Rameesha Rants

description vs. dialogue

agenda:

in this chapter, i'll be giving my opinion on the balance between description and dialogue by studying the case history of the famous phrase show, don't tell.

warning:

➛ breaking the stereotypical advice

discussion:

now, ladies and gentlemen, we've all been told, at least once in our life, that all good writers show and not tell. they show us readers that their main character is either rich or poor, drop-dead-gorgeous or just plain looking. in fact, it is through this show process that we identify villains and heroes.

all in all, we know the deal and at some point, have tried it too. and before we begin this rant (which is more of an advice session) let me tell you that i perfectly agree with this phrase under some circumstances

the key word, however, is some.

this phrase cannot apply under all circumstances, this phase should not apply under all circumstances. now, before you guys raise your brows and declare a word-y war against me, let me elaborate.

the thing is simple - if you went on showing everything and telling nothing, you'll end up with a long ass novel with next to nothing happening in it. and, you guys, we don't want that, do we?

let me give you my example and how i got to learn this handy dandy lesson:

i once participated in NaNoWriMo (i will probably make a chapter on it too when November comes but all you need to know right now is it's a month in which you write 50,000 words) and managed to write some 35,000 words. although i lost, i was still happy because something urgent came up in the last week and i couldn't reach my goal and knew if i had gotten time, i would have.

but we're not talking about nano, we're talking about descriptions. so, back to the story. after i went back to checking what i had written in that month, i was surprised to know that those 35,000 words made only 8 chapters of my book. although they were long and show-don't-tell-scene was going strong, there wasn't much happening in the story.