Show, Don’t Tell
Has anyone realized that the often-quoted and incredibly annoying (to new writers) comment “show don’t tell” (SDT) is, in fact, telling us what to do instead of showing?
I don’t like to admit it when I’m slow, but dangit, it took me forever to figure out what people meant when they said SDT. It’s not very intuitive.
In the editing of my novel, I’m finding one word that pinpoints SDT: “felt.” Lately, “felt” is the dirtiest word in my WiP.
“She felt cold” needs to be “she shivered.”
“She felt something sharp prick her palm” is more concise if you say “something sharp pricked her palm”
Yeah, “felt” isn’t the only way to tell instead of show, but it seems to be my particular vice. When I’m done editing, I need to do a search to find out how many “felt”s I left in . Bah.
About the Author: I am a writer and podcast producer, writing for magazines and RPGs. I am a wanna-be fiction writer with several short fiction, comic scripts, and one novel sale. Playing For Keeps will be out August, '08.
Robin L. | Mar 30, 2006 | Reply
Hey, thank you! I hear SDT all the time and usually it’s talked about as relating to passive verbs. But “felt” makes so much sense as a chief offender!!
This will help me a ton. Going back over my manuscript right now and doing cntl-f for “felt”…
JRMurdock | Mar 30, 2006 | Reply
Felt, in my opinion, is fine. It’s things like this…
She saw the bird land on the railing.
Okay, if we’re inside the character’s head already, why not this?
A small bird landed on the railing.
You need to eliminate things like:
She saw a rock. She heard the killer’s footsteps. She took the rock. When the killer walked by, she used it to hit the killer in the head.
Instead use active sentences that move action forward:
A rock the size of her fist lay in the middle of the path. The crunching sound of his feet grew nearer and nearer. The rock’s roughness felt painful as she gripped her hand around it so tightly as if her life depended on it. She knew her life depended on it. As soon as he passed by, she used the rock to smash his head in.
Telling is a very sterile way of getting a story across. If you’re libing inside the character’s head, let them ‘exprience’ their environment. Don’t tell the reader ’she heard’ something. Describe the sound she heard for the reader. This is the showing you hear so much about.
Mur Lafferty | Mar 30, 2006 | Reply
I do, in fact, equate “saw” and “heard” with “felt”, JR. I just realized I use “felt” more than any of the others, but you’re right.
JRMurdock | Mar 30, 2006 | Reply
another dirty word you may want to check for is ‘was’. This is my worst word in all my WiPs and I try to find it and look at how I can re-word a sentence to not use ‘was’ as ‘was’ is a very ‘tell’ type of word.
The car was red (to quote Mike S.) should just be ‘The red car’ and what did the red car do? This helps to tighten things up as well as provide active verbs rather than passive verbs.
Writing is too dang much fun.
So many different ways to do the same thing. WOO!
BTW, I’ve been meaning to say, love the little daily doses. It’s a real pick-me-up. I cranked out about 2500 words today thanks to your cast and I’m going to do a few more in a few minutes. I should be writing. Hmmmmm.
Skought | Mar 31, 2006 | Reply
Have you done a show on SDT?
If not, it would be a helpful one.
Phil Rossi | Mar 31, 2006 | Reply
Yep. I’ve been eliminating a lot of SDT stuff along the lines of saw, heard, felt, etc… And it is astounding how strong a section of narrative can become when some of that schtuff is eliminated.
Cisco | Mar 31, 2006 | Reply
Yes, “Show Don’t tell” is really annoying, expecially when I get it from people who like to do off the wall things like write a complete novel in the present tence…rolls eyes.
In any event, I am carefully ballancing my writing at the moment, but my writing style is very much ‘telling’ anyway. I dont mind it when people say ‘you could make this better by saying X here instead of Y’. But a LOT of people are like pre-programed atomitons who see words like ‘felt’ and automatically pop out with “show dont tell’ regardless of how it works in the story.
My point is that while ‘Show don’t tell’ is good advice, I have to wonder how often people actually think about it before the spout off about it.
Mr. Sock | Apr 1, 2006 | Reply
If you haven’t read Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” yet, pick it up and I’m sure that you’ll be ready to throw the book against the wall. He uses: “He felt” and “she felt” so many times that I could barely take it.
So… I understand that it’s important to learn the rules, but Brown’s writing is pretty poor and yet he’s sold millions of books. Crazy, isn’t it?
Kiki | Apr 2, 2006 | Reply
I *hate* peple that use SNT as shorthand for “I didn’t like your writing style, but I don’t have anyhting specific to say”, because half of the time, that’s exactly what these people are saying.
At a workshop a while ago, an agent/author told us that it’s not even always correct. He said that inherently, there’s nothing wrong with telling, and that it’s mainly writers that pick up on it. Readers care so much more about what’s happening than how it happens, if you asked a (non-writer) reader whether they cared about your wases and thoughts, they’ll probably just shrug and say “Didn’t notice, was too busy reading your STORY.”
We tend to get too caught up in the rules at times that we fiddle with a single sentence to make the words fit the rules rather than making sure our story is sound. the question is not whether it’s “She saw a bird”, “There was a bird” or “The bird outside on the lawn…”, but rather, what is the blooming bird doing, and why should the reader care?
That’s why bestselling authors get away with all these writing “mistakes”. They don’t get bogged down writing while they tell their story.
But maybe it’s a design decision. I’d rather be a popular author than one that gets quoted as the “right” example in textbooks and literary circles.
Anonymous | Feb 28, 2007 | Reply
I read a lot and I enjoyed Dan Brown’s books and I have to say I found them extremely easy to read. So maybe I shouldn’t care so much about the SDT rule, because I obviously don’t mind being told.