Honeycomb on show, don't tell · 8:27pm Aug 26th, 2014
A good long time ago, Honeycomb wrote a post about "show, don't tell" on 4chan or fic or something (I dunno, I'm old). It has an important insight that isn't in any of my many long posts on the subject.
Today he posted a more recent restatement of that idea. Though personally I find his original post less confusing. I think that what he says in both posts is an elaboration on two principles:
- Don't tell the reader what to feel
- Don't tell the reader what to think
Take this bit of story:
Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot...
But the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, did NOT!
The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
If this were a story in a literary magazine about how the Grinch sees through the shallow hypocrisy of Christmas, as epitomized by plastic Christmas decorations, then this would be bad telling. The author would want us to feel as the Grinch feels about Christmas. He should refrain from just straight telling us that the Grinch hates Christmas, and instead show people applying mindless crass consumerism as a band-aid for human suffering.
But if the Grinch's hatred of Christmas is a plot element rather than an emotion the reader is supposed to feel, then it's okay to just say it. In fact, if it is important for the reader to feel differently than the Grinch does on the subject, you probably shouldn't "show" here!
So you can't take a quote in isolation and criticize it for telling instead of showing. You can identify it as telling, but whether that telling is acceptable or not depends on the context.
I would point out that the remake showed why the Grinch hated Christmas... and that didn't help the story at all.
2403415 Good point--I'm gonna note that in the post.
Humans by nature are contrarians. Tell them what not to do, and they'll go do it the moment your back is turned. (Case Reference: Adam vs Serpent) Sometimes you can use this to your advantage by telling the audience NOT to believe something, and they will naturally slide into belief just as smooth as a greased key.
Consarn it, where's the "Like" button on this contraption?
I-It's not like I wanted your pity reblogging anyway... b-baka...
2404013 Dammit, I tried to stealth-edit that out before you saw it.
I like your idea! But I think that what you posted on your blog today takes a long way around to get to it, and some people will get lost along the way. Possibly including me.
I think these are very good basic rules and steer you away from about half of the egregious "show vs tell" errors, and honestly probably should be told to people instead of "show vs tell" in such cases.
I think the other half has to do with evocation vs explanation, which is the other half of show vs tell and usually has to do with focus - if the characters compete in a race, saying that one of the characters just barely beat the other one is generally worse than either showing that scene (and thus letting us see how close it was) or having them discuss it in the aftermath of the race via dialogue or just their reaction to getting the medal or whatever.
On the other hand, if we're talking about something which happened in the past, which is necessary to inform us about the present but which isn't itself a focus, explaining what happened outright would generally be more acceptable.
This is actually really interesting. Short, but it definitely made me think. I'll try to keep this in the back of my mind as I write things. Thank you.
2404013
So much tsundere.
Hmm...who decides what constitutes telling the reader how to think or feel--the reader, or the author?
It's too late at night for me to really spin my brain wheels on this, but I'm going to say I'm leaning towards the disagree side in relation to these two points being hard fast rules. I think they apply more as ways you may choose to write, and that you can be equally successful in doing otherwise.
This I wholeheartedly agree with.
2404350
Or, to put it more succinctly:
2405354
The reader. But the author should be able to predict it.
I suspect that this may be why stories which are too blatant about pulling on heartstrings can fall flat, incidentally - if you are too obvious in your emotional manipulation, then the reader realizes that you're trying to tell them that they should feel X.
Very good
It's like the difference between lived experience and background axioms. There's every reason to have both categories of thing, but the 'givens' of the story are glossed over because the point of the story is something else…
2405468
I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you, but then which reader does the author listen to, and does the reader listen to herself or others? I've seen novels colored from black to white by those who have read them; opinions of the writing can span all across the board for a single piece of work, and it has nothing to do with intelligence, just in case you want to explore that route for an explanation (just take a look at BH's blogs, or the writings of say Harold Bloom). As for myself, I've seen many fanfic critics condemn a piece of writing for being too telling, and I completely disagree with them, either in whether it is telling or that it was bad writing. It happened just this past writeoff.
I do agree that subtlety tends to be important, but whether that connects directly with not telling the reader what to think or feel...I don't know. I would even hesitate to say that doing those things means you're attempting manipulation, which may in fact be what all writers attempt. Certainly every author wants their reader to feel a certain way while reading their work.
I don't know the truth of these matters yet. But I am uncomfortable with pushing around blanket statements or rules, as opposed to offering general guidelines that can be played with, hence my more dissenting nature in these comments.
2406172
The reader in question is your target audience. People are not all the same, but they don't have to be.
2406965
Ah, good point, I like that clarification, because your target audience can be anyone, even a single person.
Exactly. I totally agree.
I don't see how that sentence would be equivalent to telling the reader to feel sad if it were written to make the reader feel sad. Likewise for all his examples in the chan post.
I think this is what he's going for:
I have my doubts about the general truth of this since unwarranted telly language usually makes me feel something (just not about the characters in the story), but those doubts have specific cases that can be resolved with experiments.