Show when you _______, Tell when you _________ (Part II of 'show don't tell')

A foundational post

Some days ago I posted a piece about “Show don’t Tell” with a focus on “show.”

In Part II, we’ll focus on “tell” as well as some summative thoughts. We’ll look when “telling” might be useful or even necessary: the nature of “telling” while working through a first draft; in moving the plot and transitioning; with regards to character and tone and that key in writing fiction, human emotion (looking at both writing for young people and adults) and why you might in fact need to “tell” within this context. And some concluding thoughts on assembling tools, the aural experience of audio books, and more—a rewrite of the axiom to close. The unpacking here has taken me by surprise—

In Part I, I used two sentences as examples:

Telling: It was cold outside.

Showing: London winter made no effort to find friends.

Let’s reconsider the sentence It was cold outside. (In Part I, I spoke to the “showing” sentence.) Sometimes you don’t want the reader to have to spend time sub/consciously working through your words and meaning. Maybe they’ve spent such energy on a preceding paragraph, or they are about to with what follows. Not every phrase and sentence should be “work.” Sometimes you might even want the abrupt quality in straight-ahead “telling.” Maybe “telling” is the true voice of a character, or a narrator in that moment. It might be a piece of flash fiction, and a voice you want for some reason of form. Really, there are many reasons you might want to “tell.” The significant piece is to know when you are doing it, whether you need it, why, and what else it might be.

A review of the questions asked by an Unschool writer-reader:

1) What are the clues to look for in the writing as to whether one is showing or telling?  What sort of words are indicators? How can one make the shift?

2) Are there ever times when telling is acceptable or even preferred in writing or is it always considered undesirable.

3) How can I get more inside my characters to show rather than tell? 

4) Are there any exercises to train oneself to be aware of the differences?

5) is it more difficult to “show” when writing in third person POV? 

We’ll be working with Question 2 for the most part here—“times when telling is acceptable or even preferred.”

First drafts

If working on first or early drafts, and developing the plot, you might simply tell, and return later to flesh out. It might be a writing day when plot ideas are flowing easily, and you don’t want to halt that process in any way. Write as if sketching, with quick lines. You can fetch the water colours later to fill in.

On another kind of writing day, those expansive-feeling days, you can go deeper, add that colour, fill in and out—and “show.” Showing can take time, a deeper level of absorption, immersion. You might feel, at such times, the “flow” some talk about. For each of us this can be so different; you might find yourself thinking about a particular reader. Or you might feel that you are truly communing with a particular character in your work-day.

There are no rules. There are only principles. And these are always in flux for each story, and each day of work.

Moving the plot

“Telling” can be useful to move the plot along at times. Honestly, if we were limited to showing-only, novels would be 1500 page dragging things that no one would read.

At times, you have an action-oriented piece. This is a good time to be utterly clear, and to keep your reader moving exactly as the characters are.

A quote from John Updike’s Couples that reveals this “move along” quality in the physicality of a story, mid-basketball game among neighbours…

• Hanema, abruptly fierce, stole the ball from Constantine, braving his elbow, pushed past Ken in a way that must be illegal, hipped and hopped and shot.

(Of note: this last phrase captures the rhythm of the basketball play!)

Updike could let the reader guess about the “abruptly fierce”—so telling!—but he just wants to get it in there and out of the way—no time for guessing. A game is happening! The story must go on.

Tone & Character…

Sometimes, or at some points, a story is asking for a tone of “reporting.” Characters, too might ask this. Your character might have a “telling” voice—what is that about? It might mean taking on their way of seeing the world, and their way of articulating it. Sometimes, characters, by their nature, move the plot along…

Is your character a pragmatic sort? Romantic? Colourful? How does this connect with showing and telling?

A pragmatic character might make an observation about the sun rising in the morning. Another character might add a piece personifying the sun, or adding some whimsy. A poetic character might wax on a bit. DO consider the voice/character/setting… Let one element of your story inform the approach to the other elements. Or ask yourself why you might want the juxtaposition of elements.

There might be the possibility of an unreliable narrator, who might be “telling” you misleading pieces… (But that would be another post! So many ways to digress in this topic.)

Transitions

Sometimes telling serves to transition with ease and quickly. Quick transitions—such as “Next day…” “Later…” are generally best. They slip by, place the reader, and carry on.

That “simplicity” to telling can be welcome at points. Sometimes your reader needs it as much as they need the white space in poetry. It gives them the opportunity to take a breath; sometimes it is appropriate to simply hand something to someone. Don’t be coy.

Emotions (with a note about writing for young people, too)

For years now, in teaching writing for children, I’ve taught this axiom (borrowed from an unremembered source) as “Always show; sometimes tell; never explain,” with a focus on how—sometimes—young readers might benefit from having the complexities of emotions articulated—told but not explained.

It can be a challenge to know what any reader’s experience is, and whether they will understand what it is you are trying to show.

Children’s capacity for emotional experience is not different from an adult’s. All ages know loneliness, harshness, betrayal… Though in the case of a child, betrayal might be a school-teacher forgetting a promise; for an adult, it’s something else. A child’s experience of emotions, ideally, is gradations of… As a parent, you can only hope they experience Hammy the hamster dying before a loved relation.

There’s the thought that the only emotion children do not truly understand is “nostalgia.” But they can know yearning. Writing about emotions for young readers gives them vocabulary to voice what they are already feeling.

Writers have long filled the role of giving voice to experience and questions; that’s still a role we inhabit in our work.

But being open to the times you might feel that some telling is warranted is not for young readers alone.

More from John Updike’s Couples … in which I’m finding interesting bits of adult emotion that is clearly stated, emotion that is surprising at times, unexpected even—which may be why Updike doesn’t want it open to interpretation: it is what it is.

Examples in single sentences, without context:

• She went into the kitchen and deliberately didn’t listen, because she wanted to.

• Foxy laughed, delighted at having been deceived.

• Her voice, lifted toward the man, sounded diminished to Foxy, frightened.

This is what I mean by “unexpected.”

• Thus a gentle rift was established between them.

And here, it’s blunt. As is needed at times. To “show” a “gentle rift” being “established” could take chapters…

• Hanema was beside her. Surprisingly, he said, “I hate being a shit and that’s how it keeps turning out. I beg him to come play and then I cripple him.”

  It was part confession, part brag.

Note the adverb surprisingly for a “telling” don’t-leave-it-to-the-imagination adverb! And the conclusion—part confession, part brag—might have been picked up on by a paying-attention reader, but Updike just concludes this bit by stating/telling.)

More straight-head telling… that works.

• Nancy’s (a young daughter) anxious curiosity searched out something he had buried in himself and he disliked the child for seeking it.

• He had a wife, a coming child, a house in need of extensive repair. He had overreached. Life, whose graceful secrets he would have unlocked, pressed upon him clumsily.

This novel is such a grand mix of telling/showing. The sentences are long and wander and turn in on themselves, and out again. The characters build via scene and exposition. The page count is long and there are multiple characters—another reason to do some “telling”: the reader has a lot to track.

Here, an example of just telling it as it is—and enjoying the writing (both work and the reading of it) in that:

• John Ong watched sober, silent, smiling, smoking.

This is such a strong sentence—the collection of two syllable s- words, the double -ings at the end. The juxtaposition of “sober smiling.” It’s all there, spelled out. And a pleasurable thing. It’s a statement piece, that leaves us with images and emotional response—a blending.

A note on audio books - my wondering

I am trying to do the audio book thing. I started to listen to Barbara Kingsolver’s latest while riding my exercise bike.

The strange thing is, after a couple of lengthy listens, is that I feel I’m “being told” the story. I’m now wanting to get a hard-copy of this book to see if the writing is as “telling” as it sounds. The voice is retrospective, a child’s perspective. And that voice can easily lend itself to a “telling” place for the writer. As a writer who habitually writes from a child’s immediate perspective, I try to be aware of this, and to create “scene,” and read aloud to hear what the work is doing in the air.

So my inner jury is out on this audio-book thing. I need to hear more of this particular story, and then see it. I know I don’t read on a screen in the same way I read on a physical page. I’ve adjusted to this: if I’m reviewing a book, I don’t read it on screen. My review won’t be as favourable as it will be if I read old-school; I’m wondering about audio books now. Different modes of reading for all.

The Toolbox

The above are tools, pieces to reach for as needed. You can read about writing and talk about it, you can read works in whatever form and genre you want to work in. But nothing replaces filling page after page with words—the act of writing.

You write to discover how balance grows. Or not. And what you need. Or not. You can workshop, and listen to others’ opinions, and revisit the work. You’ll find you agree and disagree. You might disagree, and then stumble over a “tool”—piece of “advice”—two weeks later, and come to agree.

Or find a third piece, a new thought. In my experience, this happens frequently when working with a talented editor: they make a suggestion, offer a half-thought… and something lights up inside you. NOT what they suggested, but something seemingly from nowhere. The sum being more than parts. This takes openness, experience, knowledge.

Keep writing. Writing = experience.

Question #1: How to make the shift?

I’m hoping that these two posts answer this question. Maybe it’s less about “shifting” than it about growing awareness of both, and seeking that balance. But if you are left with even half of a question…

A note about Question #5

Is it more difficult to “show” when writing in third person POV? 

It shouldn’t be. Especially if the POV is close or “limited” third. If in doubt, re-write a section in first person. This will reveal! Then you can revert and re-write in a much closer third… if you didn’t reach that goal on first try.

And the verdict…

When I set out to put this post together, I was thinking a fairly straightforward “answer.” I’ve had more than a few questions on this subject in the past while. All writers struggle with it. Mostly, possibly, because it is spoken of so frequently.

But in writing these posts, I find myself returning to thoughts on evoking “Scene.” I wrote a post about this in ’21, and have linked to it a few times since. I also have been mulling how perhaps some of the bias against “telling” isn’t about “telling” so much as it is lazy writing—writing with over-used wording, go-to place-holders.

Look at the richness in the examples. This is not writing that strikes immediately as telling. But they are “statements” which is how we defined “telling” in Part I.

We live in rushed times. We eat and sleep and travel to save time. For what?

As creatives, to take time to get a sentence “right”—that is, “what it should be”—is something to strive for. It’s the writer’s version of all the mindfulness talk. It’s contemplative. It’s caring about your story, caring about how it reads. Writing is connecting the two solitudes.

Yet another sentence from Updike:

• “the window was partly a mirror in which his handsomeness, that strange outrigger to his career, glanced back at him…”

Updike is telling us so much in the half-line “that strange outrigger to his career.” An adult lifetime summed in those words. The word “outrigger” creates an image so strong… so yes, we could say we are being shown by the creative word choice, but we’re also being told the role of his appearance within the context of his career; he’s gone up the ladder, face-first. He adds “strange” which is a telling judgement. He doesn’t want us to miss this point. Yet within the context of this sentence (much longer than it is here) this is almost an aside! But throughout the novel are these telling bits that reach back in time and weave together solid portraits of character and motivation and intention. A true blend of knowing when to show, when to tell, and how to.

It’s quite by chance I’m reading this book at the moment. My book club chose to read the memoir The End of Your Life Book Club, by Will Schwalbe, and that is leaving me with a lengthy list of books-to-read, including Couples. Reading and connecting ideas as a writer is a serendipitous act (as is writing this newsletter, surely).

The End of Your Life Book Club is about Schwalbe and his mother, dying of pancreatic cancer, sharing books, as they always have, but intensified by the dying they are living with.

I read this, and pondered “the doctor would ‘tell’ us.” And that penultimate sentence, about Mom being sure the doctor would “let us know.” The space between tell and let know.

In the end, what do our readers need to know? Are we letting them know? In the best way possible—that is, with rich, thought-full writing? Scene-writing? With balance?

A re-write of ‘show don’t tell’…?

Tell when you must; show when you can.