I went through all this because a lot of the feedback I kept getting was distilled into a single, dreadful three-letter phrase: show don't tell. I never had this taught to me formally in school (not even when taking Creative Writing in college), but it is the first and most important rule for writing. Writers everywhere embrace it. They live it. Breathe it. I wonder if some chant it endlessly while walking in circles around their den and whacking themselves in the head with a hard-cover writing textbook.
Show don't tell on its own is such a vague phrase that can point to a vast array of issues. Most writing articles I found tell the basics: how to describe scenes and events in a literary way. But the rule can also be aimed at characters, the way they act and talk. It can be aimed at the plot. Maybe it's meant to criticize expository prose. Maybe there's on-the-nose dialogue, or maybe the themes are spelled out too obviously. Or maybe it's describing the entire work--readers can't care for the characters for some reason. And that can be the hardest thing to pinpoint.
The most frustrating thing about it is that show don't tell on its own, without any other direction on how to fix it, isn't helpful. And from what I've read, every writer goes through this phase where they have to overcome some simple, amateur problems and learn from those mistakes before being able to pump out quality work. For a while, I went through the same actions and reactions other writers have: I got hit with the show don't tell missile regarding characters and the pathology of the story, so I tried to "show" them by describing their reactions. That just leads to more problems: my characters were reacting to things through physical action, but with no clear indication of why. And that just hurt the stories more than they helped. Something was still missing, and I wouldn't figure out what until much later.
The problem was point of view. I needed to embrace deep POV in order to make my stories--any of them--work. But now this topic warrants its own nuanced set of issues. What level of internal narrative is considered "showing" vs "telling"? What if characters want to think of backstories or how something works--is that considered "telling"?
After studying and learning what I could, I pinpointed several key issues I had to rectify in order to make my stories work the way they should. Now that I know more, I can do two things: I can write a grade better than before right off the bat, and I can self-edit better and catch problems before readers eyes get burned. To do either requires something that might vary from writer to writer: the ego.
Another phrase writers toss around a lot is "kill your darlings." I'm not fond of that phrase personally--I find it melodramatic and weepy. But the point of it is, you have to let go. If multiple readers point to something as a problem, it's a problem and it needs to be fixed. It would be narcissistic to assume everybody's wrong and the writing has to stay the way it is--to let go of the words and let them change into something that works, you may find that you'll improve any number of things. Maybe the story will flow better. Maybe it'll be easier to read. Maybe the characters will jump off the pages and do an Irish jig in the readers' heads (which would be awesome). Maybe you'll fix one thing and figure out how to fix another. I've come to see writing not as an act of throwing words up and fixing them, and I prefer not to think of it as a grim reaping of darlings. To me, it's sculpting. The first draft is a block of clay. You have to chisel away at it, tossing excessive words and phrases, tossing all the "telling" bits, maybe adding more clay in some areas, chiselling away until you form a beautiful bust. There's nothing to miss from clay that's chipped away from the sculpture--it's dead weight and it makes the thing unshapely. Less is more, and if you learn to let go and open things up to change, you will find that text is just as soft and flexible as clay.
In order to chisel at text, you have to know what to chip off. Chances are there's more for me to study, but I've finally reached a level of confidence that I can share what I've learned--these key things to look for have improved my writing substantially, and if you find yourself being slammed with the show don't tell criticism, hopefully this will help you figure out what needs to be changed.
Things that show and should be used / implemented / left in:
- Action. No matter how you write it, things happening is the meat of the story and needs to be reported as it happens. Assuming it's all experienced by a POV character, then it happens as that character experiences it, and would be written in that character's voice.
- Character voice. Assuming you're writing in first or third-person limited POV, you will need to write their thoughts in their words, not yours. Doing so will show characterization in phenomenal ways. Using character voice alone can reveal so much about who they are, what they think, believe, how they perceive others, all without having anybody spell it out. To pull it off, it should be consistent and creditable. No matter what POV you're using, character voice exists to facilitate the inner narrative.
- Characters thinking to themselves--as long as an entire thought process is being described, which leads to characters reacting, it is a form of showing. Some writers may not call it that, but it helps me personally to acknowledge that you are indeed showing a thought process. To me, this is the most important thing: every reaction needs an action, and my writing suffered for a while because I misinterpreted the show don't tell rules and assumed reactions alone was a form of showing. No, reactions on their own are meaningless, shallow, awkward--the thought and emotional patterns leading up to those reactions are what gives it all weight and allows readers to relate to the characters. This, along with wording things in the character's voice, is the essence of deep POV. Using it will help readers connect to the characters properly without having to be told characteristics. This can extend to their emotions, their beliefs, their political views, relationships--a whole breadth of areas that will paint them as deep and creditable people.
- Deep POV. Goes hand-in-hand with using that character voice. But with deep POV in particular, there are a few more rules to keep in mind. First, you have to diminish or remove author voice as much as possible. Second, you can't transition to other people's heads without some kind of scene break (otherwise readers get confused and editors will drop your work like it's hot).
- Description. Sure, you could say it was a dark and stormy night. But it's much more dramatic and awesome to have a sentence like "lightning sizzled through the starry sky and boomed against the snow-packed mountain." If a description can be elaborated as whole sentences, then they should be expanded this way. And it will lead to stronger writing because it forces you to be more inventive with the writing, to the point where you can craft metaphors and personify objects in flashy ways.
- Strong verbs. I've always loved verbs, and nothing's cooler than writing a sentence with words like "smash," "rip," "tear," "eviscerate," and so on! What makes verbs powerful is when you use them to solve the problems mentioned in showing description--if you want to say it's sunny outside, you could say "the sun is shining." But then you're left with a boring sentence. Replacing verbs has become my favorite way to jazz up sentences--what's more potent than saying something like "sun-rays blazed on the cracked ground"? Now you have a specific and distinct image shown to you with some flair. Every verb choice carries specific meaning, connotation, and will paint a more specific picture in readers' heads. This can get very interesting and artistic when you associate odd verbs with odd things, like emotions and intangible things. I found that Ray Bradbury had this incredible gift of making it feel like a bunch of things was happening, even when nothing happened. He did it with verbs!
Things that tell and should be removed / avoided:
- Filter words. Any time you have a phrase like "he thought," "he saw," "he heard," etc., just remove them and let the action speak for itself. There's a natural tendency to channel everything through the characters with filter words because that's the way we see it in our heads--we see the guy experiencing something. But the POV is channeling the story through the character already--as long as the voice is working, readers will understand that the action is happening through their eyes. A few key exceptions exist: in third-person POV, it might be wise to use one or two filters at the very beginning to orient readers, but it's not necessary for everything afterwards.
- Introductions and conclusions. This is the standard thing for essays and public speaking. It's not needed in creative writing. Anytime you write a sentence to explain what you're going to talk about next, you're being repetitive by telling readers what they're about to be shown. And if you put that kind of thing at the end, you're just recapping what they've already been shown. These kinds of sentences should be removed so the action can be presented as it occurs.
- Passive voice. Any time a verb is preceded by another verb (especially "was"), most of the time you can condense it to just one verb. Having too many verbs slammed together dampens the action and distances the reader. Just write it straightforward: noun-verb-object. Passive voice should only be used when the noun is unknown (for example, "the place was ransacked," but we don't know who did it so this sentence is fine as-is. This shouldn't happen that often though--the majority of the time, you know who does what, so active voice should be embraced).
- Accelerated passage of time. If nothing happens in that space of time, there's no need to "show" those as full-blown scenes. Compress it with a quick and easy sentence, to maintain pace.
- Epistolary works. If you're attempting something really fancy by piecing together a story with diary, journal, or newspaper entries, you're going to have to write them as they would appear in real life. That means you don't write these by "showing" every scene--nobody writes a journal for pages on end describing locations and dialogue and everything. You would assume a more telling style--one that's more akin to journalism than literature. So long as you assume other writers' voices really well and maintain the right amount of gravitas, writing this way might be worth toying with (although I don't know if the industry really likes these kinds of works or not).
- Omniscient POV. By nature, omniscient POV eschews character voice and uses the author's voice more heavily. Doing so eliminates the ability to show, and relies a lot more on telling. The trick to this would be to tell in a way that works--maybe with humor, maybe with flair, attitude, etc. As of the time of this writing, omniscient tends to be discouraged by writers and the industry--I would only see a use for this if you want to take the focus away from characters and more on something in the plot or the setting. First and limited third person POV are safer bets, but some stories may warrant this style, and there are plenty of classics that have embraced it.
- Recapping dialogue. If one character has to explain the whole story to another, readers don't want to sit through that if it's the exact same story they've already read. So, you can condense it into a simple sentence, like "he explained how he got there to the man."
- Adjectives and adverbs. Occasionally, I read about how evil these things are, and how some writers go on crusades to obliterate all of them. There's a good reason to: most of the time they're squeezing in some form of telling that's not necessary. The most blatant examples would be adding something like "cold" next to "tundra." Well duh, a tundra is cold by definition, so you don't need "cold." More importantly, words like these can be removed if it's shown in some other way (so if I've written a whole sentence that shows coldness, I don't need to describe the tundra as "cold." And if such a sentence doesn't exist, it needs to be written to replace the one adjective). HOWEVER: I believe it is possible to use adjectives and adverbs as description, especially if you want to maintain momentum or pacing. What sense does it make to stop everything to say "the car was red," when you could have a sentence like "the red car careened past me." In an instance like that, there is no other way to "show" a car being red, that's description. So why not entwine it with the action with adjectives and adverbs? The key is identifying what's an empty and useless "telling" description, and what's a description you can't have without having to stall things and say "x was y." I could be wrong about this, but I see successful adjectives and adverbs on occasion and I suspect this is one of the reasons.
- Exposition. Otherwise known as the infodump. We see it all the time, in movies and everything. Anytime the text has to stop everything and explain to the reader something, it is inherently a form of telling. What makes it worse is that, most of the time, it's delivered either in author's voice (which should be a no-no unless you're in omniscient voice...I think), character voice (which can work if it's part of the action-reaction thought process, but can be intrusive if the character stops everything to address the reader and spell it all out), or in dialogue (which can work, but runs the risk of introducing "purple prose," or having characters talk in an unrealistic fashion, and it slows everything the heck down). If there are better ways to show information, do it--either with action, the plot itself, better-flowing dialogue, or something. HOWEVER: some things will have to be spelled out to the reader, finding the balance is the challenge. Science fiction demands some explanation for all the speculative technology and ideas that go into a story--Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlein, and most especially Michael Crichton explain all kinds of cool stuff to their readers. But they each find ways to relay their information in any number of ways, and it's not always a chore to read (Crichton in particular has this weird gift of stalling the action for essay-style writing, but still manages to entertain and make it accessible to laymen). Overall, exposition is a hard thing to nail down one way or another, you just have to use what tools you can, find a balance, and fix it when it doesn't work.
- Narrative tags. This one might be up for controversy, but I've seen it argued time and again that "said" and "ask" are the only tags you can ever have. Anything else just trips up the reader and stalls their progress. Narrative tags must be invisible--"said" is a word readers skim over to read the actual meat of the dialogue (which is where all the "showing" happens anyway). HOWEVER: I'd argue that volume must play into your choice of words. "Said" has zero connotation of power or strength, as opposed to "yell" or "shout," which will make it clear that a verbal smackdown is happening. On the other hand, "said" implies normal speaking, but "whisper" or "mutter" suggests a volume nobody else will hear. How confusing would it be to have a character taking and nobody else reacting--but with the tag "whisper," there's no mistaking that the character's voice is going unheard. What really should be avoided are words like "reply," "explain," "state," "utter," etc. which add and modify nothing to the dialogue's tone, volume, or inflection. And if the tag tells the same thing that's shown in the dialogue, it should be changed.
- Be specific. Generalizing leads to all the telling phrases and sentences. Narrowing it down to detailed descriptions is what prompts you to show everything.
- Everything works with action and reaction. Unless he's the Joker or something, you're character is not going to run off and react to things without reason. Always dig into the "why" of everything they do, to pinpoint the source of their emotion and decisions with the inner dialogue so readers can follow and understand them.
- Stop repeating yourself. If you've shown a thing, you don't have to tell a thing. Most self-editing I've done has been removing telling words and phrases that are inherently redundant to what's implicit to the rest of the writing. Look for those repetitive things and cut them out.
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