I want to begin with a disclaimer. This is a blog about breaking rules – sometimes. But you can only break those rules if you know what they are. Please do not take what I’m about to say as something you should “always” do. Use only when necessary.
I’ve been judging a great many contests lately. Most of these are for new writers and the No. 1, problem I see is their stories are full of telling instead of showing. That and they almost always load up those first chapters with backstory they don’t need. But backstory is a topic for another day.
As you know, it is always better to show, rather than tell a story. Showing gives the author an opportunity to bring the reader in by showing the characters in action. Henry James called this dramatizing. According to Wikipedia Janet Evanovich says, “It is the difference between actors acting out an event and the lone playwright standing on a bare stage recounting the event to the audience.”
All of this is true. It’s difficult to engage the reader and get them invested in your characters if you don’t show the action. We need to feel like we are there and showing us through the actions and dialogue is the way to do it.
BUT there are times when telling is necessary. If you always “Show” your story, first you will have a tremendously long book. Second you’re going to have a lot of problems with pacing. When you show a story, it takes many more words to do so. When you do that all the time, it can bog down the prose and create a snail’s pace.
How many times have you read a book and thought, “Just get on with it.” You know those pages you skip and skip to get to the heart of what the author is trying to say? That’s where a little telling would come in handy.
In that same Wikipedia article it has a quote from James Scott Bell that says a writer “tells” as a shortcut in order to get to the meaty part of the scene. “Showing is essentially about making scenes vivid,” says Bell. “If you try to do it constantly, the parts that are supposed to stand out won’t, and your readers will get exhausted.”
If you’re writing literary fiction, show all you want. But if you want to be successful with commercial fiction you need to find the right balance of showing and telling. People tell me all the time my books are fast reads. I honestly do more telling than I should, but I like books that have a fast pace. I’m also not a big fan of using a great deal of description, which is required with showing.
The thing to watch out for when you use “telling” is that you don’t end up with: and then this happened, and then that happened and then…
As Bell says, you want those big dramatic scenes to mean something and that can’t happen if you are telling the reader about the event, rather than showing.
My point, and I really do have one, is that you have to find out what works best for the book/scene you are writing. I’m working on a scene where a character has to travel from one place to another. The journey isn’t what is important, it’s the confrontation when she gets there. If I show that journey, it’s going to take forever to get to the heart of the scene. We need to know that she’s gone from point A to point B, and that’s she’s nervous, but I can tell the point A to point B part, and show just a bit that she’s nervous. Then Pow! I hit you with the confrontation.
I’ve seen some really talented writers use too much showing, which bogged down their books to the point where I wanted to throw it across the room. I can be on page 75 and still not know what the hell kind of story I’m reading. It’s frustrating. But as I said before, I prefer books with a good, brisk pace.
I remember years ago I was in a class at a conference where an author was teaching the difference between showing and telling. He read one scene where he used “telling” and then he read it again where he used “showing.” He insisted the second one was better, but it wasn’t. It was a transition from one scene to the next, and it didn’t need all the showing.
I only want new writers to know, that yes, showing is important. But it isn’t always the best way to write a story. There are times when a little telling comes in handy.
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I’ve been struggling with pacing lately and this is exactly the reason. I’m getting bored with the in between bits! Thanks for making the exception to the rule easier to understand.
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Beth, Don’t feel bad. I’m nine or ten books in and I still catch myself looking at something and wondering why it’s slogging. It’s almost always the telling vs showing problem.
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I agree, especially about the “getting from point A to point B” part. I’m trying to read more fantasy novels, because I like to write fantasy romance, but I’m finding that some authors are so in love with their world building that the scenery overpowers the story. I’ll read three pages of description of a nomad encampment and then get to the conversation and go, oh, yeah, that’s what I was really interested it. But the setting description distracted me from the plot for several pages. Argh! Then I just feel silly for letting myself get distracted. Since my daughter’s one now, I can’t use “pregnancy brain” as an excuse any more:)
Anyway, yay for telling, on occasion:)
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Jessica, I hear you on all the world building. I’m horrible about skimming through those pages in search of the heart of the chapter.
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Indeed, show/tell balance isn’t easy for new writers but through practice it will get better.
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It’s like Rosemary says in her blog today: writing, writing, writing makes you better.
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Thanks Candy!
As you know I definitely had a problem with too much telling in my action scenes and the “then this happened and that happened.”
Now that I’m starting to edit and revise I know what to look for. Thanks for all of your advice and help!!!
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Hey Jason, As I said before, it’s something we all struggle with. I know if my characters aren’t connecting the way I want them too, I’m telling too much. It happens with every book.
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Hi Candy,
Thanks so much for this great post. About halfway thru, I made up my mind to ask you if there was such a thing as too much showing…and then I saw it for myself in your post. Thanks for sharing! Sometimes I show too much, and it slows the manuscript to a crawl. I suppose like everything else in life, you have to have an even balance to get the job done.
Thanks again for your generosity,
Rita Lorraine
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Thanks for the reassurance, Candace. I had a scene where the H and h brought a third party into the situation they were trying to solve. The first time I wrote it, it dra-a-a-gged. Then I realized it was pretty much a repeat of the H and h scene of information sharing from earlier. So I whacked it down to one “telling” transition sentence. The whole thing flowed so much better.
And then I got lambated in a contest for that one “telling” sentence.
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Heya Candy–
Great points! The trick is to figure out which bits are important to show, and what is just “getting from point A to point B.”
Still working on that
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Thanks for running with this one Candy –
I have been struggling with this since I decided to turn my attention to short stories. As you know, they are limited in the word count, and for someone who writes more to show than to tell, it has been hard. It also hasn’t helped that my personal editor (hubby) bases his knowledge on literary fiction and not mainstream fiction. He tends to go with the show as well. I am glad to see I am not the only one who struggles with this topic.
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The problem when a rule gets boiled down to three words, “Show, Don’t Tell”, is it leaves off all the times when the rule doesn’t work! LOL Your post is a great description of when to use telling as the correct tool. Thanks for sharing this — it is so helpful.
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Rules were made to be broken
I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned from you through WW. I don’t post, but I read everything and it’s a wealth of information.
I’ve trimmed and cut and condensed and my “critter” tells me it flows so much better, but I’ve worked on it so long, I can’t see it anymore because I just want to ‘kill my darlings’. Literally. In the fireplace would be good.
*sigh*
Thank you for another great post!
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Yay, candy gave me more work on my book, I just noticed that in my editting i was adding to much showing, I don’t need to describe each vampire that is attacking the dragon, they die anyways. So now the question is do i like you or dislike you for this extra, extra work. When I am writing, I noticed if I do to much of one or the other I slow my writing speed down too much, and I never could figure out why this was being done, now I do, ITS SHOWING AND TELLING.
Now for my next trick I am going to pull a story out of my_____ well fill in the blanks because that is how it feels sometimes. It is very hard to keep that balance.
Now for the part of the characters history, I think it is very important to have some history of the character, but in tadbits, or prologue. Like in Karen Tabke’s, “Master of Surrender,” She has a pre-prologue that is about page in width that pretty much shows the characters are strong and tormented before hand which shows the reader the bonding and then throughout the book, the characters talk like (not getting right from the book, in my own words) “Yeah, this was like the time when we were attacked by the vikings, blah blah.” They weren’t just battle scenes, it showed something that we needed to know about the character to start putting the puzzle together. I personally use flashbacks in different parts of the book, like in his mind he saw his sister picking red roses from the field to make his favorite meal. and then blah and blah which shows why he cared so much for his sister and why he is doing this journey and putting up with humans.
thanks again for making the extra work
A.M.
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Great post, Candace. I catch myself telling when writing something I’m uncomfortable with–like action scenes.
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