Wordsmithing: It's Time For Show and Tell!

Dedicated to Malachi, the first of several I've explained show and tell to.

There is this strange concept that authors and writers refer to, over and over again, that needs to be explained for those new to it: “show” vs. “tell”. Well, isn’t that clever? It’s time for “Show and Tell”. Now, what are these terms? What do they mean? They’re quite ambiguous, and can cause long delays and much confusion when one person knows what those mean and the other doesn’t. This needs to be solved, and the simplest way is educating the uneducated (because you are not ignorant, mindless drivel that have no lives). But the hardest part about the educational process is that there are no good definitions for these two concepts. They’re easier “shown” than “said”.

For those of you who are very analytical, perhaps you picked up already that this first section has been very informative, very much my telling you facts. That is what “tell” is. You’ve read it in prologues before, where an author sits you down and info-dumps reference points on their story, such as the age of history their story takes place in, where their story is set, and the general mood of that region.

Example: Long ago, in the land of Phoenixa, near the dawn of that world’s time, there lived many races, the elves, the goblins, and the trolls. The trolls migrated away from the lands inhabited by the elves and goblins, and the two remaining species lived in peaceful coexistence until the terrible goblin chieftain the Great Bitter arose and united his people under one banner, and waged war against the elves to conquer them, and to rid his land of their ‘blight’. He succeeded, and utterly decimated all elven villages beyond the borders of his native land, taking many elves back captive to work in the mines, scraping out the ore that furnished the chains that bound them. The elves were disjointed, broken, and utterly without hope. It was at this point that hope dawned on the dejected elves, for there arose four Heroes with powerful swords, bent on overthrowing the tyrannical Bitter and liberating their people.

That would be a good prologue for those who prefer the more informational approach to their writing. However, “tell” writing is only rarely acceptable. Places “tell” writing [a.k.a. info-dumping] is appropriate: Scientific textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, almanacs, and other reference works. “Tell” writing should not be used in fictional writing, unless being used in a reference work for a fictional series, such as the Halo Encyclopedia, the Inheritance Almanac, and Companion to Narnia, to name a few. But I must be very clear in how I say this next sentence. Tell writing is not unexpected, understandable, and up to the author’s discretion in the following- Introductions, Prologues, Epilogues, and Appendices. I am hesitant to say that using “tell” writing in these instances is acceptable because, for Prologues and Epilogues, this is a style choice. For Intros (or Conclusions) and Appendices, “tell” writing can and should be used. This entire essay up to this point has been “tell” writing, except for the example “tell” paragraph, which was me “showing” an example of “telling”, which is an odd logical hybrid. Have fun figuring it out and let me know your thoughts on that one.

Now, here is an example of “tell” used in the middle of a story [where it does not belong].

Kira woke up in Eldia, her country that is not a part of our world. Eldia is an old country, but that world is not as old as ours, being about 4,000 yrs. old. Kira lived in a palace. That palace was big, maybe the size of the White House. She was a princess. And now that Obsidian attacked she was the last living nobility of her line. Obsidian attacked because he wanted absolute power, and he would stop at nothing to get it. So that was why he attacked. Kira looked around her room after she woke up.

That is horrible, nasty, nasty writing that should never occur in a narrative. True, I exaggerated the sloppiness to a certain extent (see the first two sentences), but that is how some younger authors write, and there’s nothing wrong with that, so long as you’re willing to learn to recognize when you have “tell”, and get rid of it. Most “telling” is done with state-of-being verbs, am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been, and related verbs/verb phrases, but “telling” is not limited to just those Linking Verb sentences. For example, look back at this sentence from the example paragraph, Kira lived in a palace. That does not have a Linking Verb, and yet that is a statement-of-fact sentence, a “tell” sentence.

Here is that example “tell” paragraph slightly redone to give an example of “show”:

Kira sat up in her canopy bed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She twisted out of her covers and slipped her bare feet onto the cold, stone floor. After tossing off the tangle of sheets gripping her arms, she strode over to the bedroom window and threw it open, staring out over the palace courtyard. 'What a beautiful sunrise,' she thought as she watched the pink and orange tinted clouds floating lazily in front of the sun.

Now, close examination of this short paragraph’s grammatical structure may seem like I’m going back on what I said earlier, since all the sentences seem to be statements-of-fact, or “tell”. Just like I pointed out Kira lived in a palace as “tell”, I could say the same of Kira sat up in her canopy bed. But here’s the key between “show” and “tell”: description. I have just given you the same information as I did in Kira lived in a palace, only with more details. “Show” makes a scene much more vivid. Compare the information given in the “tell” paragraph with the details “shown” in the “show” paragraph. In the first, you know that Kira woke up, she was a princess, and lived in a palace. With the “show” paragraph, you know that she woke up in her bedroom, when she woke up (at sunrise), that it was chilly when she woke up, that she lived in a palace, that her bedroom floor was made of stone (made chilly by the morning cold), and that her bedroom had a courtyard window facing East, assuming the sun rose in the same direction on that world. “Showing” is giving information that needs to be given without just telling the reader [that’s why “tell” is called “tell”].

Now, as much as I’ve gone off about not using “tell” in your actual narrative, there are times to use it. For example, when you want to summarize, or “fast forward”, through a huge segment of time, and “showing” everything that happens during that time is non-essential to the story, would be nothing more than retelling a mundane cycle (which gets old), and has no real significance other than its passing, you can use “tell”, but carefully.

Example: Her lease had expired yesterday. Really, she should have moved out days ago. But, hey, she was a busy woman, and she had a life. So what if the landlord wanted her to ‘expedite’ her move? She’d rather pay the fine than give up that Blake Shelton concert. So now she stood with the last two suitcases in hand, staring at the stuffed U-haul waiting to be driven to the storage facility. Breathing out her air and all the pent-up stress, she walked down the driveway and slipped into the driver’s seat, sliding the luggage the entire length of the empty bench to rest against the passenger door. She pulled the key out of her purse and slipped it into the ignition, then fired up the rented beast and pulled onto the road. An hour later she arrived at the U-store and unloaded all her belongings into her unit. Well, all except her trusty laptop. That piece of technology had been more faithful than her past four boyfriends combined. She walked up to the storage complex’s rental office and logged onto their free Wi-fi, beginning her search for a new apartment. Two weeks later she’s signed a lease and moved into her new home, ready to kiss her old life goodbye. She laid down in her freshly unpacked and made bed, wrinkling the white bed sheets. Four more hours, she thought, looking at the bright red number display on her clock. Four more hours until she had to get up and go back to work. Well, life could wait four hours. She rolled onto her back, pulling her pillow along with her, and folded her pillow over her face, shutting out the world. Okay, so maybe four hours would take a hike without her permission. But at least she still had those four hours to rest.

Notice the two bolded sentences. The first sentence is not in the Linking Verb format, and yet I “tell” that an hour’s drive went by. I did not show every aspect, all the turns and streets she passed or drove through, the stoplights and stopsigns she hit, or the parked cars lining some of those streets (a few with tickets from expired meters). And yet in small quantities “tell” can help the “show” flow smoothly, and make the story much more enjoyable. Now, the second sentence was a much greater time jump, but what is there to show during that time? She stays somewhere, perhaps with a friend, and goes to work during the day, then spends her off-time on-line, searching for a new apartment (or pad, if she felt so inclined). The cycle- get up, go to work, go home, Google search, go to sleep, get up and repeat. Fourteen days of that, fully described in proper “show” fashion, would be tedious, monotonous, and, most importantly, boring.

And that previous example paragraph is also good for showing how narrative style can use Linking Verbs and state-of-being sentences (which are typically associated with “tell”) to give a solid “show” narrative. So that, my friends, is “Show and Tell”.

Any questions?