Show versus Tell, example fourteen

From contest entries and critiques that I’ve done, I’ve noticed that often people don’t quite understand what exactly is “showing” and what exactly is “telling.” So, I’m doing this series to give numerous examples so that you can see for yourself the various kinds of “telling” that can occur in your own manuscript, and suggestions for fixing it.

This example is from my own proposal. It’s an Inspirational romantic suspense.

(From Jorge's point of view)

Jorge explained, “My brother still visits some of his old friends to try to get them to come to church with him.”

“Oh.” Her eyes skittered away as she renewed her vigor in sweeping.

She had never been comfortable talking about her faith. They’d rarely talked about God when they were dating, but she had said she was a strong Christian.

The last paragraph is all telling. There’s a more dynamic and interesting way to show this information, plus you can use this as a way to deepen the point of view.

I decided to anchor the information in Jorge’s current thoughts and wonderings, which are all in real time. It turns the paragraph into a combination of backstory information about her faith and Jorge’s current thoughts in the scene.

Jorge explained, “My brother still visits some of his old friends to try to get them to come to church with him.”

“Oh.” Her eyes skittered away as she renewed her vigor in sweeping.

Strange, she seemed even more uncomfortable talking about her faith than a month ago. They’d rarely talked about God, but she’d never actually avoided the subject like this before. She had said she was a strong Christian—was her faith wavering in the face of all the recent problems?

The boldface phrases are all current, Jorge’s thoughts in real time. It shows the backstory information mixed with the immediate thoughts so that it: (a) is in deep point of view and (b) shows forward movement in the story (c) without pausing to “tell” the reader about the heroine’s faith struggles.

Grammar, Punctuation, and Style for Fiction

Recently, a friend had witnessed a heated discussion between writers about the MLA Style book and the Chicago Manual of Style. She suggested I write an article on it. If you're not a fiction writer, this won't apply to you, but if you do write fiction, here's important information for you about style standards at major publishing houses.

Click here to read the article

Finding "Telling" and Fixing It

Many times, writers hear the injunction, “Show, don’t tell.” But how to know when you’re “telling” instead of showing, and what do you do about it?

Click here for the rest of the article

The first page, part 9

Make every word count

This goes back to how you only have one page to hook an editor. If that editor isn’t hooked by that first page, he or she will move the entire manuscript to the Reject pile without even bothering to go to page two.

That being the case, you should expend considerable effort to not have any useless words on that first page.

Make every description juicy and unique, without any “throw-away” words or phrases.

Make every line of dialogue snappy and emotional, without unnecessary tags or adverbs.

Make every sentence concise and precise—nothing meandering or vague or fluffy.

Introduce your character with clear but unique descriptors, whether in dialogue or by action. Don’t waste time with backstory and “telling” the reader what’s happening—suck the reader in to “show” them what’s happening as it happens to the character.

Dwight Swain has an entire chapter in his book Techniques of the Selling Writer, where he talks about just the words a writer should use. Now, granted, Swain is a bit wordy himself, but he wouldn’t go off for so long on the topic if it weren’t important.

So go through every word on that first page and determine its importance and it’s vibrancy.

If a word is bland, try to come up with something stronger. If a word is unnecessary, cut ruthlessly.

Spend time on each and every word, no matter how tedious that might sound to you. Just do it, because you’ll be glad you did when an editor reads that first page and then HAS to read on to page two.

Pubbing 1.0 How I did it by Camy Tang

I’m on the Steeple Hill blog in an interview with advice for writers, especially those targeting Steeple Hill.

1. What’s your sale story? How did you end up selling to Steeple Hill?

I’ve been reading Steeple Hill books since the 1990s, so when I first started writing seriously, I targeted Steeple Hill as a publisher.

Click here for the rest of the interview

Head-Hopping

Twenty years ago, omniscient point of view was commonly used in fiction. However, these days, a deep third person point of view is preferred most of the time, although there are exceptions, naturally.

Click here for the rest of the article

Show versus Tell--when to tell, examples

Camy here: Since so many people asked me to, I ran a series of blog posts with examples about when it was better to tell rather than show. This is a compilation of those blog posts. If I post additional examples, I'll just add them to this article.

Also, remember, these are not hard and fast rules about when to show and when to tell. Please do not take these examples as such. Ultimately, it's up to you as the writer since it's YOUR manuscript. Utilize whatever is best for your writing voice, the rhythm and pacing you're aiming for, or the atmosphere you're trying to obtain.

For examples of "telling," see this article.

Telling isn’t always bad. In fact, sometimes it’s preferable. However, you ought to have a darn good reason to tell.

One reason could be to telescope time. If you’re skipping from one place to another, or one time to another, that’s where telling is good.

Say Joe has been arrested and then in the next scene, he’s talking to his jailmate. It’s okay to tell in a sentence or two what happened in between. The reader doesn’t need to know all that detail, and it’s useful for letting the reader know that time has elapsed.

The police slapped the handcuffs on him.

Exactly forty-two minutes later, after being slightly roughed around by the cops who processed him, Joe turned to his bunk mate with a casual, “Got a smoke?”

Or

Joe got on the plane, flew to San Jose, and rented a car.

Two hours and one accident during rush hour later, he arrived at Amelia’s house, ready to break some heads.

Here, we didn’t need to see everything Joe did on the plane, in renting the car, in sitting in traffic. We just need to know what’s going to happen next.

So in these examples, telescoping time and/or space is a perfectly legitimate reason for telling instead of showing.

Another reason is if the action isn’t emotionally important. The reader doesn’t need to read detail if it’s not important for the story.

For example, the reader doesn’t need to read every step as Joe walks into his bathroom, brushes his teeth, combs his hair, shaves, etc. “Joe got ready for work” is sufficient.

Another example is when a character is telling another character what happened to him. Since we as the reader already know all the events he’s relating, we don’t need to read his dialogue telling his friend.

Jason Bourne related everything to other agent as he tied him up and set the house to blow up.

In the example above, we also didn’t need to follow all of Bourne’s actions as he rigged the house, because it’s not emotionally important.

However, what if the agent has information to impart while Bourne is telling the agent what happened to him? What if the agent can explain why so-and-so shot at Bourne, why such-and-such agency never existed, etc.?

In that case, show the complete dialogue between Bourne and the agent, because the information the agent gives him will cause an emotional reaction in Bourne and influence his decisions about what to do next.

Therefore, if the actions aren’t emotionally significant to the story or plot, telling is preferred. But if there will be emotionally relevant information, then go ahead and show it.

Sometimes you want to deliberately distance the reader from the character or action. It might be a decision you make based on pacing or emotional flow or simply word and sentence cadence. In that case, go ahead and tell. But make sure you have a good reason in your own mind for telling.

Why hadn’t he asked her for her phone number? (showing)

versus

She wondered why he hadn’t asked her for her phone number. (telling) No, she didn’t want to think about it. Too painful.

In the first example, the question is very blunt and emotional.

In the second example, I chose to keep the reader distanced from the emotion because the character herself is trying to distance herself from the emotion. The telling achieves the same sort of emotional distance or denial that the character is going through.

So, if you have a reason for telling, go for it. Sometimes it’s more effective.

One reason that people give for “telling” is one that I don’t like, although some of you might not agree with me. Some people use “telling” because they say they don’t have the word count for “showing.”

For example, many category books are shorter, and some authors say they have to tell in order to make the book hit their lower word count.

I don’t agree (but some of you might not feel the same way). While it’s true that showing often has a larger word count, there are more creative ways to show that will match the word count of a section of telling.

Also, a lot of times, the story doesn’t need that section of telling at all. I’ve seen many manuscripts with telling where the information isn’t necessary for the reader to understand and enjoy the story.

Or maybe the information can be snuck with in a phrase or sentence later in the manuscript where it's more pertinent to the current action.

My suggestion is that before you decide to “tell” something, ask yourself or your crit partners if the information imparted is absolutely vital to the story, especially at that moment. You may discover that you don’t absolutely need it. If you don’t need it, cut it. Make your word count with vibrant prose rather than prose with lots of telling.

If an editor later asks you add in more telling, that’s infinitely better than being rejected because your prose is too bland with too much telling.