You’ve heard “show, don’t tell," but using both is better. Lately I’ve been coming across some stories filled with potential, but missing the mark on holding my interest. They would have succeeded if only they had the right amount of both — of show AND tell.
A good story uses the right balance of show and tell. Having too much of one or the other can make a story terrible. The goal of using show is to help paint a picture for your readers of what they’re suppose to see because a book is not like a movie or a television show. Showing also helps to dramatize scenes and characters which can help invoke the readers’ emotions and keep their attention from wavering. For example: “She’s a strong warrior."
That is good to know but would the reader care? No. Because the reader may not believe that the character is a strong warrior just because they’re told that she is. They need evidence. They need to be shown that she’s a strong warrior and you can do that by showing her in action.
The same can be said when you have characters stating how they feel. For example: “That’s makes me angry!"
Why have them state their feelings? Instead show that they are angry. Have then clench their hands into a fist and their mouth twist into a sneer. Or have their eyes narrow as they snarl out curses at whatever or whoever pissed them off.
It’s a lot more exciting for the readers to be shown that kind of information instead of being told about it. However, there are times when showing is inappropriate and telling would be better to use, such as when writers want to imply that something violent or sexual happened without showing it to avoid censorship. Or writers state items used (or events), but not how, to let the readers’ imaginations fill in the gaps.
For example: “Kelly was killed in the bathroom with a fish."
Readers’ imagination would go wild, wondering how it happen and what she was doing when she was killed and how (or what kind of) fish can be used to kill her. Also sometimes telling is good to use for time skips. No one want to read through a lengthy sequence of events where nothing particularly interesting, exciting or relevant to the plot happens. Under such circumstance, it’s quite acceptable to just jump from one relevant bit to another relevant bit and tell your readers that it’s “twenty years later" or it took him/her ten minutes to get to school or whatnot and leave it at that without showing what happening during that time.
Basically, stories must contain both to be truly effective, and hopefully, entertaining.
 DamnBlackHeart · Wed Jul 03, 2013 @ 04:06am · 0 Comments |
