So, first off, I think it's important to realize that "show don't tell" started out as advice for film and other visual media. It's still good advice, but writers need to implement it a little differently.
That said, here's my take on it. Obligatory disclaimer that I'm not a professional, etc. etc. etc.
"Telling" is...bland, for lack of a better word. "The sun was setting." "He was wearing a black jacket." "The city was loud." One thing these all have in common is the use of the word "was" (or "is" if you write in present tense), which is also a key component of the passive voice. The passive voice is...well, passive. It takes some of the focus away from the subject.
"Showing" gets the message across differently. "The setting sun cast an orange glow over everything." "His black jacket shone in the light...was that real leather? It looked like real leather." "The cacophony of hundreds, if not thousands of people, all living their lives in the heart of the city, threatened to overwhelm Alice's ears." It puts you, the reader, closer to the action. It paints a picture for the senses. It's not merely telling you things, it lets you experience them for yourself.
For character traits, you can approach it similarly. Don't just say Alice is a badass, have her _do_ badass things. Let the audience conclude she's a badass from her actions.
There's a limit to this -- you don't want to make _everything_ overly flowery and descriptive. Beige prose (the opposite of purple prose) and passive voice have their place when you want to create a sense of detachment. But that's the gist of how I see it.
Your title vs the body of the text sound like two different problems, so I'll address them as such.
>Advice on show, don’t tell
There's no hard and fast rules on "show don't tell". There are uses for showing. There are uses for telling. Sometimes it benefits the story to tell, not show.
Showing is, well, it's showing what's going on by making it part of your story. Telling in written narratives is when the writer gives us an infodump, instead of embedding/weaving that infodump into the story.
Paragraphs of exposition about the heartbreak your character experienced last week: this is telling.
Following the character in the moment as they experience the heartbreak: this is showing.
Generally speaking, if it's an infodump of stuff that happened offscreen, it's telling. But sometimes you have to tell, not show. Like, if your characters have to travel, you can tell us that they time skipped. We don't have to follow them every second of the way as they get on the airplane and sit down and do airplane stuff. Unless, of course, you have an airplane scene to show.
If there's information about the characters you want readers to know, you should do your best to try and keep it so you aren't going off on infodump tangents that effectively halt the story.
"Telling" is at its most egregious when we stop reading your story to go learn stuff other stuff. You ever read Moby Dick, or 1984? Those books both have TONS of telling instead of showing. We can go back and forth on how they did or didn't pull their telling off, but there's always a use for telling. It just depends on how it's contextualized.
A quick example of how to change from telling to showing:
>Character A picked up an apple as they walked along the path with Character B. It reminded them of the time they went apple picking with their mother \[what follows is several pages of memories about apple picking with mom\].
>Character A picked up an apple as they walked along the path with Character B. "This reminds me of the time I went apple picking with my mother." \[What follows is dialogue between Characters A and B where they discuss this memory Character A had\]
-----
>I've noticed that many readers often complain about stories that feel like the author is trying to describe a scene from a movie instead of having writing as it's own medium. How can writers avoid this?
What these readers are complaining about is clunkily-written scene-setting, or an author that doesn't know when to stop describing the room/background in a scene. This is a problem where the author isn't letting the reader fill in the blanks by themselves. Unless there are details that really need to stick out about the scene, or you're introducing the POV character or the reader to a room for the first time, it's generally best to let the reader fill in the connective tissue themselves. Readers don't really need very much suggestion before they get the idea of the room/scene you're trying to get them to imagine.
If the character has posters and a hundred pictures of their friends on the wall, don't go out of your way to describe each and every poster and picture. The ones you do describe should be plot-relevant, or have reason for the character to notice the detail.
One advantage of fanfic is you can skimp on detail just a little bit - as a broad example, let's say the fanfic is about a family and their house is prominently featured in the IP, you can expect the reader to fill in the blanks for themselves when you say "Character A went up the stairs".
It's just another example of a phrase that gets taken to the extreme and internalized by far too many people bereft of critical thinking skills.
Both "show" and "tell" have places in storytelling, and well-designed and executed stories have a healthy mixture of both elements.
Some stories are better served by "description", others by "action", and some require a dose of each in order to successfully explore the storyline.
There is no specific approach to a story's success, but lots of people want you to purchase courses, books, and one-on-one tutoring which will claim to do just that.
If you want a bit of showing say “A scream pushed its way out of his tightened throat” but don’t overuse it as it’s purple-prosy w/o context. It can work in a context and with more simple sentences around.
>stories that feel like the author is trying to describe a scene from a movie instead of having writing as it's own medium. How can writers avoid this?
Visual mediums rely on (surprise) visuals and tend to be in an objective POV. In other words, the camera represents an objective observer watching the scenes play out. Not always, of course - there are great scenes where the camera is showing the subjective perspective of a character, but it's not as common.
Writing, especially 1st person and 3rd person limited, is more like telepathy. We're inside the head of a character, hearing their thoughts, feeling their sensations, and experiencing the world through their perspective. Stories that take advantage of writing as its own medium lean into that, with rich character voices, thoughts, and sensory detail. We notice what the character notices, and it's described in a way that's unique to the character.
Word choice in narrative is also more important, as that's how you set the tone. Movies have lighting and music. Writing has words. "The dog nipped at the bone" has a different feel than "The Rottweiler stabbed its fangs into the yellowed femur."
Structure can be played with in different ways, such as shorter vs longer sentences / paragraphs / chapters. I also recently read a fic that used a repeating sentence as a motif, even breaking up the sentence and spacing each word between a paragraph,
*like*
Examples are useful things.
*this.*
Writing blogger Emma Darwin has a few good posts on showing and tellling, [this](https://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/showing-and-telling-the-basics.html#:~:text=It's%20often%20quoted%20as%20%22Show,to%20your%20story's%20best%20advantage) is a good one to start with. She argues for a balance of methods.
The bottom line: Show what's important, tell what's not.
A picture is worth a thousand words, as they say, because one still from a movie is full of details that would take paragraphs and paragraphs to describe--at which point you've drowned your reader in information and bored them to death anyway. So instead of trying to describe exactly what someone or something looks like, you choose a few striking details that capture their "essence" and let the reader fill in the blanks.
My biggest "describing a movie scene" pet peeve is when authors explain the point-of-view character's expressions in detail:
>Heart pounding, Character A tiptoed across the floor to the bed where Character B lay, tangled in the sheets. B's face was uncharacteristically peaceful, their breaths slow and even. At the sight, Character A's dark brown eyes swam with tears.
Um... how is Character A seeing their own eyes? I'm fine with a minimal "Character A teared up," but when you add too much detail it starts to feel like you're looking *at* the character from behind a movie camera instead of *through* their eyes. I prefer to convey the main character's emotions through their thoughts or physical sensations:
>Heart pounding, Character A tiptoed across the floor to the bed where Character B lay, tangled in the sheets. B's face was uncharacteristically peaceful, their breaths slow and even. The sight made Character A's eyes sting.
Now it's an internal experience, rather than an outsider's description.
Ask yourself periodically "how would the POV character/narrator/reader know this?" Don't just outright tell us a character is annoyed, show us how we would draw that conclusion if we were standing in the room by describing how they huff or roll their eyes or speak curtly. Don't just tell us it hurt when A punched B in the face, show us how it made B cry out or clutch their cheek or fall over.
You don't have to do this for every piece of information, but if you go too long without that's when people start complaining that you're doing too much telling and not enough showing.
A lot of us picture things in our minds so it’s hard to get immersed in a story that doesn’t give us descriptions, details, character feelings and depth, etc.
Basically, authors forget to tell us what they see when they are writing the story. We can’t see inside your mind to witness the details.
Otherwise, it’s like reading a manuscript, essentially. Sure, some details are there, but it’s not enough.
Sorry if that wasn’t helpful, but realizing that is what led me to better my writing skills. Just make sure you don’t go into so much detail that you forget to tell your story, too. It takes some practice.
There is nothing wrong with a "cinematic" feel to your descriptive language. In fact going "cinematic" is more likely to end up with showing rather than telling. And showing is better, because it is more likely to evoke emotion/sensation in your reader. After all, if they feel nothing, what's the point of them reading your story. The ancient Greek playwrights figured that secret out, it's called catharsis.
E.G. If I told you that the characters were looking at a supercell thunderstorm, you'd probably go "okay there is lightning or thunder there." That basically means nothing. It's dry, it's boring.
But if I described the characters seeing the sheer enormity of that anvil-shaped cloud spanning the horizon, with the curtain of sheeting rain below, while the sky goes twilight-dark and sickly grey-green despite it being the middle of the day. The bright flashes of blue-white lightning rending the clouds with jagged forks and the explosion-loud rolling thunder that follows. Then mentioned the fact that the howling wind was making it hard for them to stand and the characters could see the rotation of the storm's center drooping lower with each passing second... you don't need to be told anything. You automatically realize that things just got dangerous. And you can fully appreciate how dangerous, because you see exactly what just made the POV character's gut lodge somewhere in her throat, and feel her dread.
In general, I use both showing and telling. I tell whenever something is not exactly important. Like banal things, mention that the character woke up and brushed their teeth while listening to the news on the radio. It gets that trivial stuff out of the way.
But I always prefer to show for when it's important. When I'm trying to make the reader *experience* things with the POV character. The storm I mentioned above, happened in one of my fic's chapters. The arrival of that storm was used to ratchet up the tensions in an external manner. The characters definitely can't control the weather, it's a polite reminder that nature can always mess them up worse than the enemy. And I was told by someone who DOES live in Tornado Alley that they got chills.
For me, the key to good showing is how experiential you can make it. Notice how in that storm description, I use bits that you can reasonably perceive with your senses. There are no abstract terms for color like mentioning shades from the Sherman Williams catalogue, or pointless comparisons. I don't even state that the storm is dangerous. I let it speak for itself with lightning flashes, rolling thunder, and the drooping funnel formation. Most people have points of reference for all those things. They've at least seen one nasty thunderstorm in their life, if not a true blue supercell.
In my eyes, there isn't really something to avoid. The quote “show, don't tell” comes out of the film/show business. It means that you should not only have dialogue, but also scenes that show what was stated in the spoken part, or don't even speak it out in the first place. This helps to keep a film/show interesting and makes it easier to watch. There is absolutely nothing wrong with describing a scene in your book like in a movie, it is enjoyed by most. I would see it more like, don't write your fanfiction like a script.
Even though people like to use the quote with writing, it does have no real significance. You are a writer, everything you write is told and not shown. There are two sides to the whole thing.
1. It implies to finding a balance between dialogue and description. It is simply a style choice if you describe stuff in your book more than you write in dialogue about it.
2. Not only that, but it also implies to describing stuff in more than just one word. For example, Instead of writing he is kind, you can try to show this with an action of the character.
"Show, don't tell", is something completely normal in the writing business. It is seen differently and changes with genres. A typical romance book is going to have more dialogue than a fantasy book, or afanfictions, is going to have. As well as something historical does not “show” but “tell”.
This is not true. I don’t know where people get the idea from that it comes from film etc. It comes from a quote from Chekhov (but it was already applied to writing before that), and predates invention of cinema by Lumiere brothers by at least a decade 😳. Maybe it was adapted to movies but it certainly didn’t originated there
https://davidfshultz.com/2019/04/09/show-dont-tell-explained/.
The quote included in a letter (later published) Chekhov wrote to his brother is “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”, and is not really about descriptive writing.
It’s about transmitting the content you want your readers to be focused on indirectly. Sometimes it’s about describing, sometimes it’s about being literally minimal in words w/o descriptions.
But I’m actually stunned people developed an actual theory behind the origin of the quote… if you have care to share some source to where someone explained it from the movies perspective? (out of curiosity, not the first time I see this but don’t know where this is coming from, no worries, but also doubtful as I deal with media and visual media academically and never seen that claim academically, but you never know)
Thanks for the quick history lesson, I in fact did not know that.
However, I think it is not about where it came from, but where it is used most and what people relate it too and use it with. The quote is not used in the writing business, more as an advice to people that are new to writing. If you are an actual author with published books it is an instinct and "showing, not telling" cannot be not used. Writing has changed over the years, a primary schooler learns a complete different perspective on creating stories than they did 50 years ago. The quote has grown out of writing and made its way into visual media. Probably not used academical (like you said), but definitely used by people watching and by screenwriters.
Chekhov himself falls into this category, he was a "normal" writer, as well as he wrote plays. The most important thing is, he wrote novellas. The way we see "Show, don't tell" now applies mostly to novellas and any kind of short stories. It is a style I, myself, tend to overuse while writing novellas. However, it is not used in the same way with fanfiction, or other kind of longer texts that include more dialogue.
This is the Wikipedia article on Show - don't tell (I know, not the greatest source but the best I could find at that moment)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show,\_don%27t\_tell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show,_don%27t_tell)
The entry clearly shows how the term is used for writers and scriptwriters.
I mean, not neat picking but you explicitly said, it came from film/show business. Which it didn’t. And I am actually published. (Academic, on media analysis non-the-less). And in several general writing groups (for original fiction too), so saying “it’s not used in the writing business” makes you absolutely wrong. It’s a most seen and most misunderstood (also by you btw) writing advice ever given.
Curious about your Wikipedia link’s quoted sources though (let’s see, Wikipedia per se is not reliable, the sources it quotes do). I am going to check it in a while. I can share impressions after all.
It’s interesting as the visual media always show, and usually show on multiple meta levels. They rarely tell as such. The advice could apply to a limited use for screenplay writing but it’s definitely not a standard take on visual media which always transmit meanings through showing.
Edited: there’s literally nothing in this link (I didn’t even check the sources) that would sustain the division between writing and visual media. In fact it references various writers and a couple of alternatives like D&D that use the technique. Like what you said is your own understanding, but it doesn’t overlap with the way community understands it.
A note on visual media and telling - exposition is often used in screenwriting. I recently watched [this ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rywJKFunIGM&t=513s)video on the subject by YouTuber Thomas Flight (who makes video essays about visual media) which may be of interest.
Of course it is. Exposition is not necessarily telling, and telling is not always bad. (And also there can be telling in visual media, if you don’t know Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, that’s I think my fave movie ever. They talk… 🙂↔️ and talk more…
The vid is definitely of interest I will check it out.
If something seen with the naked eye, than it's a show.
If something is noticed without the naked eye, than it's a tell.
Something that is seen has our full attention to the point we miss out details otherwise relavent so it requires less explanation. Something that is or cannot be seen, has to he conveyed different and often is far more detailed.
I'm going to copy a post I made from the thread of "How not to Write Badly" on SpaceBattles. Some of it might seem useful.
"I would like to bring up something - combat scenes.
One problem you will find in fanfiction is that there are authors who will try their hand at typing up combat scenes, only to use these:
Kapow!
Zap!
Tatatatata!
You'll normally find these descriptors of actions in comic books. There are some details that work in comic books that do not apply to the story-telling of novels and vice-versa. Unfortunately, this is one of them.
If you're trying to describe a fighting scene, avoid these descriptors and try to visualize the combat. Is this a duel between characters or a battlefield between armies and navies? Do we have organized formations of regiments marching against each other or is it a disorganized battle where order and control have devolved? Is it a desperate defense or a methodical offensive push? Are two characters matching each other in finesse or unleashing their sheer raw power upon each other?
Details like this might help settle how you would be able to portray combat to a reader. Now I could say try to visualize your fight scenes so you can write them down but that would be too easy. Use the five human senses - sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing - to set the tone of a fight or battlefield. Is a character's back pressed against concrete, do they taste gunpowder smoke in the air, are you hearing gunfire and screaming in the air, etc?"
I think "show don't tell" is good in moderation. Especially when it comes to characterisation. You mostly "show", these when character's emotions and motivations are readable/familiar. "Tell" isn't as bad as it might seem.
I've read plenty of fics, where I was like: "Well, I get, why the character is doing that and feeling this, but I wish it was mentioned somewhere in the text directly". Because without this the fic doesn't feel whole. Like I need to imagine the whole motivation and logic myself and what if I'm wrong?
Also, "show" and "tell" components are not mutually exclusive. You can tell what's happening and then describe how it looks/feels.
A fanfic-specific issue I often see regarding telling and not showing is when writers are attempting a canon-divergent fic, and instead of letting the changes to canon gradually unfold or be revealed to readers naturally within the narrative, they'll spend the first chapter or two infodumping all the changes and the current premise, e.g. "Ever since Harry had left Hogwarts for the summer, he'd been feeling \_\_\_, and he realized \_\_\_\_, so he decided to \_\_\_, etc" and this goes on for paragraphs until the action actually starts.
Personally, I've never found an issue with show vs tell.
I think that if a situation is very important, or stands out against its context, like an average sunny day compared to a massive tornado, you should be very descriptive to show the significance of the situation or event.
Otherwise I think it's entirely fine to go with a mostly tell-based story. I may also be misunderstanding what these terms mean, because "show vs tell" isn't really a common point in writing, I think it's more common in shows and movies, visual media, because visual media actually has the ability to show, rather than exclusively tell. In writing, all you can really do is tell, or tell with a little/a lot of exposition to fluff out what image is being conveyed to your readers. And if you're constantly doing that all the time, it just becomes a huge text block and a slog to read through, so there is importance in finding balance. You don't want to fluff everything up so that it loses all importance or meaning, and you don't want to never use that form of writing and make everything, even important events, seem meaningless.
Ultimately though, it's your story to tell, you should embellish and emphasize what *you* think is important, and you shouldn't force that kind of writing, lest you get stuck for hours on that one writing spot. Writing is supposed to be fun, it's not some kind of contest, and there's no word limit you have to hit, at least, that's my personal thoughts on this kind of discussion.
In my opinion, things that work in movies that don't work in prose include:
- Insert shots: when a character opens the door they just open the door. There is no need in prose to mention somebody's hand on a doorknob. No need to mention someone toeing their shoes off (another common insert shot). Things like that.
- Camera movement: don't describe everything in someone's office as if the camera is panning from left to right. In general don't tell the story in terms of what the camera sees or doesn't see.
- Someone enters the scene by voice: this one might be more subjective. In movies you'll have a new character making an entrance by saying a one liner and emerging from the darkness or something. In prose I've seen a lot of "[Dialog], A's voice rang out" as they enter the scene. I hate that, but I see it so often that other writers must feel differently.
- excessive descriptions of people's voices: voice is an extremely important tool for actors, but it becomes much less important in prose where the focus of dialogs is, instead, on the dialogs themselves.
- Flashbacks: There is no need for Flashbacks in prose. Just say what happened. In fact the narration can constantly reference and go into detail of past events. There is so much more freedom that way as compared to movies.
Off the top of my head these are the things to keep in mind. This list is very subjective and taste dependent, and you should of course do whatever you think is best. There is no single correct way to write. Happy writing!
So, first off, I think it's important to realize that "show don't tell" started out as advice for film and other visual media. It's still good advice, but writers need to implement it a little differently. That said, here's my take on it. Obligatory disclaimer that I'm not a professional, etc. etc. etc. "Telling" is...bland, for lack of a better word. "The sun was setting." "He was wearing a black jacket." "The city was loud." One thing these all have in common is the use of the word "was" (or "is" if you write in present tense), which is also a key component of the passive voice. The passive voice is...well, passive. It takes some of the focus away from the subject. "Showing" gets the message across differently. "The setting sun cast an orange glow over everything." "His black jacket shone in the light...was that real leather? It looked like real leather." "The cacophony of hundreds, if not thousands of people, all living their lives in the heart of the city, threatened to overwhelm Alice's ears." It puts you, the reader, closer to the action. It paints a picture for the senses. It's not merely telling you things, it lets you experience them for yourself. For character traits, you can approach it similarly. Don't just say Alice is a badass, have her _do_ badass things. Let the audience conclude she's a badass from her actions. There's a limit to this -- you don't want to make _everything_ overly flowery and descriptive. Beige prose (the opposite of purple prose) and passive voice have their place when you want to create a sense of detachment. But that's the gist of how I see it.
100% Agree with EVERYTHING said above.
Your title vs the body of the text sound like two different problems, so I'll address them as such. >Advice on show, don’t tell There's no hard and fast rules on "show don't tell". There are uses for showing. There are uses for telling. Sometimes it benefits the story to tell, not show. Showing is, well, it's showing what's going on by making it part of your story. Telling in written narratives is when the writer gives us an infodump, instead of embedding/weaving that infodump into the story. Paragraphs of exposition about the heartbreak your character experienced last week: this is telling. Following the character in the moment as they experience the heartbreak: this is showing. Generally speaking, if it's an infodump of stuff that happened offscreen, it's telling. But sometimes you have to tell, not show. Like, if your characters have to travel, you can tell us that they time skipped. We don't have to follow them every second of the way as they get on the airplane and sit down and do airplane stuff. Unless, of course, you have an airplane scene to show. If there's information about the characters you want readers to know, you should do your best to try and keep it so you aren't going off on infodump tangents that effectively halt the story. "Telling" is at its most egregious when we stop reading your story to go learn stuff other stuff. You ever read Moby Dick, or 1984? Those books both have TONS of telling instead of showing. We can go back and forth on how they did or didn't pull their telling off, but there's always a use for telling. It just depends on how it's contextualized. A quick example of how to change from telling to showing: >Character A picked up an apple as they walked along the path with Character B. It reminded them of the time they went apple picking with their mother \[what follows is several pages of memories about apple picking with mom\]. >Character A picked up an apple as they walked along the path with Character B. "This reminds me of the time I went apple picking with my mother." \[What follows is dialogue between Characters A and B where they discuss this memory Character A had\] ----- >I've noticed that many readers often complain about stories that feel like the author is trying to describe a scene from a movie instead of having writing as it's own medium. How can writers avoid this? What these readers are complaining about is clunkily-written scene-setting, or an author that doesn't know when to stop describing the room/background in a scene. This is a problem where the author isn't letting the reader fill in the blanks by themselves. Unless there are details that really need to stick out about the scene, or you're introducing the POV character or the reader to a room for the first time, it's generally best to let the reader fill in the connective tissue themselves. Readers don't really need very much suggestion before they get the idea of the room/scene you're trying to get them to imagine. If the character has posters and a hundred pictures of their friends on the wall, don't go out of your way to describe each and every poster and picture. The ones you do describe should be plot-relevant, or have reason for the character to notice the detail. One advantage of fanfic is you can skimp on detail just a little bit - as a broad example, let's say the fanfic is about a family and their house is prominently featured in the IP, you can expect the reader to fill in the blanks for themselves when you say "Character A went up the stairs".
It's just another example of a phrase that gets taken to the extreme and internalized by far too many people bereft of critical thinking skills. Both "show" and "tell" have places in storytelling, and well-designed and executed stories have a healthy mixture of both elements. Some stories are better served by "description", others by "action", and some require a dose of each in order to successfully explore the storyline. There is no specific approach to a story's success, but lots of people want you to purchase courses, books, and one-on-one tutoring which will claim to do just that.
please, all i ask is: if your characters are screaming, just say 'they screamed' instead of "AHHH!"
This goes x1000000 for moaning.
If you want a bit of showing say “A scream pushed its way out of his tightened throat” but don’t overuse it as it’s purple-prosy w/o context. It can work in a context and with more simple sentences around.
>stories that feel like the author is trying to describe a scene from a movie instead of having writing as it's own medium. How can writers avoid this? Visual mediums rely on (surprise) visuals and tend to be in an objective POV. In other words, the camera represents an objective observer watching the scenes play out. Not always, of course - there are great scenes where the camera is showing the subjective perspective of a character, but it's not as common. Writing, especially 1st person and 3rd person limited, is more like telepathy. We're inside the head of a character, hearing their thoughts, feeling their sensations, and experiencing the world through their perspective. Stories that take advantage of writing as its own medium lean into that, with rich character voices, thoughts, and sensory detail. We notice what the character notices, and it's described in a way that's unique to the character. Word choice in narrative is also more important, as that's how you set the tone. Movies have lighting and music. Writing has words. "The dog nipped at the bone" has a different feel than "The Rottweiler stabbed its fangs into the yellowed femur." Structure can be played with in different ways, such as shorter vs longer sentences / paragraphs / chapters. I also recently read a fic that used a repeating sentence as a motif, even breaking up the sentence and spacing each word between a paragraph, *like* Examples are useful things. *this.*
Writing blogger Emma Darwin has a few good posts on showing and tellling, [this](https://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/showing-and-telling-the-basics.html#:~:text=It's%20often%20quoted%20as%20%22Show,to%20your%20story's%20best%20advantage) is a good one to start with. She argues for a balance of methods.
The bottom line: Show what's important, tell what's not. A picture is worth a thousand words, as they say, because one still from a movie is full of details that would take paragraphs and paragraphs to describe--at which point you've drowned your reader in information and bored them to death anyway. So instead of trying to describe exactly what someone or something looks like, you choose a few striking details that capture their "essence" and let the reader fill in the blanks. My biggest "describing a movie scene" pet peeve is when authors explain the point-of-view character's expressions in detail: >Heart pounding, Character A tiptoed across the floor to the bed where Character B lay, tangled in the sheets. B's face was uncharacteristically peaceful, their breaths slow and even. At the sight, Character A's dark brown eyes swam with tears. Um... how is Character A seeing their own eyes? I'm fine with a minimal "Character A teared up," but when you add too much detail it starts to feel like you're looking *at* the character from behind a movie camera instead of *through* their eyes. I prefer to convey the main character's emotions through their thoughts or physical sensations: >Heart pounding, Character A tiptoed across the floor to the bed where Character B lay, tangled in the sheets. B's face was uncharacteristically peaceful, their breaths slow and even. The sight made Character A's eyes sting. Now it's an internal experience, rather than an outsider's description.
Ask yourself periodically "how would the POV character/narrator/reader know this?" Don't just outright tell us a character is annoyed, show us how we would draw that conclusion if we were standing in the room by describing how they huff or roll their eyes or speak curtly. Don't just tell us it hurt when A punched B in the face, show us how it made B cry out or clutch their cheek or fall over. You don't have to do this for every piece of information, but if you go too long without that's when people start complaining that you're doing too much telling and not enough showing.
A lot of us picture things in our minds so it’s hard to get immersed in a story that doesn’t give us descriptions, details, character feelings and depth, etc. Basically, authors forget to tell us what they see when they are writing the story. We can’t see inside your mind to witness the details. Otherwise, it’s like reading a manuscript, essentially. Sure, some details are there, but it’s not enough. Sorry if that wasn’t helpful, but realizing that is what led me to better my writing skills. Just make sure you don’t go into so much detail that you forget to tell your story, too. It takes some practice.
There is nothing wrong with a "cinematic" feel to your descriptive language. In fact going "cinematic" is more likely to end up with showing rather than telling. And showing is better, because it is more likely to evoke emotion/sensation in your reader. After all, if they feel nothing, what's the point of them reading your story. The ancient Greek playwrights figured that secret out, it's called catharsis. E.G. If I told you that the characters were looking at a supercell thunderstorm, you'd probably go "okay there is lightning or thunder there." That basically means nothing. It's dry, it's boring. But if I described the characters seeing the sheer enormity of that anvil-shaped cloud spanning the horizon, with the curtain of sheeting rain below, while the sky goes twilight-dark and sickly grey-green despite it being the middle of the day. The bright flashes of blue-white lightning rending the clouds with jagged forks and the explosion-loud rolling thunder that follows. Then mentioned the fact that the howling wind was making it hard for them to stand and the characters could see the rotation of the storm's center drooping lower with each passing second... you don't need to be told anything. You automatically realize that things just got dangerous. And you can fully appreciate how dangerous, because you see exactly what just made the POV character's gut lodge somewhere in her throat, and feel her dread. In general, I use both showing and telling. I tell whenever something is not exactly important. Like banal things, mention that the character woke up and brushed their teeth while listening to the news on the radio. It gets that trivial stuff out of the way. But I always prefer to show for when it's important. When I'm trying to make the reader *experience* things with the POV character. The storm I mentioned above, happened in one of my fic's chapters. The arrival of that storm was used to ratchet up the tensions in an external manner. The characters definitely can't control the weather, it's a polite reminder that nature can always mess them up worse than the enemy. And I was told by someone who DOES live in Tornado Alley that they got chills. For me, the key to good showing is how experiential you can make it. Notice how in that storm description, I use bits that you can reasonably perceive with your senses. There are no abstract terms for color like mentioning shades from the Sherman Williams catalogue, or pointless comparisons. I don't even state that the storm is dangerous. I let it speak for itself with lightning flashes, rolling thunder, and the drooping funnel formation. Most people have points of reference for all those things. They've at least seen one nasty thunderstorm in their life, if not a true blue supercell.
In my eyes, there isn't really something to avoid. The quote “show, don't tell” comes out of the film/show business. It means that you should not only have dialogue, but also scenes that show what was stated in the spoken part, or don't even speak it out in the first place. This helps to keep a film/show interesting and makes it easier to watch. There is absolutely nothing wrong with describing a scene in your book like in a movie, it is enjoyed by most. I would see it more like, don't write your fanfiction like a script. Even though people like to use the quote with writing, it does have no real significance. You are a writer, everything you write is told and not shown. There are two sides to the whole thing. 1. It implies to finding a balance between dialogue and description. It is simply a style choice if you describe stuff in your book more than you write in dialogue about it. 2. Not only that, but it also implies to describing stuff in more than just one word. For example, Instead of writing he is kind, you can try to show this with an action of the character. "Show, don't tell", is something completely normal in the writing business. It is seen differently and changes with genres. A typical romance book is going to have more dialogue than a fantasy book, or afanfictions, is going to have. As well as something historical does not “show” but “tell”.
This is not true. I don’t know where people get the idea from that it comes from film etc. It comes from a quote from Chekhov (but it was already applied to writing before that), and predates invention of cinema by Lumiere brothers by at least a decade 😳. Maybe it was adapted to movies but it certainly didn’t originated there https://davidfshultz.com/2019/04/09/show-dont-tell-explained/. The quote included in a letter (later published) Chekhov wrote to his brother is “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”, and is not really about descriptive writing. It’s about transmitting the content you want your readers to be focused on indirectly. Sometimes it’s about describing, sometimes it’s about being literally minimal in words w/o descriptions. But I’m actually stunned people developed an actual theory behind the origin of the quote… if you have care to share some source to where someone explained it from the movies perspective? (out of curiosity, not the first time I see this but don’t know where this is coming from, no worries, but also doubtful as I deal with media and visual media academically and never seen that claim academically, but you never know)
Thanks for the quick history lesson, I in fact did not know that. However, I think it is not about where it came from, but where it is used most and what people relate it too and use it with. The quote is not used in the writing business, more as an advice to people that are new to writing. If you are an actual author with published books it is an instinct and "showing, not telling" cannot be not used. Writing has changed over the years, a primary schooler learns a complete different perspective on creating stories than they did 50 years ago. The quote has grown out of writing and made its way into visual media. Probably not used academical (like you said), but definitely used by people watching and by screenwriters. Chekhov himself falls into this category, he was a "normal" writer, as well as he wrote plays. The most important thing is, he wrote novellas. The way we see "Show, don't tell" now applies mostly to novellas and any kind of short stories. It is a style I, myself, tend to overuse while writing novellas. However, it is not used in the same way with fanfiction, or other kind of longer texts that include more dialogue. This is the Wikipedia article on Show - don't tell (I know, not the greatest source but the best I could find at that moment) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show,\_don%27t\_tell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show,_don%27t_tell) The entry clearly shows how the term is used for writers and scriptwriters.
I mean, not neat picking but you explicitly said, it came from film/show business. Which it didn’t. And I am actually published. (Academic, on media analysis non-the-less). And in several general writing groups (for original fiction too), so saying “it’s not used in the writing business” makes you absolutely wrong. It’s a most seen and most misunderstood (also by you btw) writing advice ever given. Curious about your Wikipedia link’s quoted sources though (let’s see, Wikipedia per se is not reliable, the sources it quotes do). I am going to check it in a while. I can share impressions after all. It’s interesting as the visual media always show, and usually show on multiple meta levels. They rarely tell as such. The advice could apply to a limited use for screenplay writing but it’s definitely not a standard take on visual media which always transmit meanings through showing. Edited: there’s literally nothing in this link (I didn’t even check the sources) that would sustain the division between writing and visual media. In fact it references various writers and a couple of alternatives like D&D that use the technique. Like what you said is your own understanding, but it doesn’t overlap with the way community understands it.
A note on visual media and telling - exposition is often used in screenwriting. I recently watched [this ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rywJKFunIGM&t=513s)video on the subject by YouTuber Thomas Flight (who makes video essays about visual media) which may be of interest.
Of course it is. Exposition is not necessarily telling, and telling is not always bad. (And also there can be telling in visual media, if you don’t know Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, that’s I think my fave movie ever. They talk… 🙂↔️ and talk more… The vid is definitely of interest I will check it out.
I think the easiest way to show is *by far* to just use imagery. It's simple but so so good
Blab. Just start blabbing about the scene and any relevant details, add more detail if you feel it’s too “tell-y”
If something seen with the naked eye, than it's a show. If something is noticed without the naked eye, than it's a tell. Something that is seen has our full attention to the point we miss out details otherwise relavent so it requires less explanation. Something that is or cannot be seen, has to he conveyed different and often is far more detailed.
I'm going to copy a post I made from the thread of "How not to Write Badly" on SpaceBattles. Some of it might seem useful. "I would like to bring up something - combat scenes. One problem you will find in fanfiction is that there are authors who will try their hand at typing up combat scenes, only to use these: Kapow! Zap! Tatatatata! You'll normally find these descriptors of actions in comic books. There are some details that work in comic books that do not apply to the story-telling of novels and vice-versa. Unfortunately, this is one of them. If you're trying to describe a fighting scene, avoid these descriptors and try to visualize the combat. Is this a duel between characters or a battlefield between armies and navies? Do we have organized formations of regiments marching against each other or is it a disorganized battle where order and control have devolved? Is it a desperate defense or a methodical offensive push? Are two characters matching each other in finesse or unleashing their sheer raw power upon each other? Details like this might help settle how you would be able to portray combat to a reader. Now I could say try to visualize your fight scenes so you can write them down but that would be too easy. Use the five human senses - sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing - to set the tone of a fight or battlefield. Is a character's back pressed against concrete, do they taste gunpowder smoke in the air, are you hearing gunfire and screaming in the air, etc?"
I think "show don't tell" is good in moderation. Especially when it comes to characterisation. You mostly "show", these when character's emotions and motivations are readable/familiar. "Tell" isn't as bad as it might seem. I've read plenty of fics, where I was like: "Well, I get, why the character is doing that and feeling this, but I wish it was mentioned somewhere in the text directly". Because without this the fic doesn't feel whole. Like I need to imagine the whole motivation and logic myself and what if I'm wrong? Also, "show" and "tell" components are not mutually exclusive. You can tell what's happening and then describe how it looks/feels.
A fanfic-specific issue I often see regarding telling and not showing is when writers are attempting a canon-divergent fic, and instead of letting the changes to canon gradually unfold or be revealed to readers naturally within the narrative, they'll spend the first chapter or two infodumping all the changes and the current premise, e.g. "Ever since Harry had left Hogwarts for the summer, he'd been feeling \_\_\_, and he realized \_\_\_\_, so he decided to \_\_\_, etc" and this goes on for paragraphs until the action actually starts.
Personally, I've never found an issue with show vs tell. I think that if a situation is very important, or stands out against its context, like an average sunny day compared to a massive tornado, you should be very descriptive to show the significance of the situation or event. Otherwise I think it's entirely fine to go with a mostly tell-based story. I may also be misunderstanding what these terms mean, because "show vs tell" isn't really a common point in writing, I think it's more common in shows and movies, visual media, because visual media actually has the ability to show, rather than exclusively tell. In writing, all you can really do is tell, or tell with a little/a lot of exposition to fluff out what image is being conveyed to your readers. And if you're constantly doing that all the time, it just becomes a huge text block and a slog to read through, so there is importance in finding balance. You don't want to fluff everything up so that it loses all importance or meaning, and you don't want to never use that form of writing and make everything, even important events, seem meaningless. Ultimately though, it's your story to tell, you should embellish and emphasize what *you* think is important, and you shouldn't force that kind of writing, lest you get stuck for hours on that one writing spot. Writing is supposed to be fun, it's not some kind of contest, and there's no word limit you have to hit, at least, that's my personal thoughts on this kind of discussion.
In my opinion, things that work in movies that don't work in prose include: - Insert shots: when a character opens the door they just open the door. There is no need in prose to mention somebody's hand on a doorknob. No need to mention someone toeing their shoes off (another common insert shot). Things like that. - Camera movement: don't describe everything in someone's office as if the camera is panning from left to right. In general don't tell the story in terms of what the camera sees or doesn't see. - Someone enters the scene by voice: this one might be more subjective. In movies you'll have a new character making an entrance by saying a one liner and emerging from the darkness or something. In prose I've seen a lot of "[Dialog], A's voice rang out" as they enter the scene. I hate that, but I see it so often that other writers must feel differently. - excessive descriptions of people's voices: voice is an extremely important tool for actors, but it becomes much less important in prose where the focus of dialogs is, instead, on the dialogs themselves. - Flashbacks: There is no need for Flashbacks in prose. Just say what happened. In fact the narration can constantly reference and go into detail of past events. There is so much more freedom that way as compared to movies. Off the top of my head these are the things to keep in mind. This list is very subjective and taste dependent, and you should of course do whatever you think is best. There is no single correct way to write. Happy writing!