Showing Versus Telling

Yes, today we are going to talk about that dreadful topic: Showing versus Telling. Oooh, aahhh--Ack! I do believe this is one of the hardest subjects to understand, spot, and tackle. Let's start with something easy first, shall we?

He closed the door firmly.

Now, this is where I would leave my authors a comment that looks something like: "ly" words are often a sign of telling. Try rephrasing and replacing please. Here's an example of what could be done:

With a firm grip on the handle, he shut the door and ended the conversation.

Yay word count! Yay visuals. Because now we know he's probably angry or upset and we know he's walking away from a dispute of some sort. Yeah, yeah, I know we would have already gotten that from the surrounding paragraphs, but isn't this more fun? And doesn't it underline his emotions so well? (Nod and smile, people!)

Let's try another one. Mannerisms (those things that aren't dialogue tags but action after or during dialogue) are often riddled with telling in many manuscripts. I'll throw one at you I see a lot!

She blushed.

*Yawn* Boring! Now we know our heroine, or at least the female being discussed, has a Pikachu effect going on (and I just proved to my 6 year old that I can make Pokemon references in my posts!). Moving on--There are two ways to change the above. If we are in the heroine's POV then we need to be sure we avoid head-hopping so:

Her face heated, her cheeks prickling as she blushed over his compliment.

If we are in the perspective of someone else, say the hero, it would look different. Because he can't feel the sensation of the blush, it would be physically described.

Redness crept along her cheek bones as she began to blush over his compliment.

One way to spot telling is to look at your actions. Do you merely state what the person is doing without any emotion? Did you use "ly". Could you give us more feed via sensations? Using the senses is a wonderful way to combat telling.

The man who stole her person began to run away. "Oh no you don't!" Carina ran after the fleeing criminal. She wasn't going to let him get away with stealing her favorite purse.

versus

The man who stole her purse took one look at her, sneered, and fled down the alley way. "Oh no you don't!" Carina narrowed her eyes and sprinted after him. Her heart pounded in her chest and a lump formed in her throat as she drew in each ragged breath. Her track days were certainly long behind her, but she wasn't about to let this petty thief get away with her purse. That was her favorite one!

See the difference? You get so much more swept up in the story when you can identify with the emotions and sensations. Thus is the art of showing versus telling. Questions? Comments? ~ D. F. Krieger

This should help me out a great deal; every time I read one of these posts, I find myself disliking my writing more and more. It's really making me reexamine my style, and notice just how poor it actually is. I'm essentially self-taught, as I've never had an English or Grammar teacher worth their paycheck; all of my experience pretty much comes from role-playing. I think I'm going to have to try my best to write something and send it to you this weekend. Hopefully you'll be able to give me some critical insight to help me grow.

I'm interested in reading your thoughts on purple prose.

Her notes and such are VERY helpful and have helped me TREMENDOUSLY. A purple prose thread along with maybe a 'how to avoid Mary Sues' thread would be fantastic.

I was just going to mention the whole purple prose thing. While it's great to do the showing versus telling thing, taken to an extreme, it winds up with lavish descriptions that nobody really wants us to read in the first place. It's really about balancing, showing us what we need to know to see the story, and telling us what isn't really necessary. Which really only comes with practice.

I have to admit, I really did appreciate the examples and such. Far too often, people chant this without really explaining what the hell they mean. I've got a few RP partners that I wish realized that with this type of writing, more showing and less telling is nearly always a good thing. Anyways, I know it's just gilding the lily at this point, but definitely well done.

Thanks for the input, everyone. I'm looking forward to doing crits this coming weekend. Since you have all said the same thing, I'll be sure to post a purple prose next Wednesday. The Wednesday after that, I'll write one on Mary Sues.

Don't hate your writing, Mitsu! You should have seen the horrible stuff I was writing before anyone ever taught me. I was lucky enough to be friends with a lady who is now multi-published by one of the bigger houses. She took me under her wing, critted a page of my work (oh the colors it bled!) and in essence, showed me the right way to do things. Because of her, I finally became good enough to get published. Not everyone has that connection, but how is anyone suppose to learn if no one teaches them the finer ropes?

That's the thing. Unless we take the time to learn, it's hard to truly improve. So it's awesome to have someone who is willingly offering to take the time to teach us all. It's very much appreciated. That's for sure. And we'd all be crazy not to seize that opportunity for improvement.

I love getting stuff like this from people in my roleplays. I've seen a lot of people who dislike this and find it to be an overly dramatic way to write but I actually love it. It sets a tone and helps the imagery.