Show vs. Tell

Joni’s going to write a blog post today.

Joni sits at her desk, pencils, paper, stapler surrounding her. A deep sigh leaves her mouth as she sits contemplating, ready to tap on the keys preparing to write today’s blog.

Aha! I think I’ll write about SHOW vs. Tell! In the first sentence I told you what Joni was going to do. In the second sentence I SHOWED you.

I often read from beginning writers, ‘What is the difference in show vs. tell?’ I read many mentor’s critiques exclaiming, ‘You need to show more than tell’.

Showing is more specific in terms as it lays out the picture for you. General terms are good when you need to tell when something is happening that is brief in the story. Whereas, showing moves the story along from point A to point B.

To tell a story, one only needs to say,

Mary went to the store.

To help in getting the picture across to your reader, the ones who are following your every word, you need to learn how to SHOW them the story.

Mary grabbed her purse, hurried out the front door to walk down to the corner store. The screen door slammed as her mother called from behind, “Don’t forget the bread.”

You can see Mary in your mind, can’t you? You no longer are holding a non-descriptive image of Mary, you now see a woman grabbing her purse and rushing out the door, only to be halted by the voice of her mother.

Think of yourself reading a book. You don’t start at the end, you begin at the first page. You take it slowly and read one page at a time so you can grasp the entire picture.

Taken out of context, you can speed read a page here and there but do you fulfill your journey of enjoyment? Showing and telling can give you the same information. But with the showing the reader gets to savor each and every word in a visual manner.

Creating a mental picture for the reader is important if you care for them enough to read to the end. Children love fairy tales where they don’t need a lot of the weighted down imagery; they get picture books to supply the images. But novels or short stories need to tap into the mental cinema of the reader’s mind.

Telling is fine for trivial things like it was a stormy day. If the storm is essential to moving the story along or part of the immediate scene then showing should be done. Don’t over do it with the imagery so no one says you’re padding your work. Showing should come as a natural flow to you.

I was sad when my dog died.

This is telling you how I felt when my dog died.

I was miserable when my dog died. It hurt so much I could just spit. I never expected him to die and now he’s left me alone and lonely for companionship.

This is padding the telling and not really showing you how I felt. You read that my dog died, I hurt, and I felt alone.

Now let me try to SHOW you how I felt.

Today I was utterly distracted when the puppies in the park were playing Frisbee, it reminded me of my Skippy. My friend for life or so I thought, until he contracted a deadly virus that took him from my life. No longer do I look at his bowls the same way as they still sit on the floor near the door.

This statement gives more specific details, without telling how I “felt”. You can read in my words that I miss him. You can read my hurt without using the word. You can read that I miss my dog and that I’m hurting just by getting the longing feeling from, “No longer do I look at his bowls the same way.”

The point of "showing" is not to drown the reader in a sea of details. Instead, you should pick out only those instrumental details that matter.

Give your reader something to hold onto. Have them frothing at the mouth waiting to read more of your pain and anguish. Give him/her a tale of beauty with ribbons of sensory and imagery. Save the telling for the hairdresser.

Give your writing some music and it will SING!

Story to Tell...

Prov.10:20 The tongue of the just is as choice silver: the heart of the wicked is little worth.

As a leader in the world and the writing community, I see something that knits us all together. We all have a story to tell. Even if it was not a dream of ours, or maybe it was and we just got lost along the way (see yesterdays post) we all need to be aware that we have a story to tell and how you write, effectively drawing out emotions in the reader, will either spell success or fail in your journey.

As our story unfolds, heartstrings will be tugged and like a rubber band, it will snap something in the reader. Either a tear will exit the eye and make a beeline for the chin, or maybe a crinkle will appear on the mouth and form a smile. Maybe a fevered pitch will drive a stake right in the heart of your reader, and anger will bubble up to the surface and a scream will bolt out of the mouth. Whatever emotion that is elicited, it will have to come from bringing it home for the reader.

I have met quite a few people that have said, “I’m a writer,” and I know many who are ‘published writers’, I know many who write, but again, it isn’t the story you tell or the perfect sentence structure, it is the emotions that are tied to the story. I don’t care if it is a sci-fi thriller, a Western, or Romance, (I think we all relate to them in some way) or a supernatural thriller, we have to tell the story with the reader in mind. We need to reach them, or we have no story.

Allowing your best friend to say, Good story! Loved it! Really does not tell us how we’ve done in pulling on the heart and making them feel as if they were in a Narnia-like closet, lost among your very words. We need them to express how their heart pined for the star-crossed lovers, we need them to say “I cried when I read about Mary’s death.” Why did they cry? Because you reached into their heart, and touched a cosmic emotion that wriggled the tear ducts and left them feeling pangs of pain.

Is that what we want? Pain? Not necessarily, but we do want to get an emotional reaction. If we just TELL a story, we are not going to get any reaction except maybe, “Well that was nice.” When we take it to the level of a writer, we are going to show them the same story, only they will say, “Wow! That was great! Touched me all over!”  Can you see the difference?

I know a lot of people who read my poetry, who really don’t even like poetry, say things like, “I got it! It touched me! You moved me.” That is what I like to hear.  I wrote my dad a birthday poem (as always) and my mother said, “It was beautiful. I could really feel the emotions in it.” I know I know, it was my mother, but I said, “Did dad cry?” She said, “I don’t know about him, but I sure did!”

YES! I scored! I got a tear out of the reading of my poem. I went back, read what I wrote, and even *I* welled up at the reading of it! Daggone it! Not me. I’m not supposed to cry! But as a writer, even sometimes WE need to cry too at the good writing of our souls. Every one of us has a story to tell!

The Drama of it all...

“A true spiritual aspirant will never be frightened by any circumstances, hence, move on, angel, move on!” ~BJG

***

Oh the drama of it all. I think you’ve gathered by now that I, as a writer, can take a broken nail and spin it into a web of a story. I’m like that. I was at my m-i-l’s the other day, and all she did was ask, “How’s it going out on the farm?” I began my tale with my old treadle sewing machine, placed in some thread and began weaving a delightful tale.

Instead of the simple answer, “Great, life is great.” I began, “Well the potato harvesting began roaring onto the fields with machines I’ve never seen in my life. I loved the way they swept the field and one by one an army-full of semi trucks carried away the plump juicy potatoes. And we have an Elk, living in the woods, whom I named Eli thinking it was a male last year, but when I heard the baby by it’s side I realized, Eli, was Eliza, still named Eli for short.

I went on as I always do. “You wouldn’t believe the images out there, wild turkeys walking up the road, Black-eyed Susan’s galloping over every open space, and the turkeys being grown for their shipment into slaughter. Yes siree, life out there on that farm is pretty awesome.”

I add drama to every thing in my life and as my followers more than likely can tell, I speak truth, I just have a tendency to color my world. It is like my brain is a living thesaurus, and believe you me if I can’t think of the right word, I’ll dig to find it.

That is what writing is all about. You weave a colorful story, embellish the truth a bit, not too much so it is a very believable story, but paint it just so the reader becomes a part of the fabric. He/she becomes so engrossed in the flow of every word, the stroke of every key, a part of the very scene, that they jump into the fantasy that you’ve created for them.

Rose Madder by Stephen King was like that. It started off, an abused woman who lived in fear, and one day she just woke up and walked away, fearing for her life, but she did it! She made a new life for herself too, but wouldn’t you know it, her hubby found her, as all abusive husbands do and what happened is... you’ll have to read it and find out. 

She bought a picture and somehow Mr. King painted many levels of the canvas for us, the reader. A story in a story if you will. That is what I strive to do in my life. I try to paint a picture of myself, a portrait for you to glance at. Then I embellish it by wearing jeans, fixing my hair all nice and applying makeup, but never really hiding the true me underneath.

In my words you may find the drama, but underneath it all, you will see the true me shining through. And know that deep down, the true me is a writer, through and through.

Growth is the only evidence of life. ~John Henry Newman, Apologia pro vita sua, 1864

Are you Showing or Telling?

Joni’s going to write on her blog.

Joni sits at her desk, pencils, paper, stapler and paper clips surrounding her. A deep sigh leaves her mouth as she sits contemplating, ready to tap on the keys preparing to write today’s blog.

Aha! I think I’ll write about SHOW vs. Tell! In the first sentence I told you what Joni was going to do. In the second sentence I SHOWED you.

Showing is more specific in terms as it lays out the picture for you. General terms are good when you need to tell when something is happening that is brief in the story. Whereas, showing moves the story along from point A to point B.

To tell a story, one only needs to say, Mary went to the store. To help in getting the picture across to your reader you need to learn how to SHOW them the story. Mary grabbed her purse hurried out the front door to walk down to the corner store. The screen door slammed as her mother called from behind, “Don’t forget the bread.”

Think of yourself reading a book. You don’t start at the end, you begin at the first page. You take it slowly and read one page at a time so you can grasp the entire picture.

Taken out of context, you can speed read a page here and there but do you fulfill your journey of enjoyment? Showing and telling can give you the same information. But with the showing the reader gets to savor each and every morsel.

Creating a mental picture for the reader is important if you care for them to read to the end. Children love fairy tales where they don’t need a lot of the baggage that comes with imagery, they get picture books. But novels or short stories need to tap into the mental cinema of the reader’s mind.

Telling is fine for trivial things like it was a stormy day. If the storm is essential to moving the story along or part of the immediate scene then showing should be done. Don’t over do it with the imagery so no one says you’re padding your work. Showing should come as a natural flow to you.

I was sad when my dog died.

This is me telling you how I felt.


I was miserable when my dog died. It hurt so much I could just spit. I never expected him to die and now he’s left me alone and lonely for companionship.

This is me padding the telling. You read that my dog died, I hurt, and I feel alone.

Today I was distracted when the puppies in the park were playing frisbee, it reminded me of my Skippy. My friend for life or so I thought, until he contracted a deadly virus that took him from me. No longer do I look at his bowls the same way as they still sit on the floor near the door.

This statement gives more specific details, without telling how I “felt”. You can read in my words that I miss him. You can read my hurt without using the word. You can read that I miss my dog and that I’m hurting just by getting the longing feeling from, “No longer do I look at his bowls.”

The point of "showing" is not to drown the reader in a sea of details. Instead, you should pick out only those details that matter.

Give your reader something to hold onto. Give him a tale of beauty. Save the telling for the hairdresser.