apple stem in her hands. "So you're- Oh my God. I'm so sorry. I should've recognized you. Please don't tell my dad."

[excerpt from a standalone chapter about Marcus (Run Cold Books 1&2)]

Italicized we have a clear example of telling. Marc thinks to himself (and you, the reader!), revealing that at some point in the past he shot the queen. He tells us this information.

Now, when someone is critiquing or editing, they might just highlight this and say TELLING IS BAD SHOW US.

What they're asking for, basically, is more detail.

As the writer, you are responsible for deciding that.

Should  I have shown more? Should that have been a memory of staring the queen down and pulling the trigger?

You can't just highlight the text and say show. That's one of the problems when you post tiny segments or users critique bits and pieces of your writing.

"Show is better than tell" is not always true.

When you're deciding whether or not you agree with them, consider a few things:

1. The scene.

Let's say Marcus and Katrine bumped into each other at the grocery store. They're strangers. It's busy. There are people moving carts and baskets all around them, just trying to buy their damn groceries. Katrine's waiting for her ticket number to be called at the deli counter. Marc has a mare in foal he's gotta get back to. And they're having a conversation in all this.

Think about meeting people in grocery stores. How often do you have time for big pauses and long memories when you're passing by even your BFF?

It won't make sense in every scene/situation to show every little detail. Consider what's going on and the speed at which it's happening when you are trying to decide if you should transition from tell to show.

2. The character's emotional attachment to what they're telling.

If you're using a limited pov, how a character responds to what they're telling can dictate whether or not to show something.

In the excerpt above, we don't know how Marc feels about shooting the queen. We know the queen's alive (Katrine said know vs knew), but it's difficult to discern exactly what his connection is. If Marc doesn't care all that much, or he's just making an observation to himself in passing, he may not IC feel the need to re-live it.

3. How much does the character know about what they're telling?

Let's say your eleven year old character's teacher asked her to report on the War of the Moon Dogs, a war that occurred 200 years ago. Showing might not be an option for them. And if you consider other factors (like the kid doesn't give a rat's ass about the war), they might not do anything but tell.

4. The character's style of telling.

A closed-off, introverted narrator who focuses on the little things will tell/show differently from the chatty extrovert.

My aunt, for example, can turn a trip to the grocery store on Thanksgiving into a circus adventure. My brother, meanwhile, might just tell you "the store was busy, but I  still got the cranberry sauce."

5. The pace.

All stories have a rhythm and a pace. When showing requires expansion (it doesn't always, but if often does), you risk slowing down the pace of the scene, chapter, or story. Consider whether or not this is appropriate; if it's not, you might find yourself slowing the battle scene down by showing an excess of material, when all you really needed was the gift of it (the axe landed in his chest and down he fell).

There are times where you should look at pace and say "hey, I want to slow this down." Transition from less tell to more specifics will help. To speed it up, transitioning from less specifics to more tell will do the same.

6. How important the information is/how important the additional information is.

So someone says you told something and thinks you should show it. How important is the additional information? You don't want your novel to be filled with unnecessary and cumbersome detail; just what is necessary.

If the only thing important is that Marc told Katrine the party is Friday, you can say that. You don't have to show him telling her the info and her reacting to it, etc. On the same note, if the additional information is important (maybe this is where we find out that Marc likes her), then that information can be beneficial shown, moreso than if you left it out.

7. Where in the story this happens.

If we know Marc feels guilty about being forced to shoot the queen, because we've already gone over this in the story, you don't necessarily have to show things again. That's where you have to watch out, especially if you are posting sections of story where anyone (who hasn't read the rest) can critique you.

In the above example of Marc and Katrine, the reader of my Run Cold novels already knows that he's in love with the queen. They know why he shot her; they witnessed the shooting scene where he was forced to. They know he was supposed to shoot her in the head, they know he took her to the hospital and stayed with her day and night and they know the queen thanked him for saving her life. They know he looks at the scars and feels guilty....So when they read his thoughts, they have the ability to fill in an emotion for him. They don't need it shown because it already has been. In this case, this would be yet another reminder about how bad he feels (someone mentions the queen, and his mind immediately goes back to shooting her).

But if I asked someone off the streets or forums to critique it, they'll be asking for a lot more than the readers of the series!

How much do I show?

This is where specifics come in. Use the above list to help you figure out what is important and what isn't. Is it enough to say when Marc fell asleep he dreamed about the queen? Or should we say he dreamed that she was standing in a white dress? Should we say how he interacted with her in the dream?

We'll go into this further in part two. :)