When I typed Show versus Tell into Google I got 265,000,000 results.
It is a term on the lips of every agent, editor and publisher and consequently at the forefront of every wannabe published novelist, but what does it mean?
I thought I knew, I thought I was avoiding doing it, but Tim pointed out several examples where I was spoon-feeding huge amounts of back story into the text.
He used the metaphor of having someone else watching an episode of a TV show and then relating it back to you the next day. We understand the plot, we know what has happened, we might even be able to recite some of the more memorable parts, but we don’t connect with it. we can’t engage emotionally with something that is second hand.
This gave me something of an epiphany. It was such a clear and concise definition of something that had previously been elusive, more of a buzzword than a piece of advice that I could work into my craft.
Once I had grasped the concept I began looking around on the internet for further information, which is where I came across the 265,000,000 entries on the topic.
Some of the posts were spot on-
Like this one-“telling is when you give information in a straight summarized fashion: “Jim was a lazy slob.” Showing is when you illustrate that through scene, action, and dialogue”
Some not so-” In writers’ circles this is known as show vs tell. It’s one of the most difficult thing for new writers to learn. One of the basics of good writing is putting your reader into the middle of the action. This has been a continuing topic in many writer groups. It separates a good writer from a poor one.”
In the end though, after trawling through literally hundreds of blog posts, article, forum posts, I kept coming back to the TV metaphor.
Now, I’m not saying I don’t do it anymore, because I do.
And as a reader I like a certain amount of tell; published authors are guilty of it too, I have just read Man in the dark by Paul Auster and this is at least 70% tell.
But I feel now that I understand the principle behind the term. If a piece of information is important enough for you to include it in your novel, then it is worth spending the time to dramatise it.
