Skip to main content

Show versus Tell--when to tell, example one

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.

Comments

  1. I'm glad to see some posts on telling and its use also. There's always a lot of confusion about this topic, and too many writers treat "Show, not tell" as a strict rule that has to be obeyed.

    I just critted a writer who saw that advice and followed it as a strict rule. He ended up with a first chapter laden with meaningless details like the angle of a character's arm as he picked up an object, and then described how the sleeve moved as he performed the action. He didn't understand the concept well enough to know the difference between showing, telling, and leaving out what wasn't important.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Building a blog

This article originally appeared as a series of blog posts in November and December 2008 . Here are all the posts collected together. Building a blog These days, blogging is a great way to express yourself and/or to market a product you might have. Blogging is cheap, easy, and can be a lot of fun. But while anyone can blog, how do you create an effective blog? Here are a few tips, broken down into Blogging Logistics and Blog Content. (Before I begin, I also want to mention that blogging isn’t for everyone. Not everyone likes to blog, and that’s perfectly fine. I think that no one should feel forced to blog—if you don’t like blogging, then don’t blog. But if you do enjoy blogging, this is a series of articles to help you make a better blog.) Blogging Logistics: Blog consistently. Good blogs have bloggers who post consistently and often. Most of these bloggers post five days a week, taking Saturday and Sunday off since blogs usually have lower traffic on weekends. Ideally, a blogger who ...

How to write a kiss

There was a question on the writer’s Discord server that I’m on where someone asked how to write a kiss. They weren’t specifically asking me, but I was able to give a short answer for how I write kisses. I write and read traditional romances, so my kiss scenes tend to be heavily influenced by the genre and by how my editors critiqued my manuscripts. You basically want to focus on the emotion of the kiss and how the kiss makes the point of view character feel, as opposed to going deep into physical detail. Ideally, the description will show that the kiss is something special and not just them macking. For example the kiss made her feel ___. Or the kiss was ___ which made it seem that he felt ___ for her. “The kiss made her feel as if she were incredibly precious to him.” “His lips were gentle and almost tentative, as if he were afraid of frightening her.” “The kiss surprised her and yet felt as familiar as if they’d kissed a thousand times before. The kiss felt like home.” I...

Writing Fight Scenes

I love martial arts movies and action flicks. So naturally I'd write action scenes. I discovered that it takes a slightly different writing style. These are some of the things I learned, although this list isn't exhaustive by any means. Action-Reaction A fight scene is always Action-Reaction. He punches, she staggers back. She kicks, he blocks and swings a fist at her. Watch out for putting your reaction before your action: She staggered back when he slammed his fist into her shoulder. The rule of thumb is to have each action-reaction have its own paragraph, although that’s not always possible. Sometimes the sentences are too short for their own paragraphs and can be combined. It’s up to the writer how to format it: He swung a roundhouse punch. She bent backward and felt his knuckles swish past her nose. versus: He swung a roundhouse punch. She bent backward and felt his knuckles swish past her nose. Short sentences = fast reading flow Use short sentences and phrases to make re...