Show, Don’t Tell I - An Introduction

Introduction

Welcome to the July edition of Zen Thoughts, where, as the Professor of Writing, I break down some fiction writing techniques that might help people improve their writing beyond what the Shadow Academy courses offer. This is the first in a series called ‘Show, Don’t Tell’.

When I first heard the advice ‘Show Don’t Tell’, I had no idea what it was meant to mean. The twentieth time, I didn’t either. It felt like the advice was just given because everyone else was saying it, and I never really understood what it meant other than ‘be more vague… or something?’.

I’ve since been listening a lot more to professional authors and editors giving advice on the subject, and heard a lot of different explanations, some of them resonated with me, some of them didn’t. This first post will be an introduction to the general idea, and subsequent lectures in the series will cover more specifics.

Let the Reader Take an Active Role

“In storytelling, the audience actually wants to work for their meal, they just don't want to know that they're doing it. That's your job as a storyteller, is to hide the fact that you're making them work for their meal.” - Andrew Stanton

Andrew Stanton is the writer of Wall-E and Toy Story, and gave this quote in a TED Talk titled The Clues to a Great Story. Humans enjoy puzzles, we enjoy working things out, and in reading a story, we enjoy taking an active part in experiencing the story for ourselves, not having everything spoonfed for us.

When writing Finding Nemo, Stanton and Peterson used the “Unifying Theory of 2+2” which says “Never give the audience 4, give them 2+2”. It’s not about giving them the facts, it’s about giving the reader the details to piece together the facts. But it’s got to be simple enough that the reader deduces what you want them to deduce without doing too much work. You’re giving them 2+2. Not 2(exp(i*2*π)-cos(π)).

This is what ‘Show, don’t Tell’ is unhelpfully trying to oversimplify. Show details that allow the reader to deduce things, rather than tell them the information.

When to Show?

Generally speaking, showing is most useful to replace something abstract with something concrete. Things like emotions, thoughts, opinions, sensations, temperature, etc., things you can’t see or touch, are often better off shown through details rather than explicitly stated. Concrete details replace the abstract concept you want the reader to get to without you saying the word.

Consider: He dressed like a mechanic vs He wore grey coveralls and a hydrospanner hung at his belt. In the former, I’m just spoonfeeding the reader the information that the character is a mechanic. In the latter, I’m giving the details that allow the other characters to deduce that.

He was very tired vs He yawned and dropped onto the couch.

Appius’ story was very interesting to him. vs Zentru’la leaned forwards in his chair. “Tell me more.”

The wind was very cold vs She turned her face from the biting wind. (from Jerry Jenkins)

These three examples shift the focus from something abstract to the character’s actions and allow the reader to deduce that he was tired, that the story was interesting, or that there was a cold wind. They also replace a ‘state-of-being’ verb (was) with more active verbs (yawned, leaned, turned). More on state-of-being verbs in a future lecture.

A DB example

The following is an excerpt from a story CSP’s Thran Occasus wrote in one of my competitions.

The Lambda-Class shuttle had lost several streaks of its chromium hull on the vertical wing as it entered the constricted hangar bay. The flight crew was sweating blaster bolts as they lowered the ramp at the nose of the ship. Rank and file, the young officers exited the ship ahead of their passengers. Each pulled their caps down snug over their heads, hoping the thin brims would prevent the Sith from plucking the eyes from their skulls with some dark and unbending evil. The Captain stood tall as two cloaked figures strode down the incline. They didn’t break stride as they walked past.

Here, Thran doesn’t just tell us the ship is damaged, we’re shown the scraping of chromium hull. We’re not told that the flight crew are scared, we’re shown them ‘sweating blaster bolts’ and pulling their caps over their heads. The two cloaked figures not breaking stride as they walk past the crew shows us everything we need to know about their attitude without any direct explanation.

The full story is available here:

Closing Thoughts

‘Show, don’t Tell’ has been repeated a million times with varying success. I hope that this has helped somewhat if you were struggling with understanding what it actually meant. Later on in this series, I’ll be digging deeper into more specific techniques.

It’s also always worth keeping in mind that a lot of storytelling advice works for some people and not others, nothing is ever set in stone when it comes to a creative form of expression like storytelling. But when you write your next story, try playing about with some of these ideas. Next time you describe something abstract with a state-of-being verb, try replacing it with a more concrete detail or, more active verb and see if it helps bring life to your story.

The next lecture will be called Striking Gold and will analyse (where published) nova-winning stories from the Great Jedi War and what made them stand out.

Previous Lectures

• May 2020 - Writing Engaging Dialogue