Showing vs. Telling: When Is Telling Okay?

Yay! We had another successful WANACon, and I can go back to sleeping more than 3-5 hours a night. *gives weak fist pump* (If you missed out, a single price gives you full access to all the workshop recordings and materials.)

I’ve even been able to write again over the last couple of days. Luckily, my characters hadn’t felt so abandoned that they went off in search of another writer to tell their story. *whew* Now, back to the blog…

We’ve probably all heard the advice to “show, don’t tell” more times than we can count. Like most advice, it’s worded as an absolute, making it seem as though telling is never okay.

Once we’re experienced, we know that’s not true. Some telling is absolutely okay, and in certain cases, is preferable to showing.

My guest post by Janice Hardy last week did a fabulous job at demonstrating the differences between showing and telling and why “showing” creates stronger connections between the reader and the story. But if that’s true, wouldn’t we always want to show?

Or, to point out an observation commenter ChemistKen made on that post, how much showing is enough?

“Two of the “before” versions sounded pretty darn good to me.”

I don’t disagree. In fact, at the bottom of my post, I said:

“Sometimes it’s not just about showing. Janice’s “before” examples on tips #3 and #4 have showing and some lines that might be internal thoughts. … But Janice’s examples … go even deeper, like with those goals and stakes in the “after” examples.”

Let’s talk about various situations and why we might decide to show or tell depending on the circumstances.

Tweaking the Amount of Emphasis

One thing Janice’s examples made clear is that we usually need more words to show than to tell. Each of her “before” examples was a paragraph, and most of her “after” examples were several paragraphs, about half a page of words.

There’s nothing wrong with an event taking up more or less words—unless we unintentionally mislead the reader with the amount of emphasis. We generally don’t want to unintentionally do anything, especially if it might negatively affect the reader’s understanding.

Our words act like a tour guide to readers, telling them what to notice. The simple fact that we point something out means that we’re telling readers to pay attention to that element.

So when we use a lot of words for a plot point, character observation, or narrative description, we’re telling the reader “This is important.” Half a page of words on something that doesn’t deserve that much emphasis should probably instead use narrative summary to share the details the reader needs to know.

The opposite is true as well. An important plot or emotional turning point should take up a lot of words. These are the times to pull out every trick we know to expand the amount of words used: showing, visceral responses, internalization, etc.

As a bonus, being aware of this “more words equals more emphasis” guideline means we can intentionally mislead readers. Want to bury a clue? Limit it to a short phrase or sentence in the middle of a paragraph, and most readers won’t consciously recognize it as a clue, yet we’re not cheating the reader by withholding information.

Transitions and Traveling Scenes

Going along with the above point, if we have a scene that’s just trying to get the characters, story, and/or the reader from here to there, telling works great. If nothing happens during a car ride, we don’t need the play-by-play.

Phrases like “after she arrived” are telling. But they work if we’re just trying to get the character from point A to point B.

If the point of a scene is the next encounter with the bad guy, the reader doesn’t need a half page of character drama with the unimportant things leading up to that. In fact, that show-every-thought-in-her-head approach could easily seem melodramatic.

A guideline here might be that if we need to tell for a transition or traveling scene, then we should get in and get out with our “telling interruption” as quickly as possible. Yes, we have a legitimate reason for telling here, but that doesn’t mean we should go on for a paragraph or more.

Repetitive Information

In general, we don’t want redundant information in our stories. We don’t need to repeat the goals, stakes, or motivations every couple of paragraphs. If we did, not only would that be annoying to the reader, but the characters could also seem too “woe is me” for dwelling on it so much.

This is why Janice’s “before” examples from tips #3 and #4 don’t seem as bad as some of the others:

“The pharmacy door was busted open, the drawers ransacked and empty. She swore and moved on to the nurses’ stations, checking every cart and drawer she passed. At a broken vending machine, she paused to fish out a candy bar stuck in the back, then continued her search for antibiotics. They had to be there somewhere. Bob didn’t have much time left.”

“Jane crept into the abandoned emergency room, eyes alert for zombies. She avoided the broken glass and pools of dried blood and made her way to the pharmacy. It was a long shot, but Bob’s fever was getting worse and if she couldn’t find him some antibiotics he’d probably die. Her chest tightened. She couldn’t let that happen. No way. They had things to talk about. Things to finally admit to each other.”

Those “before” examples include some showing, visceral responses, and internalization. In other words, they’re not “bad.”

However, Janice was demonstrating how we can use deep point of view to add information like goals, motivations, and stakes. Her “after” examples layer those elements in with the showing and internalization that’s already partially there.

If those elements are already covered for the scene, we don’t need to expand the showing even more to include them again. Remember, these examples are excerpts, which means we’re missing the context we’d normally have around them in a scene.

If we’d just finished a segment with Jane freaking out over the situation and then getting her act together to focus on her mission, we certainly wouldn’t need to rehash those elements in these segments. That would be repetitive, which can be just as annoying—if not more so—to the reader as “telling” incidents.

Not every paragraph like those “before” examples above needs to be expanded with more showing, especially if we’re not trying to emphasize the details and/or we’re just transitioning to something else. Janice was sharing a technique, not an applies-in-all-cases instruction.

In other words, as a general rule, we need to balance showing, emphasis, goals/motivations/stakes, and pacing. Some types of showing—unimportant details or repetitive information—should be avoided or it could slow down the pace of our stories.

The goal with all our writing, regardless of technique, is to keep the reader engaged in the story, turning pages because of the tension and stakes. Not all showing will meet that goal, and that’s how we can decide when to tell. No matter how full of showing it is, a scene of a character watching paint dry isn’t likely to be engaging to readers. *smile*

This is the last week to register for my workshop on how to do just enough story development to write faster, while not giving our pantsing muse hives. Interested? Sign up for “Lost Your Pants? The Impatient Writers Guide to Plotting a Story.” (Blog readers: Use Promo Code “savethepants” to save $15 on registration.)

Do you disagree with any of my exceptions to the “show, don’t tell” rule? Do you have any additions to the list? How do you decide when to show or tell? Do you struggle with knowing how much showing is enough? Or when telling is acceptable (and maybe even preferred)?