Young Writers Society

Let's consider this:

Mark was a terrible person,and he was scared of dogs

That was telling me. Now this is showing me:

Mark punched Jon in the face, sending the boy to fall back on the floor. He laughed, dusted his hands together, and swiped dirt away from his shoulders. He cocked his head back, and spat a large glob of spit on Jon's face.
"You're such a freakin' loser."

Mark turned and saw two growling pitbulls staring at him. Spittle drooled from their mouth and onto the street. To Mark, it felt as if the dogs had already ate his heart with their sharp teeth. Mark ran the other way as the dogs chased him

Not the best example, and even that can use a lot of editing. But it paints a picture of how bad this kid really is, and how the dogs scare him. There's many more examples ranging from describing your friends to saying that you had a horrible day. If you want to describe your friends, do more than just say that this person is funny, or this person is a ladies man. Show how they are such. It's okay to tell the reader that they are I suppose, but if you do, show it.

That is all I have to say. If anyone wants to add to it, go ahead.

I like!

Showing not Telling is really hard to get the hang of, but using examples like this is a great way to explain.

My favourite example is this;

Lucy had two choices. Tom was really annoying her. She hated the way he grinned so proudly when he managed to manipulate her.

She could tell him this, by saying 'Tom I hate the way you look so proud just because you solved an argument by giving me your ice cream', or she could show him, by shoving the ice-cream in his face and storming off like the strong, independent six year old she was.

The latter has a bit more impact. Excuse the pun.

I might add that sometimes narrative summary or description is needed. Don't try to 'show' EVERYTHING. Do that and you'll hit a pot-hole and bore your readers to death!

Granted: Showing is better than telling.

But also, remember that there IS a line. Don't push it.

*Pushes*

*Pushes*

*Breaks*

*Falls into semi-concious streaming*

*Drowns in a pit of obscurity*

BlackNether12 wrote:I might add that sometimes narrative summary or description is needed. Don't try to 'show' EVERYTHING. Do that and you'll hit a pot-hole and bore your readers to death!

Granted: Showing is better than telling.

But also, remember that there IS a line. Don't push it.

True.

But at the same time, there is nothing wrong with "Mark was a terrible person, and he was scared of dogs."

You know. If that's what you're going for.

I agree with BlackNether that you can't show everything, not just for the sake of length, but you need to differentiate for your readers which details they need to pay attention to and which ones are just there for the sake of logistics.

however, balance is a skill that needs to be developed over time. for this reason I am hesitant to suggest to most writer's whose work I critique that they both show and tell. the problem is that so many novice writers do nothing but tell. their stories are all summary with no scene. I think it is asking too much too soon to expect someone who is just beginning to grasp the concept of "showing" in their work to be able to balance scene and summary effectively. the scale needs to tip back and forth a few times.

BlackNether12 wrote:I might add that sometimes narrative summary or description is needed. Don't try to 'show' EVERYTHING. Do that and you'll hit a pot-hole and bore your readers to death!

Granted: Showing is better than telling.

But also, remember that there IS a line. Don't push it.

But where is the line when it comes to setting? I personally hate it when an author doesn't give you enough to picture a setting or place. I find myself describing the setting in great detail, but how great is too great?

MooMoo wrote:
But where is the line when it comes to setting? I personally hate it when an author doesn't give you enough to picture a setting or place. I find myself describing the setting in great detail, but how great is too great?

Personally I find the best way to get around that is keep detail narrowed down to creative detail. Like in poetry, you can describe an apartment by the place had never been cleaned, with paper on the windows, a beat up couch in the middle, and an old antenna television. The rest is filled in as you go, but the overall vision of the room is all going to have basically the same details without it being an extensive setting paragraph/page.
Also it helps keep the memory around if you touch on things in a way that is easy to remember. The most useful way I've seen things described is bit by bit. Instead of info-dumping the room, express it when the character comes over to it, like a character sits down and bumps the wobbly arm of the musty broken couch into the rickety side table half stripped of it's finish.

As Aley said, key details can make all the difference to describing a scene. If you pick the details that give us the gist of what the scene looks like or who the person is, our brain tends to fill in the gaps.

There is also no right or wrong amount of detail. It boils down to personal preference. Some people don't like much detail at all, while others want miles of description. You also have to consider the pace of the work, the amount of information you're giving at once, and the genre.

Really the amount of detail you put into describing your scene depends on A: Who your reader's are, and B: What your own style is. Depending on these two variables, yes, there is an optimal amount you'd want.

If you're writing for twelve year old's then it's understandeable if you don't describe your scenes very much. Most would use more action and less complicated description for this age group. If you're writing for older reader's though (50's/ 60's) I've found that they handle (and appreciate) more scene description.

But usually, for your usual teen/ young adult group of reader's, putting in the right details will leave the reader to fill in the gaps automatically (like Aley and Rosey said). Details that describe the scene overall. Something that might help you in fixing this (it did with me -I used to have a problem with it, yes) is reading a book you REALLY love and then trying to analyze how they describe things.

Sometimes telling can be used for dramtic effect. In The Book Thief there are a lot of little facts of Death commenting on the story or explaining a characters backstory or what happens to them. That probably doesn't make sense unless you've read that book so now people are probably confused.