Telling vs. Showing?

As a reviewer (and a writer), I know the whole drill about show vs. tell, how great it is, blah blah blah. But what I really want to know is, do we really believe that telling is a bad thing? Also, is telling a skill we should be developing just as well?

Discuss, please.

Yes, telling is as important as showing is, really, in the end.

I agree. Sometimes, I get sick of being told: "Remember: Don't tell us, show us!" *gasp!* I mean, obviously there should be some showing being done, but telling is just as important.

Telling is important for maybe something that happened in their past, because there are some things that obviously don't take place over the course of the story because each character has a past. But the danger in admitting this is that people become dependent on explaining everything that happens which, while it has its place, doesn't typically make an interesting story. Telling is something that we all have to do in our stories, though it should never dominate our work. Readers aren't as patient with paragraph after paragraph of description of the past and would rather be told or shown (or maybe even surprised) later on by being filled in with different pieces of information as the story flows on.

Telling is useful, but it has a lurking tendency of being used improperly if it isn't used sparingly.

-Lydia

When I write, I like to pretend my reader has no idea what I'm talking about.
When I character bleeds, I think, How would I describe blood to someone who has never seen it?
Well, I could say it's crimson. I could describe its viscosity. And suddenly, the sentence "She bled," becomes "dark crimson oozed from the wound."
My reader can picture exactly what I want them to see.

Telling is okay when giving back stories and things such as that, but I hate when people write sentences like, "She screamed." What does it look like? What does it sound like? By showing me with description, you can imply that a character is screaming without even using the word "scream".

Haruno Sakura wrote:When I write, I like to pretend my reader has no idea what I'm talking about.

Telling is okay when giving back stories and things such as that, but I hate when people write sentences like, "She screamed." What does it look like? What does it sound like? By showing me with description, you can imply that a character is screaming without even using the word "scream".

1- I love that idea. I'm going to use that. ^_^

2- I agree. Often I'll look at a descriptive word and flag it, saying that something such as "evil" or "evily" is just too flat to really have any punch. In some rare cases it's okay (dialogue and thoughts come to mine), but 99% of the time, just.... no.

Haruno Sakura wrote:Telling is okay when giving back stories and things such as that, but I hate when people write sentences like, "She screamed." What does it look like? What does it sound like? By showing me with description, you can imply that a character is screaming without even using the word "scream".

[/quote]
Sometimes, though, a scream is just a scream.

Part of what I'm trying to get at is that we're so eager to show all because it's easier to critique shows. I think that maybe it's time to start welcoming telling back, a little bit? One of my best stories, "Your Coat of Arms is the Lion" is about 70% telling and I've gotten great feedback. It's about how well it is written, but if the telling sucks, it's automatically assumed that showing would be better. It's a bad rap. [/overuse of "tell"]

Orson Scott Card, for example, keeps description to an absolute minimum and still manages to keep his work quite vivid. A nice balance of S&T...perhaps we should be looking for that. I'm not sure about the rest of the writing population, but when I write something one way, that's the "natural" way it was formed in my mind. It's frustrating to try to change that when it clicked earlier.

So, yup, $.02. I'll try to brainstorm some tell-advice and let's see what happens. I'd love to change the whole "telling = omgevil, showing= ultimate win" thing a lot of reviewers have going. :\

EDIT: Sorry 'bout that, Rosey. ^_^ I cut out the wrong tags.

Telling is important too, only that showing has a far greater importance than telling. Telling has its place once in a while of course. Too much of it somehow makes the story bland, plain, mediocre. Showing is utilized to make the reader have a visual on the world that's showed through letters, unmoving letters at that.

It's a matter of balance, just how much telling and showing is needed depends on a writer's style perhaps.

Telling is useful in segues between scenes, or filling in gaps between important plot points. However, for the most part, you should show as much as you can. Showing is active and telling is passive, so we want our writing to be as active as possible to excite our readers' imaginations.

Telling, and showing, as they're meant when you hear the SDT thing are seperate ways of relating the same thing. If you're using show instead of tell, it doesn't mean you're describing things more. Showing isn't pure description, and telling isn't pure action. You can tell description, and you can show action.

Everyone here seems to think that showing is when you're describing something, and telling is when you're straightforwardly relating what's going on. Using show instead of tell doesn't constitute flowerly language and meaningless descriptions. I guess you could say that showing, as it's mean in this sense, is a way of telling.

In fact, sometimes showing not telling is the absence of description. Take, for instance, dialogue. If you describe the sound of their voice, that's usually telling. Showing would be when you use effective, vivid enough dialogue that the reader can tell without being told how the speaker is supposed to sound.

'Showing' doesn't mean going into every tiny detail. It means not going into every little detail and letting the reader see it for themselves. What you guys were saying made your showing sound like telling.

Ugh.
Well, first off I don't care if it's showing or telling, just if you get the message across, in my opinion.

My main purpose in writing is to let the reader understand what I am talking about so they could relate with my MC. If not, then really what is the point of a book full of jibberish?

Showing is alright, there's nothing bad with showing.
Yet there is nothing bad with telling, either.

Here is showing: She knit her eyebrows and took a deep breath, trying to keep her shaking hands controlled.

Here is telling: She looked extremely anxious.

Lousy example, but you get the picture.
Okay, you can tear me up now.

In writing, I feel that both telling and showing is important. However, you can't tell everything, just as you can't show everything. There has to be a balance. I've read this really good article about it, but I can't remember where to find it anymore. Well, telling everything would be like putting a bunch of sticks to form a house, and showing it would be like covering every single available surface with decorations and stuff. Weird analogy, I know.

Well, just my two cents. It's quite difficult to show things while not doing an infodump. Very annoying at times. Anyway, achieving the balance between telling and showing takes quite a bit of effort, unless you're born with the talent. Seriously, I've seen some people do that, even though they have never written a piece of creative writing before. And when I demand to know the secret, they look at me and go, "What secret?"

There has to be a balance. Of course we want to feel we're there, living it, tasting it, smelling it, yadda yadda. But, a lot of the time people over-do it. Not everything needs to be described vividly. Only the important aspects, I think. It's about subtlety.
A lot of the time people rely too much on adjectives, and, especially on openings lines, I find that off-putting.