seconded. tell is like, Alice loved her mom. Show is exactly what they said tell is. Alice cried as she watched her mother leave. shows alice loved her mom
No surprises. Google has slowly been lobotomizing its search algorithm.
This is the duckduckgo first link:
https://blog.reedsy.com/show-dont-tell/
Which already makes more sense.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Already seen it, proof:
Pic related
I didn't even remember whether I used google or duckduckgo, but google was easier to say.
11 months ago
Anonymous
All I'm saying is there are better examples, and both showing and telling are things that authors do with a deliberate purpose.
If you believe one is better than the other, then you obviously don't read any books, and the extent of your involvement will be sharing blog articles on facebook. So I'm not worried about it. Writing 'tips' don't concern me any more than homeopathy or astrology. But if it leads to interesting discussion, then all the better.
Show vs tell is an editing argument more than it's an argument for writing. It's a case of 'do I need this', more than 'is this good', at least it is if you have any writing ability at all.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>All I'm saying is there are better examples
I know, but of course I chose the worst one, as that one stood out the most. >If you believe one is better than the other
I don't
11 months ago
Anonymous
I was using the generic 'you'.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>All I'm saying is there are better examples
I know, but of course I chose the worst one, as that one stood out the most. >If you believe one is better than the other
I don't
i remember just the other day some moron anon in another thread was saying "oh, we don't need a hypothetical case in english grammar and that using 'you' is just fine." Frick you, moron, I hope you're reading this.
11 months ago
Anonymous
It's a shame because we have 'one' but everyone refuses to use it because they consider it pretentious and they're moronic.
both are telling; the wrongly given correct example is just a more elaborate telling.
Showing not telling is supposed to mean letting the reader put together meaning through symbolic interplay.
I don't mean symbolic as in "this flower symbolizes peace." I mean symbol like "the flies buzzed around the hobo" "symbolizes" the hobo frickin stinks. It means the hobo hasn't bathed in a while. Basically, it's saying a lot with a little.
OPs example counts as showing. It's doesn't state any emotion directly, even though it's piss easy to figure out what Alice is feeling.
11 months ago
Anonymous
hate to break it to you ya fricking dope but "tears streaming down [one's] face" is the definition of crying. It's just telling.
11 months ago
Anonymous
For a trivial one-sentence example, the distinction is relevant. If you want a more substantial example you'll need to provide one.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>the distinction is relevant
No, it isn't. It would certainly be convenient for your argument were it so, but, alas, it is not.
11 months ago
Anonymous
It is.
It's a description of a scene. It's showing what's happening. The emotional state is implied from the description. You are wrong. Feel free to to try making an argument otherwise without increasing scope, but I am sure you will fail.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>It's a description of a scene. It's showing what's happening
you keep re-stating your assertion like it means a fricking thing. A description of a scene tells what's happening, by definition.
Your babble about scope is irrelevant nonsense—frankly it's apologetics for the tacit admission that I'm correct: you wouldn't need to attempt to justify the fact that it's a shitty example with "length" if it weren't a shitty example.
Here's a much better example I thought of in two seconds:
telling >Alice got a call. It was Bob, who she hated, so she declined.
showing >Alice got a call. Her phone read, "Bob the butthole," so she put the phone back down.
Notice that both are two mere sentences; example length means nothing to this matter. I'm sorry that both you and whoever wrote the image in OP are too moronic to know what you're talking about, or at least are too moronic to contrive a proper example. Get bent.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Alice in the first one seems like a different and more likable character than Alice in the second one.
11 months ago
Anonymous
good for you
11 months ago
Anonymous
Just saying, the two are different characters so it isn't correct to say the 2nd one is better than the first.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Except they're the same character, regardless of whatever quibbling cope you come up with. The fact is any single deviation in word will produce two different characters; both examples could be telling and you'd have two different characters.
As a matter of fact, it doesn't even matter if they were two different characters. The task was to demonstrate the difference between showing and telling, not to create a precisely interchangeable example between showing and telling. The original example doesn't do that either, so stop moving the goalposts and take the L, loser.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Actually they're not the same character. Any single deviation in word won't necessarily produce two different characters. Both examples could be 'telling' and I could have the same characters. It does matter if they are two different characters, the task wasn't to demonstrate the difference between showing and telling it was to create a precisely interchangeable example between showing and telling. The original example does do that and I'm not moving the goalposts.
11 months ago
Anonymous
keep slamming the table, frickwit. You can be right in your own mind, at least.
11 months ago
Anonymous
By you own reasoning your own example could be considered telling. If she thinks someone's an butthole, by definition she doesn't like that person.
11 months ago
Anonymous
lmao you're so out of your depth it's almost sad. Go read a remedial logic and argumentation book i don't even know what to tell you. Naming someone an butthole is not the *definition* of not liking someone. It's a plausible inference that you don't like someone who you'd name an butthole. It's a basic inference, sure, but that's entirely appropriate for a basic example.
Guiding the reader's inferences is (however) the definition of "showing," as it is meant here.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Sorry anon but if someone not only has someone in their contacts, but cared enough about them to give them a special sarcastic name like that, I wouldn't assume they hate them. People you hate are best kept outa sight, outa mind.
11 months ago
Anonymous
good for you and your dumb opinion
11 months ago
Anonymous
I know it's not the definition, I was comparing it to an earlier comment in the chain:
hate to break it to you ya fricking dope but "tears streaming down [one's] face" is the definition of crying. It's just telling.
Tears can fall straight onto the ground, or stream down the sides of your head, or fall onto your hands. You're being pedantic, so am I.
11 months ago
Anonymous
You're a fricking moron FULL STOP. There's nothing pedantic about making a distinction between a definition and inference. It's a nuance you might not have considered until the third grade, sure, but it's not that big of a deal. Seriously, what the frick is wrong with your head? I know you have a little monkey brain in your skull only capable of vague gestures but that doesn't mean you have to make it everyone else's problem. Do better, anon.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Also there's a difference between "by definition" and "it's the definition".
By definition a cat has four legs.
Four legs isn't the definition of a cat.
11 months ago
Anonymous
now THAT'S pedantry
11 months ago
Anonymous
Maybe it has something to do with how you insulted me and then proceeded to strawman me. Anyway, this discussion is going off track indeed. Let's go back to this comment:
It is.
It's a description of a scene. It's showing what's happening. The emotional state is implied from the description. You are wrong. Feel free to to try making an argument otherwise without increasing scope, but I am sure you will fail.
and presumably your response:
>It's a description of a scene. It's showing what's happening
you keep re-stating your assertion like it means a fricking thing. A description of a scene tells what's happening, by definition.
Your babble about scope is irrelevant nonsense—frankly it's apologetics for the tacit admission that I'm correct: you wouldn't need to attempt to justify the fact that it's a shitty example with "length" if it weren't a shitty example.
Here's a much better example I thought of in two seconds:
telling >Alice got a call. It was Bob, who she hated, so she declined.
showing >Alice got a call. Her phone read, "Bob the butthole," so she put the phone back down.
Notice that both are two mere sentences; example length means nothing to this matter. I'm sorry that both you and whoever wrote the image in OP are too moronic to know what you're talking about, or at least are too moronic to contrive a proper example. Get bent.
The anon you responded to was talking about EMOTIONAL STATE. People can cry tears of joy, but the reader can infer that it's sadness.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>Maybe it has something to do with how you insulted me
You deserve to be insulted, you're a braindead mongoloid.
>strawman me
fantasy
>People can cry tears of joy, but the reader can infer that it's sadness
cool
>Your babble about scope is irrelevant nonsense
No, it's not. In fact you prove my point with your own example.
You claim "telling" for the first example, and yet it is actually an example of show and tell. Overall, you can claim that the point of the text is to tell the read that Alice hates Bob, explaining why she did what she did rather than using action to lead the reader to the same conclusion. And yet, if you were to look at ONLY the event portion of the sentence, you would not be able to claim it's "tell." Because there's no idea, concept, character trait or anything apart from the event itself being told to the reader.
So, when your sentence is expanded in scope, with an event as a a component of the larger point, you can reasonably claim the entire thing is "tell." With OP's example, there's no "telling" in either case. It's all strictly showing events that happen in the story. There's no equivalent to "Alice hated Bob" anywhere in OP's picture. That is "telling." There is no telling in OP's picture. I know I'm repeating myself, but you have proved yourself to be very dense. I'll repeat myself one more time.
[...] >"tears streaming down [one's] face" is the definition of crying. It's just telling
This is wrong. You are wrong. It is not telling. It is showing.
"Tears streaming down face" is showing.
"Crying" is showing.
You're showing the character's emotions and feelings as they happen. You aren't describing a summary character trait. You aren't offering a pre-digested/biased explanation of events. It's showing, not telling.
>I'll repeat myself one more time.
You can repeat your WRONG assertions until you're red in your fat, aging face. It won't make you correct. If you want to define tell as show, be my guest. You're simply uneducated.
When we say show not tell, we mean show as in DEMONSTRATE. We mean show is in "show that √2 is irrational." Showing this requires a proof. We need to demonstrate that it is so. Now in writing, we don't need a proof, per se, but we do need a series of tells by which more is told than the mere sum of parts. This is accomplished by way of reasonable inference on the part of the reader.
Advising a writer to be demonstrative is good advice. It's what is meant. It's how to really play the game of writing. That's the art of it. Advising a writer to show something doesn't just mean be descriptive. Sometimes, description is SHIT. It needs to be meaningful—that's the advice beyond argument. That's why we say SHOW, not tell. Get it yet?
>"Tears streaming down face" is showing. >"Crying" is showing.
It's telling. All your writing is telling. That's why it's bad. That's why nobody likes it.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>When we say show not tell, we mean show as in DEMONSTRATE.
Demonstrate, which means using events in the story rather than direct explanation to the reader, which is exactly what I said. The problem is that you made a mistake interpreting OP, refuse to admit the mistake, and are twisting your head into knots protecting your fragile ego over the trivial point. It's really rather pathetic.
This is a pretty reductive take on the uses and types of exposition. You can reveal information directly to the audience that isn't based in any dialogue or action but still conveys considerable depth, character, emotion, power, and organicity. It just depends on how you phrase things. Take any of the exposited parts of Paradise Lost for example:
Say first (for Heaven hides nothing from thy view,
Nor the deep tract of Hell) say first what cause
Moved our grand parents in that happy state,
Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the world besides.
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
The infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile,
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The Mother of Mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equalled the Most High,
If he opposed; and with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God
Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud,
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition; there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.
No amount of 'show not tell' will teach you how to write like this. It is a lost art. Now we suffer from infinite reams of cliched purple prose and overdescription that slows any narrative to a miserable crawl.
>This is a pretty reductive take on the uses and types of exposition.
It's more useful than most of what has been posted in the thread so far, and clearly wasn't intended to be comprehensive.
Cut and dry description is not necessarily bad, and subtle exposition is not necessarily good. However, since someone who starts writing naturally gravitates towards more "prosaic" styles, it may be useful to point out to them that they don't need to be so literal in their descriptions. I agree that the term has been way overused, it is even brought up in videogame discussions to claim the supposed superiority of environmental storytelling over traditional dialogue.
>it is even brought up in videogame discussions to claim the supposed superiority of environmental storytelling over traditional dialogue.
Most videogames have orders of magnitude too much dialog. If I wanted to watch hours of shitty character dialog, I'd watch a TV show. Shitty TV writing is at least better than Videogame writing and performed by competent actors rather than the nauseating mocap abominations that zoomers love.
Videogames should be about gameplay and sitting on your ass listening to characters talk to each other is not gameplay. Dialog should be sparse and essential.
11 months ago
Anonymous
I don't agree, many of my favourite games are story-driven. They also create a much more interesting culture than dudebro twitch streamers or STEM PC nerds.
11 months ago
Anonymous
I know many people with shit taste disagree with me.
When I was young and stupid, I wished for more storytelling in videogames. Videogames of my era were constrained by technical limitations so every bit of text had to be carefully considered. Some games even shipped with printed material and the game would reference entries to read at specific times. (The out-of-order journals would come with bogus entries to discourage trying to read ahead without playing). NES and SNES games had extremely limited storage on cartridges so every bit of text had to be essential. Even "story-driven" games with lots of dramatic cutscenes like Final Fantasy had nowhere near the burdensome dialog that modern games have. If you analyze play of the SNES-era Final Fantasy (4-6), you'll find easily 85% of the play time allocated to exploration, combat, and miscellaneous gameplay with only ~15% devoted to dialog and storytelling. For any given hour play session, you can expect 45 minutes of playing for every 15 minutes of cutscenes (with cutscene length rarely exceeding 10 minutes).
Then CD-ROMs happened and writers had free reign stuff as much garbage into games as they wanted. The RPG genre never recovered. Even other genres have been afflicted. Today, it's considered fine and normal for an hour-long "play" session to be totally consumed with nothing but storytelling.
11 months ago
Anonymous
I don't think that every game needs to put all the weight on the plot. Something like Max Payne for example would get bogged down with detailed exposition. But I also don't want to go back to the era when the concept of a story driven game like VTMB or Disco Elysium was alien and I completely reject your arbitrary view that all games should follow a single narrow framework.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>I completely reject your arbitrary view that all games should follow a single narrow framework.
I never stated that. I haven't exactly written a comprehensive essay on the subject that carefully disclaims every possible exception. But since you bring it up I will say that there are inherent tradeoffs with storytelling in videogames, specifically related to player agency and conflict resolution. In general, the more you allow the player to drive the events and resolve conflicts, the less power you have as an author to tell a compelling story. Story and gameplay often find themselves mutually exclusive. Exceptions to this represent a niche. A valid niche, but a niche nonetheless and so when you start talking broadly about how "show don't tell" does or doesn't apply to videogames, we can't assume we're dealing with that small niche.
My problem is that I like balance, moderation and taste, and storygay advocates are totally indiscriminate in their demands for more. I like games that emphasize gameplay and use world-building, structured content and environmental storytelling with a light sprinkling of dramatic cutscenes and dialog to enhance the experience. Especially since most videogame writers are bad and even good writers find it hard to navigate the complex production demands of a modern videogame. Since most videogame writing is going to be bad, you may as well limit the damage.
> also don't want to go back to the era when the concept of a story driven game like VTMB or Disco Elysium was alien
Story-driven games existed long before VTMB. The idea has never been alien. In the 80s and 90s they were known as adventure games. The concept of a story-driven is in no danger whatsoever because I point out that games overuse cutscenes and active storytelling.
11 months ago
Anonymous
From what I gather from your post, you are more or less talking about high profile games and the trend towards cinematic games that started around the PS3 era. Now I would agree that a lot of these games are not very interesting, but my problem is not that they are too story driven, but that they are generic. If we had a lot of good story heavy or cinematic games I wouldn't have any objections to that, so in that sense I am on the side of the "storygay advocates". Which is not to say that I don't care about more traditional games, I already mentioned Max Payne which I played recently, and I also liked Nioh, Oni and Half Life. That said these days I generally pick games based on an interesting premise or setting or even art direction rather than pure mechanics, so here our differences are clear. >Story-driven games existed long before VTMB. The idea has never been alien. In the 80s and 90s they were known as adventure games.
Yeah but back then game culture was even more insulated and self referential than it is today, with games mostly taking inspirations from other games and very little influence from other media, a lot of games from that era feel very cheesy or nerdy, even granting that there is some charm to this. Of course you can point out that the current trend of games towards aping hollywood blockbusters in style and presentation is hardly an improvement, but I think the opening up of the culture allowed some interesting things to be done by certain indies and AAs at the very least. There are more people who come to work on games with a background on literature or fine arts now for example, or even just people who consume a lot of other media.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>the more you allow the player to drive the events and resolve conflicts, the less power you have as an author to tell a compelling story
I don't think this relationship is zero-sum.
The more the player is engaged in choosing their own destiny, the more compelling they will find the story.
I read a lot of cheesy romance visual novels, not because I've tricked myself into thinking that they're high literature, but because they're so effective. Having to choose a love interest, seeing the look of joy on their face as (you) confess (you)r love to them-- it's extremely impactful. Much more than the same story would be if it was a simple romance novel without my involvement.
If anything, the more freedom you give the player, the easier it gets to tell a strong story. It's almost like Tom Sawyer and the fence. Convince your player that building their own story is fun and you can watch them do all the work for you. They'll get attached to the world and the characters all by themselves. You can use the effort saved to tell whatever kind of story you want.
I think Fire Emblem is a good example of this. Almost every character in the story can die or be killed. This invests the player, because suddenly they have a responsibility to keep everyone alive and have to figure out how (a responsibility they can ignore, should they so wish). The main storyline however progresses regardless of who lives or dies. Yet the player is rewarded with side stories based on their decisions. The sum of these elements is greater than an equivalently well written fantasy novel would be, I'd wager.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Your timeline here is kind of cherry-picking.
Story driven RPGs began in force during the PC-98 era in Japan. Rance 1 for example is something like 97% reading 3% combat.
On the other hand in modern times we have examples like Musou games that are just as focused on gameplay as the average SNES RPG.
In addition, part of the appeal of RPGs is the control you have over the experience. If you want more gameplay, wander into a cave and beat up some monsters. If you want more story, head into town and talk to someone. It's a bit silly to say the balance is out of whack when you're supposed to create that balance for yourself.
11 months ago
Anonymous
I know many people with shit taste disagree with me.
When I was young and stupid, I wished for more storytelling in videogames. Videogames of my era were constrained by technical limitations so every bit of text had to be carefully considered. Some games even shipped with printed material and the game would reference entries to read at specific times. (The out-of-order journals would come with bogus entries to discourage trying to read ahead without playing). NES and SNES games had extremely limited storage on cartridges so every bit of text had to be essential. Even "story-driven" games with lots of dramatic cutscenes like Final Fantasy had nowhere near the burdensome dialog that modern games have. If you analyze play of the SNES-era Final Fantasy (4-6), you'll find easily 85% of the play time allocated to exploration, combat, and miscellaneous gameplay with only ~15% devoted to dialog and storytelling. For any given hour play session, you can expect 45 minutes of playing for every 15 minutes of cutscenes (with cutscene length rarely exceeding 10 minutes).
Then CD-ROMs happened and writers had free reign stuff as much garbage into games as they wanted. The RPG genre never recovered. Even other genres have been afflicted. Today, it's considered fine and normal for an hour-long "play" session to be totally consumed with nothing but storytelling.
11 months ago
Anonymous
bad dialog when you want to be playing a videogame is even more tedious.
There's plenty of room for occasional dramatic, memorable set pieces without having to stuff games full of endless companion banter and dwelling on every trivial plot point with scripted cutscenes.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>The problem is that you made a mistake interpreting
the only one making the mistake is you and any moron who thinks like you. Your mistaken choice of definition renders the advice useless and subjective. Wrongly understanding the advice as you do boils any conversation to be had thereabout down to arbitrary feelings about what's good and not so good and bad descriptions. You can even see this worthless conclusion in this very thread.
Good advice is more or less universal—that's why my definition, which is the original definition, is totally superior in every respect.
More meaning is always good. ALWAYS. A deeper work is always a higher quality work. It is inference games that makes the reader enjoy reading; they stimulate the mind. Otherwise the game just the reader slogging through your fricking word choice—who cares.
Low IQ drones like you are why the humanities have the dogshit reputation they do anymore. Stick to the vidya ya mong.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>Your babble about scope is irrelevant nonsense
No, it's not. In fact you prove my point with your own example.
You claim "telling" for the first example, and yet it is actually an example of show and tell. Overall, you can claim that the point of the text is to tell the read that Alice hates Bob, explaining why she did what she did rather than using action to lead the reader to the same conclusion. And yet, if you were to look at ONLY the event portion of the sentence, you would not be able to claim it's "tell." Because there's no idea, concept, character trait or anything apart from the event itself being told to the reader.
So, when your sentence is expanded in scope, with an event as a a component of the larger point, you can reasonably claim the entire thing is "tell." With OP's example, there's no "telling" in either case. It's all strictly showing events that happen in the story. There's no equivalent to "Alice hated Bob" anywhere in OP's picture. That is "telling." There is no telling in OP's picture. I know I'm repeating myself, but you have proved yourself to be very dense. I'll repeat myself one more time.
hate to break it to you ya fricking dope but "tears streaming down [one's] face" is the definition of crying. It's just telling.
>"tears streaming down [one's] face" is the definition of crying. It's just telling
This is wrong. You are wrong. It is not telling. It is showing.
"Tears streaming down face" is showing.
"Crying" is showing.
You're showing the character's emotions and feelings as they happen. You aren't describing a summary character trait. You aren't offering a pre-digested/biased explanation of events. It's showing, not telling.
both are showing; the wrongly given correct example is just abrupt and lifeless.
Telling not showing is supposed to mean not letting the reader experience events as they happen.
Think of the difference between how your sour coworker Dave from the office tells stories where it's more like reading off a checklist of events and informing us how he or others felt and why things happened. Showing would be your highschool friend Dan who manages to keep up the sick skater persona while still raising a family and furthering his careers as a mechanic, when he tells stories it's all about the life imbued in them and a lot of information is conveyed indirectly through the WAY in which the story is told.
Why? I know the example is cringeworthy but I don't see how it's incorrect.
In my experience "show don't tell" usually refers to character traits and exposition.
Tell: >Alice is an emotional girl who cries easily about the slightest thing.
Show: >Alice cried when her mother left >Alice cried when anon spilled his spaghetti on her >Alice cried when Chad walked by without noticing her >Alice cried when ...
both are telling; the wrongly given correct example is just a more elaborate telling.
Showing not telling is supposed to mean letting the reader put together meaning through symbolic interplay.
I don't mean symbolic as in "this flower symbolizes peace." I mean symbol like "the flies buzzed around the hobo" "symbolizes" the hobo frickin stinks. It means the hobo hasn't bathed in a while. Basically, it's saying a lot with a little.
Anon read that post and it did made him question himself:
"Am I a fricking autist?"
He quickly dismissed because, he felt just fine, it is just his drug fried brain trying to trick him into weird shit and the good old self-sabotage that God know where the frick this shit comes from.
"I am fine" he smiled.
It would be better with "I am fine" in all caps. Also, it would be better if he smiled and convulsed in the end while rolling eyes and sticking out his tongue.
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of prostitute to bend of gay, brings us by a commodius bupkis of homosexualuration, back to anon's house and environs.
use the 'tell' method when shit is boring and routine but not boring and routine enough to time skip
if you do this enough your entire book is boring and routine (enough to skip)
OP licked his lips as he ogled at the erect throbbing penis of his fellow student. He had enrolled at the Donald J Trump academy for gay morons at the beginning of the previous semester, and he wrote every post with the energy of a young homosexual recieving his first group penetration as he drooled and blankly stared off into space,
Hunger, Steppenwolf, Notes from the Underground. Any book where the narrator over-explains or describes their interactions because of hyperconsciousness or some kind of neurosis, but because they do so, a larger thematic layer emerges from what they choose to leave out, how their opinions contradict their descriptions, how they run up against opposing views.
I always thought that “show don’t tell” was about characterisation rather than description
Like, instead of telling that a character is some kind of genius, do show him doing smart things, or instead of telling that a group of bad guys are very dangerous, show them do real threatening things to the hero(es) instead of failing evrything
Some people worry about "show, don't tell" too much, but it's a useful concept. I see newer writers who would benefit from focusing on showing more all the time.
When inexperienced authors want to write a story about a girl who is beautiful, they'll often write something like this: >Mary was a beautiful girl with long raven hair and a cute butt.
Generally, something like this is more effective: >Whenever Mary walked through the halls of the military base, the eyes of every soldier followed, attracted to the sight of her long black ponytail dancing behind her or else glued to her ass wiggling beneath the tight skirt of her uniform.
The former is shorter, but the latter tells us more about Mary and is more interesting to read.
I think showing is important for both characterization and description.
In writing, the blunt approach is often not the best.
There's nothing wrong with saying "The waitress gave him his coffee" but in a lot of situations "The waitress set his coffee on the table" is preferable. It's a tiny difference but being just that extra little bit more evocative wherever you can adds up over the course of a story.
This is a terrible example. "Alice cried as she watched her mother leave" is showing, just not in a very elegant or detailed way. An actual example of telling would be something like: "Alice was sad because her mother was leaving." I also don't really think it's always better to show rather than tell, although it often is.
This is cope to make books longer than they are supposed to be, and I agree it ruins a lot of writing. No one likes being force-fed imagery that takes the reader away from the actual impact of the event. I don't want to hear about streaming tears and "How could she just... leave?". The poignancy is in the deadpan, and I would much rather envision her crying the way I want to see it than hear the author mess their own scene up just to give us a shitty image of what it feels like to cry. Everyone knows what it feels like to cry and feel hopeless, we do not need this extra description of garbage.
Good post. Besides crying another example that keeps showing up is the mention of "crunching leaves under my feet" instead of saying it's fall. Some amateur writers will embrace this advice and take their characters to a forest just to specify which season it is in a clichéd manner.
Disagree. Ever read some heavy tell stories like all those litrpgs? >I was shot. It hurt, but luckily I wasn't hit in a viral area. So I fled, and when I got to the house I saw where I was shot. It was in the ass. My adrenaline kept me from feeling pain, but now I feel it. It was painful, that I blacked out.
The pacing is just so fast you're left with more questions.
>Reddit
I think the moronic and effeminate avatars they give to users helps emasculate those posting. Not to mention, Reddit draws feminine men to begin with, they are simply making effeminate men even more effeminate.
Exactly. Show, don’t tell, is about not forcing the reader to feel what you want but instead leading them to the feeling. Sometimes, details help, but details can also suffocate.
Disagree. Ever read some heavy tell stories like all those litrpgs? >I was shot. It hurt, but luckily I wasn't hit in a viral area. So I fled, and when I got to the house I saw where I was shot. It was in the ass. My adrenaline kept me from feeling pain, but now I feel it. It was painful, that I blacked out.
The pacing is just so fast you're left with more questions.
This is a slightly different problem. You don’t know what to feel, and you’re curious to read more. Or you’re feeling whiplash from reading too fast. Or both.
This is also why skimming/speedreading doesn’t work. You can’t speed up experience without losing the flow of human life.
More like, this is just a list of things happening. It makes for a very boring slog to read through. Like everything there needs to be balance. Tell can be very effective for emotional scenes but it needs set up. >Long ass show shit >Final line: My mother died.
The show should lead into tell and vise versa. Show also clarifies tons of things in a scene that helps the reader visualize what's going on with the MC.
x said, x remarked etc gets really old fast if it happens after every time someone speaks. Its not an ultimate rule but for beginners its a good tip to keep in mind
Why do so many people assume "show" to mean "describe every conceivable little detail in a scene"? The whole point of the advice is to keep things in motion and easier to read by not slipping into heavy-handed exposition at every turn, but focusing on what is actually happening.
Because they don’t realize that “show, don’t tell” is about providing a foothold for the reader to judge for themselves. Too little show, and it’s laborious for the reader to judge (much must be imagined). Too much, and it’s oppressive on the reader (and otherwise a slog to go through).
The only correct way to abide to this rule in any literary medium would be attaching illustration adjacent to text. Anything else is still telling, you can't show something with text.
I think the literary equivalent to this is when there's fantasy novels with too much world building and it's like >Willard walked into the den where the Sin-hag dancers performed the traditional Humamkuukoal ritual in which the eldest member of the tribe dresses in...
and literally none of it is significant to any plot, themes, etc.
It's a Pavlov reaction to some people. I just read an analytical breakdown of a story for literal 4-5 year olds and it suggested saying "his hands were sweaty" instead of "he was nervous", as if children who can barely wipe their asses would understand that.
>as if children who can barely wipe their asses would understand that.
children that young should be reading under supervision or semi-supervision anyway. When they don't understand they should ask the question, and then can learn what something so common means.
But they're not gonna ask. They're just gonna think the character's hands are sweaty and that's it.
I can't post the article because it's in Dutch, but the story is written in such a straight forward manner that "his hands were sweaty" would almost be a shift in style. "Ricky was nervous/excited" worked perfectly fine for a dumb story about a kid having his first day at school.
OP here. I was hoping for more substantial responses but I probably got what I deserved for making a dumb and provocative original post.
What's your stance on show, don't tell?
"Show, don't tell" is for cinema. For literature there's no issue in just telling. That's literally how you convey a story. You tell it with great poetic detail.
>"Show, don't tell" is for cinema
This is definitely true if you're treating it as an iron rule or at least a really important one.
In fiction writing it's better to think of it as one of many options in your toolbox. You decide when to show and when to tell, and each method has drawbacks and advantages.
I agree, I think the strengths of written is being able to see what the characters are thinking like a diary and I'd much rather read something intimate like that then trying to parse what their behavior is supposed to mean.
>"Show, don't tell" is for cinema
This is definitely true if you're treating it as an iron rule or at least a really important one.
In fiction writing it's better to think of it as one of many options in your toolbox. You decide when to show and when to tell, and each method has drawbacks and advantages.
Even in cinema it's overrated. They take pride in not using voiceovers but those can greatly enhance movies.
>those can
Can? Sure.
They can also be pointless and distracting.
>"Show, don't tell" is one of those pieces of writing advice that is halfway true but not particularly useful, and sometimes even harmful. The real Golden Rule of writing (fiction) is that every word and every sentence must come from the mind--or perhaps it would be better to say "through the mind"--of a character. Even if the story is written in third person, there still must be a point of view character for the book, for the chapter, for the scene, and every word that reaches the reader's eyes must have first passed through the filter of the character's senses, of his opinions, and of his memories. When writing about a setting, for example, one does not simply list the details of a room as if creating a verbal blueprint for the room's construction; one must present the setting through the five senses of the point of view character, then connect those sensory details with opinions, and finally connect those opinions with the character's emotional past. The extent to which a piece of contemporary fiction works or doesn't work is precisely correlated with the degree to which the writer adheres to this rule. It should be added that this has nothing to do with a piece of writing being good or bad. The quality of a piece of fiction is a question for critics (failed writers) to waste their time quibbling over. What matters is whether or not the piece of writing in question works--in other words, will a reader feel compelled to continue turning the page.
>The real Golden Rule of writing (fiction) is that every word and every sentence must come from the mind--or perhaps it would be better to say "through the mind"--of a character.
That's not a rule, either. Using a narrator's voice is totally fine even if the narrator does not have a defined character in the story.
Man, I love a fantasy movie or video game with an opening montage and narration that establishes the stakes immediately. That little bit of exposition done right piques curiosity in such a compelling way. >Fellowship of the Ring >Princess Mononoke >Dark Souls and Elden Ring
The kino moment that gave me that stance was one in Oldboy. The guy got locked up for no apparent reason and as a voiceover he says "if I knew it would take 15 years, would it have been easier to endure, or harder?"
It's an interesting concept to think about, but there's no way to show it unless they completely changed up the movie, so it's very effectively communicated in just one line.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Yes, the narration must strike a balance between the declarative and the vague, and that is a great example.
Anon's mouth shuddered as the thread watcher became italicized. A (You), just for him. He immediately tabbed back to that same thread, beginning to salivate as saw those numbers next to his post.
A grimace replaced his smile as he hovered his mouse. He'd been the victim of a mass reply. That's five seconds he wasn't getting back.
No matter, he still had his daily wank to look forward to. Opening an incognito tab, he typed those ever familiar words. 'Dirty Naughty Tiles'
Tell: >OP is a homosexual
Show: >OP shuddered helplessly as the big black Black person dick pressed against his sensitive skin. "Was it going to hurt?" OP wondered to himself even as he knew the answer and tried his best to stay relaxed.
Top: you use your imagination and put yourself in the character’s shoes and understand what she feels
Bottom: let me tell you what sadness looks like you souless automaton
>"Show, don't tell" is one of those pieces of writing advice that is halfway true but not particularly useful, and sometimes even harmful. The real Golden Rule of writing (fiction) is that every word and every sentence must come from the mind--or perhaps it would be better to say "through the mind"--of a character. Even if the story is written in third person, there still must be a point of view character for the book, for the chapter, for the scene, and every word that reaches the reader's eyes must have first passed through the filter of the character's senses, of his opinions, and of his memories. When writing about a setting, for example, one does not simply list the details of a room as if creating a verbal blueprint for the room's construction; one must present the setting through the five senses of the point of view character, then connect those sensory details with opinions, and finally connect those opinions with the character's emotional past. The extent to which a piece of contemporary fiction works or doesn't work is precisely correlated with the degree to which the writer adheres to this rule. It should be added that this has nothing to do with a piece of writing being good or bad. The quality of a piece of fiction is a question for critics (failed writers) to waste their time quibbling over. What matters is whether or not the piece of writing in question works--in other words, will a reader feel compelled to continue turning the page.
Even that "golden rule" isn't necessarily true. Roald Dahl often writes from his own point of view as the narrator. Not just a narrator who knows everything, but one who has opinions.
I wonder if there are writers for adult audiences who that to the same extent.
"Show Don't tell" is just a piece of advice for new writers to not be too cut and dry in their descriptions. It's not a general principle whose validity needs to be debated.
Its place in culture should be debated. Some people are obsessive with it, see
It's a Pavlov reaction to some people. I just read an analytical breakdown of a story for literal 4-5 year olds and it suggested saying "his hands were sweaty" instead of "he was nervous", as if children who can barely wipe their asses would understand that.
The overuse has pushed a lot of people toward the same writing style. It's also debatable whether cut and dry descriptions are actually bad, or if we've been conditioned to think they're bad. I think its popularity stems from how learnable it is. Writers can be witless and shallow, but still learn how to "show, don't tell".
Cut and dry description is not necessarily bad, and subtle exposition is not necessarily good. However, since someone who starts writing naturally gravitates towards more "prosaic" styles, it may be useful to point out to them that they don't need to be so literal in their descriptions. I agree that the term has been way overused, it is even brought up in videogame discussions to claim the supposed superiority of environmental storytelling over traditional dialogue.
Many people really REALLY don't understand "show don't tell" and it's because the phrase is misleading to an extent.
Because you are always "telling" the audience something in a sense. That's the whole point of writing, to communicate something.
Anyway it has nothing to do with how you write it and everything to do with why you write it.
To put it as simply as I can
Telling = writing something that exists specifically for the audience's sake only
Showing = basically everything else but usually what people mean is "revealing character"
So for example blatant exposition is always telling. "In the year 2069 World War 3 happened and everybody died..." etc...
But it's a little tricky because exposition can always be hidden in dialogue or elsewhere to make it seem less like telling but it's still telling nonetheless. For example a character says "Wow I can't believe the commander sent us on this crazy mission to..." etc...
Basically you see how all this exists only for the sake of the audience. This is telling.
Showing is just everything else that happens in a natural organic way that the majority of stories are, and should be, told in. Generally this is mostly just dialogue between characters or actions. What a character says or does shows the reader who they are or what they are becoming i.e. it reveals character. Basically anything that reveals character is showing.
There's a good video about this that could explain it better but I can't remember what it was.
This is a pretty reductive take on the uses and types of exposition. You can reveal information directly to the audience that isn't based in any dialogue or action but still conveys considerable depth, character, emotion, power, and organicity. It just depends on how you phrase things. Take any of the exposited parts of Paradise Lost for example:
Say first (for Heaven hides nothing from thy view,
Nor the deep tract of Hell) say first what cause
Moved our grand parents in that happy state,
Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the world besides.
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
The infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile,
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The Mother of Mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equalled the Most High,
If he opposed; and with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God
Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud,
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition; there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.
No amount of 'show not tell' will teach you how to write like this. It is a lost art. Now we suffer from infinite reams of cliched purple prose and overdescription that slows any narrative to a miserable crawl.
What bullshit, you can add prose to the tell example and it becomes far better than the overly verbose show example >With tears in her green eyes, Alice watched her mother leave.
This review of Catherine Lacey's Pew I read once is extremely applicable here:
I knew literally nothing about Catherine Lacey before picking up this book, and after reading the first paragraph I knew with absolute 100% apodictic certainty that she had been to one of about eight MFA programs (in this case, as I learned later, Columbia). Just zero question. Lacey is the female equivalent of Jesse Ball or whatever other bearded mid-list MFA bro, writing with precisely the same amount of 'creativity' and quirkiness in the same very-clearly-overworkshopped style that is apparently always inculcated in all MFA grads who land book deals with the big five American publishing houses.
Within the extremely limited palette of themes/ideas, political perspectives, paragraph structure, prose style, etc., found in 180-page novels / 220-page short story collections by this cohort of writers, Lacey is quite good; some very good lines here and there, the fable elements work pretty well, I really expected her portrayal of small-town Christians to be shallow but it somehow wasn't, etc.
But seriously; Pew is the Anthropologie of art. (I actually wouldn't be surprised if this book were sold in Anthropologie.) Pew is one of many A24 films with a 66 rating on Metacritic that is exactly 89 minutes long and shot with the same RED system that every Gen Y indie director uses, the same washed-out color palette, the same slightly shaky camera movement, the same tastefully acted melodrama with a vague and 'artistically' unsatisfying ending. Pew is one of the pretty good bands on Saddle Creek or 4AD or Matador who have just enough creativity that you maybe check out their albums when the A-list bands haven't released anything for a while. MFA-land needs to stop playing it so safe.
In reality, the advice should be show and tell. Don't tell makes amateurs think any sort of telling is bad and you end up with a bloated story that'll need to be trimmed down. The preferred way I've heard it taught is to judge each scene on how pivotal/intense it is and to lean into showing more during the important ones, and more into telling during the scenes that just move the plot along.
That's not what show don't tell means.
seconded. tell is like, Alice loved her mom. Show is exactly what they said tell is. Alice cried as she watched her mother leave. shows alice loved her mom
op confuses show with melodrama
OP here. I didn't write that screenshot, it's from one of the first pages that show up when you google "show don't tell"
No surprises. Google has slowly been lobotomizing its search algorithm.
This is the duckduckgo first link:
https://blog.reedsy.com/show-dont-tell/
Which already makes more sense.
Already seen it, proof:
I didn't even remember whether I used google or duckduckgo, but google was easier to say.
All I'm saying is there are better examples, and both showing and telling are things that authors do with a deliberate purpose.
If you believe one is better than the other, then you obviously don't read any books, and the extent of your involvement will be sharing blog articles on facebook. So I'm not worried about it. Writing 'tips' don't concern me any more than homeopathy or astrology. But if it leads to interesting discussion, then all the better.
Show vs tell is an editing argument more than it's an argument for writing. It's a case of 'do I need this', more than 'is this good', at least it is if you have any writing ability at all.
>All I'm saying is there are better examples
I know, but of course I chose the worst one, as that one stood out the most.
>If you believe one is better than the other
I don't
I was using the generic 'you'.
i remember just the other day some moron anon in another thread was saying "oh, we don't need a hypothetical case in english grammar and that using 'you' is just fine." Frick you, moron, I hope you're reading this.
It's a shame because we have 'one' but everyone refuses to use it because they consider it pretentious and they're moronic.
fpbp
if anything it's the other way around, with all the shitty narration being the "tell"
Why? I know the example is cringeworthy but I don't see how it's incorrect.
both are telling; the wrongly given correct example is just a more elaborate telling.
Showing not telling is supposed to mean letting the reader put together meaning through symbolic interplay.
I don't mean symbolic as in "this flower symbolizes peace." I mean symbol like "the flies buzzed around the hobo" "symbolizes" the hobo frickin stinks. It means the hobo hasn't bathed in a while. Basically, it's saying a lot with a little.
OPs example counts as showing. It's doesn't state any emotion directly, even though it's piss easy to figure out what Alice is feeling.
hate to break it to you ya fricking dope but "tears streaming down [one's] face" is the definition of crying. It's just telling.
For a trivial one-sentence example, the distinction is relevant. If you want a more substantial example you'll need to provide one.
>the distinction is relevant
No, it isn't. It would certainly be convenient for your argument were it so, but, alas, it is not.
It is.
It's a description of a scene. It's showing what's happening. The emotional state is implied from the description. You are wrong. Feel free to to try making an argument otherwise without increasing scope, but I am sure you will fail.
>It's a description of a scene. It's showing what's happening
you keep re-stating your assertion like it means a fricking thing. A description of a scene tells what's happening, by definition.
Your babble about scope is irrelevant nonsense—frankly it's apologetics for the tacit admission that I'm correct: you wouldn't need to attempt to justify the fact that it's a shitty example with "length" if it weren't a shitty example.
Here's a much better example I thought of in two seconds:
telling
>Alice got a call. It was Bob, who she hated, so she declined.
showing
>Alice got a call. Her phone read, "Bob the butthole," so she put the phone back down.
Notice that both are two mere sentences; example length means nothing to this matter. I'm sorry that both you and whoever wrote the image in OP are too moronic to know what you're talking about, or at least are too moronic to contrive a proper example. Get bent.
Alice in the first one seems like a different and more likable character than Alice in the second one.
good for you
Just saying, the two are different characters so it isn't correct to say the 2nd one is better than the first.
Except they're the same character, regardless of whatever quibbling cope you come up with. The fact is any single deviation in word will produce two different characters; both examples could be telling and you'd have two different characters.
As a matter of fact, it doesn't even matter if they were two different characters. The task was to demonstrate the difference between showing and telling, not to create a precisely interchangeable example between showing and telling. The original example doesn't do that either, so stop moving the goalposts and take the L, loser.
Actually they're not the same character. Any single deviation in word won't necessarily produce two different characters. Both examples could be 'telling' and I could have the same characters. It does matter if they are two different characters, the task wasn't to demonstrate the difference between showing and telling it was to create a precisely interchangeable example between showing and telling. The original example does do that and I'm not moving the goalposts.
keep slamming the table, frickwit. You can be right in your own mind, at least.
By you own reasoning your own example could be considered telling. If she thinks someone's an butthole, by definition she doesn't like that person.
lmao you're so out of your depth it's almost sad. Go read a remedial logic and argumentation book i don't even know what to tell you. Naming someone an butthole is not the *definition* of not liking someone. It's a plausible inference that you don't like someone who you'd name an butthole. It's a basic inference, sure, but that's entirely appropriate for a basic example.
Guiding the reader's inferences is (however) the definition of "showing," as it is meant here.
Sorry anon but if someone not only has someone in their contacts, but cared enough about them to give them a special sarcastic name like that, I wouldn't assume they hate them. People you hate are best kept outa sight, outa mind.
good for you and your dumb opinion
I know it's not the definition, I was comparing it to an earlier comment in the chain:
Tears can fall straight onto the ground, or stream down the sides of your head, or fall onto your hands. You're being pedantic, so am I.
You're a fricking moron FULL STOP. There's nothing pedantic about making a distinction between a definition and inference. It's a nuance you might not have considered until the third grade, sure, but it's not that big of a deal. Seriously, what the frick is wrong with your head? I know you have a little monkey brain in your skull only capable of vague gestures but that doesn't mean you have to make it everyone else's problem. Do better, anon.
Also there's a difference between "by definition" and "it's the definition".
By definition a cat has four legs.
Four legs isn't the definition of a cat.
now THAT'S pedantry
Maybe it has something to do with how you insulted me and then proceeded to strawman me. Anyway, this discussion is going off track indeed. Let's go back to this comment:
and presumably your response:
The anon you responded to was talking about EMOTIONAL STATE. People can cry tears of joy, but the reader can infer that it's sadness.
>Maybe it has something to do with how you insulted me
You deserve to be insulted, you're a braindead mongoloid.
>strawman me
fantasy
>People can cry tears of joy, but the reader can infer that it's sadness
cool
>I'll repeat myself one more time.
You can repeat your WRONG assertions until you're red in your fat, aging face. It won't make you correct. If you want to define tell as show, be my guest. You're simply uneducated.
When we say show not tell, we mean show as in DEMONSTRATE. We mean show is in "show that √2 is irrational." Showing this requires a proof. We need to demonstrate that it is so. Now in writing, we don't need a proof, per se, but we do need a series of tells by which more is told than the mere sum of parts. This is accomplished by way of reasonable inference on the part of the reader.
Advising a writer to be demonstrative is good advice. It's what is meant. It's how to really play the game of writing. That's the art of it. Advising a writer to show something doesn't just mean be descriptive. Sometimes, description is SHIT. It needs to be meaningful—that's the advice beyond argument. That's why we say SHOW, not tell. Get it yet?
>"Tears streaming down face" is showing.
>"Crying" is showing.
It's telling. All your writing is telling. That's why it's bad. That's why nobody likes it.
>When we say show not tell, we mean show as in DEMONSTRATE.
Demonstrate, which means using events in the story rather than direct explanation to the reader, which is exactly what I said. The problem is that you made a mistake interpreting OP, refuse to admit the mistake, and are twisting your head into knots protecting your fragile ego over the trivial point. It's really rather pathetic.
>This is a pretty reductive take on the uses and types of exposition.
It's more useful than most of what has been posted in the thread so far, and clearly wasn't intended to be comprehensive.
>it is even brought up in videogame discussions to claim the supposed superiority of environmental storytelling over traditional dialogue.
Most videogames have orders of magnitude too much dialog. If I wanted to watch hours of shitty character dialog, I'd watch a TV show. Shitty TV writing is at least better than Videogame writing and performed by competent actors rather than the nauseating mocap abominations that zoomers love.
Videogames should be about gameplay and sitting on your ass listening to characters talk to each other is not gameplay. Dialog should be sparse and essential.
I don't agree, many of my favourite games are story-driven. They also create a much more interesting culture than dudebro twitch streamers or STEM PC nerds.
I know many people with shit taste disagree with me.
When I was young and stupid, I wished for more storytelling in videogames. Videogames of my era were constrained by technical limitations so every bit of text had to be carefully considered. Some games even shipped with printed material and the game would reference entries to read at specific times. (The out-of-order journals would come with bogus entries to discourage trying to read ahead without playing). NES and SNES games had extremely limited storage on cartridges so every bit of text had to be essential. Even "story-driven" games with lots of dramatic cutscenes like Final Fantasy had nowhere near the burdensome dialog that modern games have. If you analyze play of the SNES-era Final Fantasy (4-6), you'll find easily 85% of the play time allocated to exploration, combat, and miscellaneous gameplay with only ~15% devoted to dialog and storytelling. For any given hour play session, you can expect 45 minutes of playing for every 15 minutes of cutscenes (with cutscene length rarely exceeding 10 minutes).
Then CD-ROMs happened and writers had free reign stuff as much garbage into games as they wanted. The RPG genre never recovered. Even other genres have been afflicted. Today, it's considered fine and normal for an hour-long "play" session to be totally consumed with nothing but storytelling.
I don't think that every game needs to put all the weight on the plot. Something like Max Payne for example would get bogged down with detailed exposition. But I also don't want to go back to the era when the concept of a story driven game like VTMB or Disco Elysium was alien and I completely reject your arbitrary view that all games should follow a single narrow framework.
>I completely reject your arbitrary view that all games should follow a single narrow framework.
I never stated that. I haven't exactly written a comprehensive essay on the subject that carefully disclaims every possible exception. But since you bring it up I will say that there are inherent tradeoffs with storytelling in videogames, specifically related to player agency and conflict resolution. In general, the more you allow the player to drive the events and resolve conflicts, the less power you have as an author to tell a compelling story. Story and gameplay often find themselves mutually exclusive. Exceptions to this represent a niche. A valid niche, but a niche nonetheless and so when you start talking broadly about how "show don't tell" does or doesn't apply to videogames, we can't assume we're dealing with that small niche.
My problem is that I like balance, moderation and taste, and storygay advocates are totally indiscriminate in their demands for more. I like games that emphasize gameplay and use world-building, structured content and environmental storytelling with a light sprinkling of dramatic cutscenes and dialog to enhance the experience. Especially since most videogame writers are bad and even good writers find it hard to navigate the complex production demands of a modern videogame. Since most videogame writing is going to be bad, you may as well limit the damage.
> also don't want to go back to the era when the concept of a story driven game like VTMB or Disco Elysium was alien
Story-driven games existed long before VTMB. The idea has never been alien. In the 80s and 90s they were known as adventure games. The concept of a story-driven is in no danger whatsoever because I point out that games overuse cutscenes and active storytelling.
From what I gather from your post, you are more or less talking about high profile games and the trend towards cinematic games that started around the PS3 era. Now I would agree that a lot of these games are not very interesting, but my problem is not that they are too story driven, but that they are generic. If we had a lot of good story heavy or cinematic games I wouldn't have any objections to that, so in that sense I am on the side of the "storygay advocates". Which is not to say that I don't care about more traditional games, I already mentioned Max Payne which I played recently, and I also liked Nioh, Oni and Half Life. That said these days I generally pick games based on an interesting premise or setting or even art direction rather than pure mechanics, so here our differences are clear.
>Story-driven games existed long before VTMB. The idea has never been alien. In the 80s and 90s they were known as adventure games.
Yeah but back then game culture was even more insulated and self referential than it is today, with games mostly taking inspirations from other games and very little influence from other media, a lot of games from that era feel very cheesy or nerdy, even granting that there is some charm to this. Of course you can point out that the current trend of games towards aping hollywood blockbusters in style and presentation is hardly an improvement, but I think the opening up of the culture allowed some interesting things to be done by certain indies and AAs at the very least. There are more people who come to work on games with a background on literature or fine arts now for example, or even just people who consume a lot of other media.
>the more you allow the player to drive the events and resolve conflicts, the less power you have as an author to tell a compelling story
I don't think this relationship is zero-sum.
The more the player is engaged in choosing their own destiny, the more compelling they will find the story.
I read a lot of cheesy romance visual novels, not because I've tricked myself into thinking that they're high literature, but because they're so effective. Having to choose a love interest, seeing the look of joy on their face as (you) confess (you)r love to them-- it's extremely impactful. Much more than the same story would be if it was a simple romance novel without my involvement.
If anything, the more freedom you give the player, the easier it gets to tell a strong story. It's almost like Tom Sawyer and the fence. Convince your player that building their own story is fun and you can watch them do all the work for you. They'll get attached to the world and the characters all by themselves. You can use the effort saved to tell whatever kind of story you want.
I think Fire Emblem is a good example of this. Almost every character in the story can die or be killed. This invests the player, because suddenly they have a responsibility to keep everyone alive and have to figure out how (a responsibility they can ignore, should they so wish). The main storyline however progresses regardless of who lives or dies. Yet the player is rewarded with side stories based on their decisions. The sum of these elements is greater than an equivalently well written fantasy novel would be, I'd wager.
Your timeline here is kind of cherry-picking.
Story driven RPGs began in force during the PC-98 era in Japan. Rance 1 for example is something like 97% reading 3% combat.
On the other hand in modern times we have examples like Musou games that are just as focused on gameplay as the average SNES RPG.
In addition, part of the appeal of RPGs is the control you have over the experience. If you want more gameplay, wander into a cave and beat up some monsters. If you want more story, head into town and talk to someone. It's a bit silly to say the balance is out of whack when you're supposed to create that balance for yourself.
bad dialog when you want to be playing a videogame is even more tedious.
There's plenty of room for occasional dramatic, memorable set pieces without having to stuff games full of endless companion banter and dwelling on every trivial plot point with scripted cutscenes.
>The problem is that you made a mistake interpreting
the only one making the mistake is you and any moron who thinks like you. Your mistaken choice of definition renders the advice useless and subjective. Wrongly understanding the advice as you do boils any conversation to be had thereabout down to arbitrary feelings about what's good and not so good and bad descriptions. You can even see this worthless conclusion in this very thread.
Good advice is more or less universal—that's why my definition, which is the original definition, is totally superior in every respect.
More meaning is always good. ALWAYS. A deeper work is always a higher quality work. It is inference games that makes the reader enjoy reading; they stimulate the mind. Otherwise the game just the reader slogging through your fricking word choice—who cares.
Low IQ drones like you are why the humanities have the dogshit reputation they do anymore. Stick to the vidya ya mong.
>Your babble about scope is irrelevant nonsense
No, it's not. In fact you prove my point with your own example.
You claim "telling" for the first example, and yet it is actually an example of show and tell. Overall, you can claim that the point of the text is to tell the read that Alice hates Bob, explaining why she did what she did rather than using action to lead the reader to the same conclusion. And yet, if you were to look at ONLY the event portion of the sentence, you would not be able to claim it's "tell." Because there's no idea, concept, character trait or anything apart from the event itself being told to the reader.
So, when your sentence is expanded in scope, with an event as a a component of the larger point, you can reasonably claim the entire thing is "tell." With OP's example, there's no "telling" in either case. It's all strictly showing events that happen in the story. There's no equivalent to "Alice hated Bob" anywhere in OP's picture. That is "telling." There is no telling in OP's picture. I know I'm repeating myself, but you have proved yourself to be very dense. I'll repeat myself one more time.
>"tears streaming down [one's] face" is the definition of crying. It's just telling
This is wrong. You are wrong. It is not telling. It is showing.
"Tears streaming down face" is showing.
"Crying" is showing.
You're showing the character's emotions and feelings as they happen. You aren't describing a summary character trait. You aren't offering a pre-digested/biased explanation of events. It's showing, not telling.
both are showing; the wrongly given correct example is just abrupt and lifeless.
Telling not showing is supposed to mean not letting the reader experience events as they happen.
Think of the difference between how your sour coworker Dave from the office tells stories where it's more like reading off a checklist of events and informing us how he or others felt and why things happened. Showing would be your highschool friend Dan who manages to keep up the sick skater persona while still raising a family and furthering his careers as a mechanic, when he tells stories it's all about the life imbued in them and a lot of information is conveyed indirectly through the WAY in which the story is told.
it's an extension, the second example adds unimportant details.
Besides - show don't tell argument is kinda moronic in context of a book.
fpbp
In my experience "show don't tell" usually refers to character traits and exposition.
Tell:
>Alice is an emotional girl who cries easily about the slightest thing.
Show:
>Alice cried when her mother left
>Alice cried when anon spilled his spaghetti on her
>Alice cried when Chad walked by without noticing her
>Alice cried when ...
>both are telling
I would say both are showing.
>I would say both are showing.
if "Alice cried" is showing then what does telling look like?
"Alice was sad"
this guy is completely 100% correct. Everyone else is blind
cried when anon spilled his spaghetti on her
It shows her thoughts instead of just telling that she watches her leave. You guys are autistic
only autists struggle with this
"Why?" said anon autiscally.
Anon read that post and it did made him question himself:
"Am I a fricking autist?"
He quickly dismissed because, he felt just fine, it is just his drug fried brain trying to trick him into weird shit and the good old self-sabotage that God know where the frick this shit comes from.
"I am fine" he smiled.
It would be better with "I am fine" in all caps. Also, it would be better if he smiled and convulsed in the end while rolling eyes and sticking out his tongue.
Autists invented "show don't tell" to justify their obsession with unimportant details.
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of prostitute to bend of gay, brings us by a commodius bupkis of homosexualuration, back to anon's house and environs.
Rarer and rarer these days, but posts like this are why I keep coming back here
use the 'tell' method when shit is boring and routine but not boring and routine enough to time skip
if you do this enough your entire book is boring and routine (enough to skip)
Only gays follow writing "rules"
This "advice" has ruined a generation of writers and this is why I exclusively read old books.
OP read the reply that simply stated YWNBAW. You. Will. Never. Be. A. Woman. OP was filled with rage.
what are you trying to convey other than the fact that trannies live rent free inside your head?
Seems like BBC is on your mind with that cringe black reddit phrase.
What's with the British broadcasting corporation? Care to explain?
It's a musical instrument reference. BBC is Baritone Bass Clef.
"My vegana hurts" she said. I replied "show, don't tell." That was my last day of work.
upboated
Kek a masterwork of flash fiction made before us.
OP licked his lips as he ogled at the erect throbbing penis of his fellow student. He had enrolled at the Donald J Trump academy for gay morons at the beginning of the previous semester, and he wrote every post with the energy of a young homosexual recieving his first group penetration as he drooled and blankly stared off into space,
troony and chud
sitting on a tree
K I S S I N G
First comes love
Then comes marriage
Then comes baby
In a baby carriage!
what are the best 'tell don't show' books?
blood meridian
I second Blood Meridian.
I third big meridian.
i fourth blood meridian
Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars
Hunger, Steppenwolf, Notes from the Underground. Any book where the narrator over-explains or describes their interactions because of hyperconsciousness or some kind of neurosis, but because they do so, a larger thematic layer emerges from what they choose to leave out, how their opinions contradict their descriptions, how they run up against opposing views.
Is such a thing only achievable when written in the first person?
The Waves by Woolf; filtered me though
I always thought that “show don’t tell” was about characterisation rather than description
Like, instead of telling that a character is some kind of genius, do show him doing smart things, or instead of telling that a group of bad guys are very dangerous, show them do real threatening things to the hero(es) instead of failing evrything
Some people worry about "show, don't tell" too much, but it's a useful concept. I see newer writers who would benefit from focusing on showing more all the time.
When inexperienced authors want to write a story about a girl who is beautiful, they'll often write something like this:
>Mary was a beautiful girl with long raven hair and a cute butt.
Generally, something like this is more effective:
>Whenever Mary walked through the halls of the military base, the eyes of every soldier followed, attracted to the sight of her long black ponytail dancing behind her or else glued to her ass wiggling beneath the tight skirt of her uniform.
The former is shorter, but the latter tells us more about Mary and is more interesting to read.
I think showing is important for both characterization and description.
In writing, the blunt approach is often not the best.
There's nothing wrong with saying "The waitress gave him his coffee" but in a lot of situations "The waitress set his coffee on the table" is preferable. It's a tiny difference but being just that extra little bit more evocative wherever you can adds up over the course of a story.
>Like,
Stopped reading here
t.
This is a terrible example. "Alice cried as she watched her mother leave" is showing, just not in a very elegant or detailed way. An actual example of telling would be something like: "Alice was sad because her mother was leaving." I also don't really think it's always better to show rather than tell, although it often is.
this is like musical theater compared to ancient Athenian tragedies
Feed don't Sneed
This is cope to make books longer than they are supposed to be, and I agree it ruins a lot of writing. No one likes being force-fed imagery that takes the reader away from the actual impact of the event. I don't want to hear about streaming tears and "How could she just... leave?". The poignancy is in the deadpan, and I would much rather envision her crying the way I want to see it than hear the author mess their own scene up just to give us a shitty image of what it feels like to cry. Everyone knows what it feels like to cry and feel hopeless, we do not need this extra description of garbage.
Good post. Besides crying another example that keeps showing up is the mention of "crunching leaves under my feet" instead of saying it's fall. Some amateur writers will embrace this advice and take their characters to a forest just to specify which season it is in a clichéd manner.
Pic related
Disagree. Ever read some heavy tell stories like all those litrpgs?
>I was shot. It hurt, but luckily I wasn't hit in a viral area. So I fled, and when I got to the house I saw where I was shot. It was in the ass. My adrenaline kept me from feeling pain, but now I feel it. It was painful, that I blacked out.
The pacing is just so fast you're left with more questions.
That's just very plain writing. "Show don't tell" would improve it, but so would inner monologue and events/ideas that are inherently interesting.
Sorry for posting a reddit screenshot but it's a good example of what dogma does to people.
This is probably some joke.
it isn't
>Reddit
I think the moronic and effeminate avatars they give to users helps emasculate those posting. Not to mention, Reddit draws feminine men to begin with, they are simply making effeminate men even more effeminate.
>but I've always heard that "show don't tell" should be how you try to write
I wonder if he ever considered that it might be bad advice.
Exactly. Show, don’t tell, is about not forcing the reader to feel what you want but instead leading them to the feeling. Sometimes, details help, but details can also suffocate.
This is a slightly different problem. You don’t know what to feel, and you’re curious to read more. Or you’re feeling whiplash from reading too fast. Or both.
This is also why skimming/speedreading doesn’t work. You can’t speed up experience without losing the flow of human life.
More like, this is just a list of things happening. It makes for a very boring slog to read through. Like everything there needs to be balance. Tell can be very effective for emotional scenes but it needs set up.
>Long ass show shit
>Final line: My mother died.
The show should lead into tell and vise versa. Show also clarifies tons of things in a scene that helps the reader visualize what's going on with the MC.
x said, x remarked etc gets really old fast if it happens after every time someone speaks. Its not an ultimate rule but for beginners its a good tip to keep in mind
>show is just tell but longer
Why do so many people assume "show" to mean "describe every conceivable little detail in a scene"? The whole point of the advice is to keep things in motion and easier to read by not slipping into heavy-handed exposition at every turn, but focusing on what is actually happening.
Because they don’t realize that “show, don’t tell” is about providing a foothold for the reader to judge for themselves. Too little show, and it’s laborious for the reader to judge (much must be imagined). Too much, and it’s oppressive on the reader (and otherwise a slog to go through).
Word economy is equally if not even more important, which the latter completely fails at.
It’s a book, you’re always going to be “telling.”
I call it story-telling, not story-showing.
The only correct way to abide to this rule in any literary medium would be attaching illustration adjacent to text. Anything else is still telling, you can't show something with text.
Actually you can't have text at all because the rule says "show, DON'T TELL"
I think the literary equivalent to this is when there's fantasy novels with too much world building and it's like
>Willard walked into the den where the Sin-hag dancers performed the traditional Humamkuukoal ritual in which the eldest member of the tribe dresses in...
and literally none of it is significant to any plot, themes, etc.
this is not what it means, or at least not what is should mean, and that is an awful example
Show don't tell is for television/movies
Sometimes it saves a lot of time to tell instead of showing with words
Yep. "Tell" is the great advantage of the written medium.
YOU CAN'T JUST TELL THE AUDIENCE HOW YOUR CHARACTERS FEEL! THAT MAKES ME FEEL ANGRY!
Platinum grade bait.
The example was a bit much, but the principle holds true.
It only holds true if the writing is banal otherwise.
It's a Pavlov reaction to some people. I just read an analytical breakdown of a story for literal 4-5 year olds and it suggested saying "his hands were sweaty" instead of "he was nervous", as if children who can barely wipe their asses would understand that.
>as if children who can barely wipe their asses would understand that.
children that young should be reading under supervision or semi-supervision anyway. When they don't understand they should ask the question, and then can learn what something so common means.
But they're not gonna ask. They're just gonna think the character's hands are sweaty and that's it.
I can't post the article because it's in Dutch, but the story is written in such a straight forward manner that "his hands were sweaty" would almost be a shift in style. "Ricky was nervous/excited" worked perfectly fine for a dumb story about a kid having his first day at school.
children should be taught to ask, but I guess you're right.
Lo, get ready for this synthesis: the best sentence would read "Ricky was so nervous that his hands were sweaty."
my palms never sweat
both of those are 'tell'. if you want to 'show' then make a movie.
'show dont tell' doesn't even apply to books, your pic certainly has a contrast in writing stories, but it has nothing to do with that phrase.
I find this thread shallow and pendantic.
OP here. I was hoping for more substantial responses but I probably got what I deserved for making a dumb and provocative original post.
What's your stance on show, don't tell?
"Show, don't tell" is for cinema. For literature there's no issue in just telling. That's literally how you convey a story. You tell it with great poetic detail.
>"Show, don't tell" is for cinema
This is definitely true if you're treating it as an iron rule or at least a really important one.
In fiction writing it's better to think of it as one of many options in your toolbox. You decide when to show and when to tell, and each method has drawbacks and advantages.
I agree, I think the strengths of written is being able to see what the characters are thinking like a diary and I'd much rather read something intimate like that then trying to parse what their behavior is supposed to mean.
Even in cinema it's overrated. They take pride in not using voiceovers but those can greatly enhance movies.
I've been pondering the same as of late
>those can
Can? Sure.
They can also be pointless and distracting.
>The real Golden Rule of writing (fiction) is that every word and every sentence must come from the mind--or perhaps it would be better to say "through the mind"--of a character.
That's not a rule, either. Using a narrator's voice is totally fine even if the narrator does not have a defined character in the story.
Man, I love a fantasy movie or video game with an opening montage and narration that establishes the stakes immediately. That little bit of exposition done right piques curiosity in such a compelling way.
>Fellowship of the Ring
>Princess Mononoke
>Dark Souls and Elden Ring
The kino moment that gave me that stance was one in Oldboy. The guy got locked up for no apparent reason and as a voiceover he says "if I knew it would take 15 years, would it have been easier to endure, or harder?"
It's an interesting concept to think about, but there's no way to show it unless they completely changed up the movie, so it's very effectively communicated in just one line.
Yes, the narration must strike a balance between the declarative and the vague, and that is a great example.
Anon's mouth shuddered as the thread watcher became italicized. A (You), just for him. He immediately tabbed back to that same thread, beginning to salivate as saw those numbers next to his post.
A grimace replaced his smile as he hovered his mouse. He'd been the victim of a mass reply. That's five seconds he wasn't getting back.
No matter, he still had his daily wank to look forward to. Opening an incognito tab, he typed those ever familiar words. 'Dirty Naughty Tiles'
Tell:
>OP is a homosexual
Show:
>OP shuddered helplessly as the big black Black person dick pressed against his sensitive skin. "Was it going to hurt?" OP wondered to himself even as he knew the answer and tried his best to stay relaxed.
The N-word?
In modern-day literature?
It may not be as common as you'd think
Top: you use your imagination and put yourself in the character’s shoes and understand what she feels
Bottom: let me tell you what sadness looks like you souless automaton
>"Show, don't tell" is one of those pieces of writing advice that is halfway true but not particularly useful, and sometimes even harmful. The real Golden Rule of writing (fiction) is that every word and every sentence must come from the mind--or perhaps it would be better to say "through the mind"--of a character. Even if the story is written in third person, there still must be a point of view character for the book, for the chapter, for the scene, and every word that reaches the reader's eyes must have first passed through the filter of the character's senses, of his opinions, and of his memories. When writing about a setting, for example, one does not simply list the details of a room as if creating a verbal blueprint for the room's construction; one must present the setting through the five senses of the point of view character, then connect those sensory details with opinions, and finally connect those opinions with the character's emotional past. The extent to which a piece of contemporary fiction works or doesn't work is precisely correlated with the degree to which the writer adheres to this rule. It should be added that this has nothing to do with a piece of writing being good or bad. The quality of a piece of fiction is a question for critics (failed writers) to waste their time quibbling over. What matters is whether or not the piece of writing in question works--in other words, will a reader feel compelled to continue turning the page.
Even that "golden rule" isn't necessarily true. Roald Dahl often writes from his own point of view as the narrator. Not just a narrator who knows everything, but one who has opinions.
I wonder if there are writers for adult audiences who that to the same extent.
Omit needless words
-strunk
"Show Don't tell" is just a piece of advice for new writers to not be too cut and dry in their descriptions. It's not a general principle whose validity needs to be debated.
Its place in culture should be debated. Some people are obsessive with it, see
The overuse has pushed a lot of people toward the same writing style. It's also debatable whether cut and dry descriptions are actually bad, or if we've been conditioned to think they're bad. I think its popularity stems from how learnable it is. Writers can be witless and shallow, but still learn how to "show, don't tell".
Cut and dry description is not necessarily bad, and subtle exposition is not necessarily good. However, since someone who starts writing naturally gravitates towards more "prosaic" styles, it may be useful to point out to them that they don't need to be so literal in their descriptions. I agree that the term has been way overused, it is even brought up in videogame discussions to claim the supposed superiority of environmental storytelling over traditional dialogue.
Many people really REALLY don't understand "show don't tell" and it's because the phrase is misleading to an extent.
Because you are always "telling" the audience something in a sense. That's the whole point of writing, to communicate something.
Anyway it has nothing to do with how you write it and everything to do with why you write it.
To put it as simply as I can
Telling = writing something that exists specifically for the audience's sake only
Showing = basically everything else but usually what people mean is "revealing character"
So for example blatant exposition is always telling. "In the year 2069 World War 3 happened and everybody died..." etc...
But it's a little tricky because exposition can always be hidden in dialogue or elsewhere to make it seem less like telling but it's still telling nonetheless. For example a character says "Wow I can't believe the commander sent us on this crazy mission to..." etc...
Basically you see how all this exists only for the sake of the audience. This is telling.
Showing is just everything else that happens in a natural organic way that the majority of stories are, and should be, told in. Generally this is mostly just dialogue between characters or actions. What a character says or does shows the reader who they are or what they are becoming i.e. it reveals character. Basically anything that reveals character is showing.
There's a good video about this that could explain it better but I can't remember what it was.
This is a pretty reductive take on the uses and types of exposition. You can reveal information directly to the audience that isn't based in any dialogue or action but still conveys considerable depth, character, emotion, power, and organicity. It just depends on how you phrase things. Take any of the exposited parts of Paradise Lost for example:
Say first (for Heaven hides nothing from thy view,
Nor the deep tract of Hell) say first what cause
Moved our grand parents in that happy state,
Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the world besides.
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
The infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile,
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The Mother of Mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equalled the Most High,
If he opposed; and with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God
Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud,
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition; there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.
No amount of 'show not tell' will teach you how to write like this. It is a lost art. Now we suffer from infinite reams of cliched purple prose and overdescription that slows any narrative to a miserable crawl.
>Tell
Alice, a black girl, cried as she watched her mother leave.
>Show
Alice be cry
What bullshit, you can add prose to the tell example and it becomes far better than the overly verbose show example
>With tears in her green eyes, Alice watched her mother leave.
these people just want to watch movies, then go watch a movie then
This review of Catherine Lacey's Pew I read once is extremely applicable here:
I knew literally nothing about Catherine Lacey before picking up this book, and after reading the first paragraph I knew with absolute 100% apodictic certainty that she had been to one of about eight MFA programs (in this case, as I learned later, Columbia). Just zero question. Lacey is the female equivalent of Jesse Ball or whatever other bearded mid-list MFA bro, writing with precisely the same amount of 'creativity' and quirkiness in the same very-clearly-overworkshopped style that is apparently always inculcated in all MFA grads who land book deals with the big five American publishing houses.
Within the extremely limited palette of themes/ideas, political perspectives, paragraph structure, prose style, etc., found in 180-page novels / 220-page short story collections by this cohort of writers, Lacey is quite good; some very good lines here and there, the fable elements work pretty well, I really expected her portrayal of small-town Christians to be shallow but it somehow wasn't, etc.
But seriously; Pew is the Anthropologie of art. (I actually wouldn't be surprised if this book were sold in Anthropologie.) Pew is one of many A24 films with a 66 rating on Metacritic that is exactly 89 minutes long and shot with the same RED system that every Gen Y indie director uses, the same washed-out color palette, the same slightly shaky camera movement, the same tastefully acted melodrama with a vague and 'artistically' unsatisfying ending. Pew is one of the pretty good bands on Saddle Creek or 4AD or Matador who have just enough creativity that you maybe check out their albums when the A-list bands haven't released anything for a while. MFA-land needs to stop playing it so safe.
In reality, the advice should be show and tell. Don't tell makes amateurs think any sort of telling is bad and you end up with a bloated story that'll need to be trimmed down. The preferred way I've heard it taught is to judge each scene on how pivotal/intense it is and to lean into showing more during the important ones, and more into telling during the scenes that just move the plot along.
BITSOW
How can they show me anything in a book unless there are pictures. They are literally telling me what happens with the words? I don't get it?
Tell: honest writing. Show: cringe female writing.
show dont tell works for movies but not for writing