I’d like to comment the ‘show not tell’ demand appearing increasingly in reviews.
It seems to be spreading like a virus.
Sometimes I think it is used as a genuine concern and at others just a nice easy points earner.

Dealing with the former, and ignoring the latter:

I went back to my library and had a look at some of my favorite books, both short stories and novels. And guess what – most had huge slabs of ‘tell’.
I’m thinking of authors like Milan Kundera, Henry Fielding, Mervyn Peak, Bradbury, Salinger, Herman Hesse, Tolkien amongst the more well known, plus a wealth of less common but equally successful others.

I think that, in the hope of getting past jaded agent/publisher readers, we are in danger of rejecting a very valuable aspect of good writing and pushing an ‘easily digestible’ literary equivalent of fast food.

I am finding myself increasingly rebelling against this demand.
I’m becoming far more interested in ‘how to make my telling more interesting/appealing’. And that doesn’t mean jamming in ‘show’ slabs just to please the virus spreaders.

Sometimes it’s best to show things, sometimes to tell.
The thing with ‘show’ is that you can better become one with a character, let’s say:
1) he became really frightened
2) his eyes dialated, he became even more pale
- now, I think the 2nd example tells the same as the 1st, but also shows his personal physical reaction.

But:
3) I pondered for a while about the beauty of her poem.
- you can’t paint that, right?

‘show, don’t tell’ is the first thing you learn about reviewing and judging written word, so a lot of people can’t really provide more in depth pointers.

1 and 2 are both ‘tell’, 2 is just telling more.
The virus spreaders demand
3. “I’m shit scared” he said as his eyes dilated.
Great for a Micky Spillane thriller maybe.

An example I once gave of how ridiculous this approach can become:

They sat in the cafe talking for five hours.
Hey, show don’t tell!

Why? They were crap conversationalists and what they said had less interest than the space it takes up on the page. It tells us (yes tells us) nothing we need to know, does not expand or clarify the plot, and would just be putting a tick in the box for those ‘how to write and review’ class evaluation reports.

Here’s some bad news for those critics.
Every single word, be in inside or outside of quotes, is actually an author telling us!

Sometimes I prefer a gourmet meal to nuggets, fries and a diet coke.

.

The problem may be that not that “telling” versus “showing” is clear in its definitions.

Yes, in its basic, purest meaning, the story is an example of “telling” by the author.

But when a person – critic – states that more showing is needed versus telling – assuming of course (which you are not) that the critic has a valid point – they are saying that the author is missing many opportunities in which to develop a key element of story telling: character development, back story, motivation, suspense, even involvement of the reader in the story.

Your example may have been ridiculous to you but only because in the tale being told it was the case. Maybe the critic thought that such a conversation may have been interesting and would have served to develop something more to the story.

Tell me… which of the following is more interesting to read and actually has more punch?

A boy kissed a girl.

Johnny, new to romance, was flabbergasted that Charlene was leaning in towards him. Of course, she was the girl of his dreams. A jewel at 12 with ruby-red lips, hair of spun silver, eyes that sparkled with emerald glitter and a face that put even Venus to shame. He swallowed hard, closed his eyes, and puckered up. The jolt he felt when her moist lips met his ran down his spine and made him clutch her with both hands at her shoulders, pushing her towards him so hard that he thought for a minute he may end up suffocating her. And that was how Johnny kissed a girl.

Sorry, but actually the first!

Genuinely!

The second is the type of passage I skip in novels that have a storyline I want to follow but are full of such prose.

A different debate is in the offing here, another about which I have strong feelings.
Color.
So many think that stuffing their work with color makes a great novel or short story. (I blame writing teachers at all levels).
Why use five words when one hundred and eight can be crammed in.

Here’s my example.
I saw a young boy kissing a teenage girl, and for a brief moment I envied them that intimate moment. However, more pressing things demanded my time and I focused on the trip ahead.
Suggest that I swap “a boy kissed a girl” with my example, and you can be my writing guru any day!

To be fair to you, however, let’s focus this debate on an area where perhaps personal taste is less intrusive.

If I am writing a novel about the inner workings of my characters, those external colors are intrusive.
If I am writing about a spy seducing a woman before going off to kill the bad guy, such color is required – it is the meat of the story.

Fast food versus gourmet meal. Both have merit.
But don’t demand I turn my single malt whiskey into a flowery green cocktail with sliced fruit and an umbrella.

LOL squarehopper love you’re last comment, sometimes being flowery is not in the authors style or nature. Keates is very flowery, too flowery for my tastes.

Ok, here’s my take. I agree with SH in that there’s a difference between showing and telling when it comes to vernacular. Yes, while storyTELLING is telling, there’s a kids-book way, and a novelist way.

Jonny jumped on a ball. Then Jonny jumped on a fence. Later, Jonny jumped on his sister, his dog, the mailman and the moon. Jonny loved to jump.

It’s similar to over-describing a scene, telling. I agree that as a writer’s buzz word it’s ridiculously overdone. I’m guilty of typing it too, and I’ll find a new way to share my thoughts. And there’s a tough call when it comes to reading a piece (take Salinger) which is intentionally, stylistically simple and metaphorically grand at once. Many readers and reviewers here won’t see the underlying metaphor and will revert to a snide “show, don’t tell” (furthermore SDT).

I have to say, I see issues in poetry here often. That’s got a lot to do with how I feel poetry and how I feel poetry should… point, maybe. Anyway, when it comes to the SDT crap, I don’t think it has a place in prose reviews, really. Lyrics, poetry, YES. And that’s personal.

And SH, I have to agree w/the other two about your passage there. Using a million adjectives isn’t enough to “show”. It’s bigger than painting a picture, it’s creating a response with your reader. I go back to metaphors. I’m metaphor’s champion. I will fight to the death. And so on.

I love metaphor myself, if its not too confusing or multi-layered to the point of misunderstanding for the reader

I didn’t use a lot of adjectives only. But hell whatever. If you want to be a reporter instead of story teller… sobeit. If you want your piece to sound like newsprint instead of bringing things to life for the reader, who am I to tell you different? I won’t read it. I won’t like it. I won’t buy it. But then I am only one.

You have all the freedom you need to be as creative and original as you want. You have all the rights you need to be bland or to be juicy in your writing. In the long run… it is the market that determines whether or not you are successful if it is you aim to make money at this. And in the long run it is your community that determines if you are successful if you goal is to create greatness.

Whooh….
“is your community that determines if you are successful if you goal is to create greatness”

Come on now, do you really believe this?
Do I really have to list those that prove this a total lie?

By this criteria, all Mills and Boon authors should get the Nobel prize for literature! (Well, the four or five of them actually, the rest are the same authors using different names).

Let’s clear up something else here as well,

“instead of story teller”

This is the real clincher, and where I think the ‘bursting dew laden purple buds of the thorny rose’ brigade differ from some of the rest of us.
Fiction is not always about story telling, not in the way you mean it here. (And have expressed it in an extremely arrogant way).

It can be about insight, about thought, and about contemplation.

When Kundera talks about a seventy year old lady suddenly revealing the sixteen year old girl through her eyes as she gazes after a young lifeguard, no one gives a shit about the color of her bikini, whether the sun was out or whether swallows were skimming the pool. I doubt if they were even interested in her heaving breasts.

Are you saying he is being a mundane reporter? Bland? Lacking juicyness?
He seems to be a well published, admired and lauded one if he is. And he made a fair bit of money through this writing.
As have so many others in this category.

It is that aim of writing that so many of these ‘show don’t tell’ brigade just do not seem to get.

Just out of interest. When you are studying a chess game, are you more interested in what the players are thinking or in the color of their hair?

I am not interested in either actually.

I am only interested in the game itself. Its execution and the possibilities present. I could care less what the players are thinking. It could be about their sex life or about what they ate or it could be about the game… but in the end all that matters is what is happening on the board and the richness of the position.

What do I care about the players themselves? They are only tools.

SO what Do I care about your feelings? I don’t.

Get off your high horse and get back to work.

Prove your point and become equal to those whose names you love to drop. Then I may listen to you. Otherwise, you have nothing of value to say.

squarehopper, it is perspectives like yours that divide an audience into making money, and writing something enjoyable to read -you are lost in the former.

Hmmm , intellectual arguements, don’t we just love them, everyone else is inferior because they don’t play chess or what ever, life is a very colourful, thing lol, try being me lol, used to get bullied, had no life, now at 38, starting to get recognised publically as a singer, did’nt start singing until 33 lol, now I’ve been told I have the ability to be a club singer, oh and the ex agent has heard a lot worse getting paid lol, how many start that old, also re- writing lyrics, I do my own sometimes , but as I’m a loner in part I can’t get them sung in a group how I want them done. Strangly enough I’m also attracting a world of arseholes and chancers wanting a date/ never used to happen though, oh but we are the inferior tell but dont show writers, whilst you clever sods have erm intellectual battles, try struggling to survive in society before you judge the so called shit writings of others, I’m sick of hearing it. You lot have no soul and don’t give a shit about people as human beings, writing is about being human, learning to survive, caring, if you have family struggling to bring them up or struggling to make it, guess I’m not frigging good enough to be included in your toff nosed intellectual arguements lol unless I make it to a number one with singing lol ha ha. To me you stuck up people are the people who cause hate and anger, come off your high horses, and life is not chess, its for living and experience , not just trying to be clever in rows.

nelson1, I like you. ♥

bows to everyone

And exits the stage.

Squarehopper:
This is my work, be it writing on forums or writing books. That is what I am trying to get across to you.

Those chess games would not exist without those player’s minds.
Supercomputers did not beat humans until they started to use programs that tried to understand the way people think, game tree programming was not enough. You, of all people, I know understand this.
If I refer to someone to illustrate my point, please don’t accuse me of name dropping – it is a facetious attack and you know it.
If I claimed to have tea with them last week, maybe….
“Otherwise, you have nothing of value to say.”
I hope that this was written in anger, we can often learn from those that are struggling as well as from those that have succeeded.

Nelson1:
I’m not sure who you aimed those remarks at, but please don’t assume that you are the only one to “try struggling to survive in society”.
I, for one, have seen far more than my fair share of pain, both physical and otherwise, in this life.
And as I have spent a reasonable portion of my life counseling the abused, I think maybe I do ‘give a shit about people as human beings’.

If you read these arguments, I think you will recognise that – wordy or otherwise – most ARE emotionally involved in this topic.

LOL tia, I’m sick of the snobbery on here. its doing my head in and I can’t stand it. Someone has to speak for the average writer, LOL,  in reality I have probably lived through more practical and personal life struggles than some of the so called intellects on here, I should of been a suicide years ago or a druggy or alcoholic, but instead I battle on through it, LOL and recently I had a drag queen apologise in front of 100 people on stage for bullying me at work when I was a teen, I survived sexual harrassment several times, in the TA/ army and at work , as well as my parents divorce and school bullying, lol. can’t wait to make it on the club singing scene just before I’m 40 lol, can’t wait to say “stuff you” to all the bullies, I have more staying power than most of those characters. Most of the people on here like a word battle, me I write a lot to defend. These lot on here are intellectual bullies as bullying comes in many forms, and I have experience all of them, but next year no longer will I be a victim because, I will have them singing with me instead lol, those same people that would be to scared to set foot on a stage lol.

Yes lol squarehopper, don’t like when someone else lets you know they have a talent lol. ha ha ha, nope I don’t leave the stage until I die because I will for ever remind people of their arrogance and cruelity, lol just like you when you say checkmate !

avedis, those remarks are aimed at those who know what they are doing, those who play arrogant mind games to make themselves feel good, whilst putting others down as inferior, because they have a different style or skills capability, why not live and let live and help each other. But then again, humans all have a selfish streak somewhere, if its not a superiority complex , then it is in the form of jealousy.

nelson1. Your number one in my book.

Thanks onlywish and Tia, I know I’m a gob-shite, But I mean and feel the thingsI say. I always was the one who spoke up and asked questions, still am :)

Good on you, Nelson1

Heather, an autre fan of M

LOL, thanks, I bow but remain on the stage even if square hopper unfriended me. :)

LOL wow, I am just gonna jump in here after reading a very entertaining page. I happen to be a writer that uses lots of imagery in my stories, although only at certain times. Anne Rice is a good example of being rather flowery. Her Mayfair Witches Trilogy was for me at first excessively over done with flowery descriptions and pages that went on and ON about something as insignicant to the story as the flower bush outside. BUT after getting through that part the trilogy turned out, for me, to be a very good one, one I couldnt put down and would read again in a heartbeat. BUT i must say that first bit almost put me off reading it altogether. My favourite authors Terry Goodkind and Diana Gabaldon bows down write AMAZING novels, with imagery that is quite sufficient to paint a detailed picture of the surroundings, though without going into the overly poetic colours of it. They draw you into their characters with such force that you feel as if you are right there with them, and lemme tell you, I’ve cried plenty of times when reading that one of them dies. BUT they only do this with paragraphs on the immense DETAILS about that person, and I am sorry but “A boy kissed a girl” DOES NOT get you attached to boy or girl BORING!. I am with Squarehopper on this one, I believe it makes a story worth reading when you know exactly how that character feels in that moment. You are joined with them then. Maybe its just me, but then again those authors are writing thousand page books in eight book series’. They would not top the bestseller list with “Boy kissed girl” ...Yawn.

My take is that everyone has their opinion on what they do and don’t like and if someone doesn’t ‘get’ what someone else is trying to achieve, they have every right to say so. Some people like to be shown, others like to be told. This (along with all sorts of other things) just comes down to taste.

But claiming right or wrong on a subject like this as a way of dismissing things offhand, now that I disagree with. If everyone did everything by the rules, there is no art, just the literary equivalent of elevator music.

I agree in stories , the scenes do need to be set, just not over done. And i would’nt just say the boy kissed the girl either, but I would’nt go into it for half an hour either.