It depends on style. If I'm writing a journal or writing the story as if it was being told, telling is natural. Similarly, when the narrator is omniscient, there's no harm telling things the characters can't feasibly know. However, if the narrator has limited knowledge or if I'm writing in first person present tense, telling might be unnatural and I'll rely heavily on showing to make it more immersive.
Because I'm not an author, nor do I plan on acting like one. I would like to provide examples, but I only have experience with essays and reports. As such it would be a poor imitation of the style, similar to how I see the example provided.
With a bad representation of these styles actually being used, it makes the discussion fall upon one side to argue. For those who show over tell, they have to either distance themself from the representation, or provide their own example of how they would do it. The issue being, in a debate such as this there should be fair representation for both arguments.
(Overall I think this is just my education speaking. I don't really mind, so please, no more passive aggression. )
On a more detailed note (not actually directed at anyone) *My own wall of text incoming*:
It's generally well accepted that showing is going to take longer than telling for matters of fact in writing. A picture is worth 1000 words. Complex emotions, however, can be shown faster than telling. Generally speaking, different kinds of stories will have some mix of both where appropriate. Some situations call for showing, others call for telling.
Showing a man crying over his dead child evokes appropriate emotions as compared to just saying the man felt melancholic depression over his lost child.
Technically, you can show at infinite depth. Why tell people someone wrote a note when you could physically describe the motion of their hand and let the reader try to decipher what they wrote?
An entire story should never be "show vs tell" but should be each where appropriate. The balance simply falls on what kind of story is being told. Even strictly non-fiction works benefit from written examples which are "showing", and even the most dramatic fiction needs to just tell you what color something is, or we'd never leave the first scene.
I feel like the "show don't tell" sort of thing came about due to visual media. In a movie, yes, obviously, you have 28 frames per second to work with. In a play, it's very similar. Don't tell, show in most cases. Sometimes, like star wars, you have exposition you want to set up, and it saves screen time to tell. Or you have a narrator open the story up, and save yourself 30 minutes of screen or acting time. Otherwise, you've already got pictures, just show it. Hell, Chekhov is the one who is generally attributed to the idea of it as a 'rule' for writing, which means it's mostly an idea born from modern romanticism. I, personally, can't stand stories that get overly descriptive and the story takes 4 times as long to read because there is meaningless detail. Even in Chekhov's examples they're a minimum of twice as long.
Show when you want emotional responses, tell when you want to move forward. Showing is also, actually, much easier to write from a meta perspective. Turning 200 words into 1000 words by showing takes less effort than writing 1000 words of all telling because there is technically less substance. It's far easier to visualize a single scene in heavy detail than it is to keep the thread of the plot moving in 5 scenes.
I've experienced this first hand multiple times. My story has a lot of telling. I mean a lot. It's the type of story it is, retrospective journal entries summarizing events means almost all of it is telling. When I have the occasional break into events that cause me to write in a shown form, I write at like 6 times the pace. It's the difference of scenes taking multiple chapters, rather than multiple scenes fitting into one chapter.
"Show, don't tell" Is horrible advice. Don't get me wrong, the meaning behind it is good. But the advice itself is terrible. My usual example of this is a weapons shop.
"You enter a shop with a crossed knife and sword above its door. Inside, there are racks and shelves and walls full of various weapons. Axes, swords, polearms, bows, and various other weaponry you've scant ever considered, let alone be able to name."
- Here, you're SHOWING that it's cluttered by describing what all is present. However, this violates the rule of Chekhov's Gun (Don't introduce something unless it's going to play a role later).
"You enter a weapon shop that's cluttered with various bits and pieces of different weaponry. Some you're familiar with. Others, not so much. You can hear hammering in the back as you make your way through the narrow aisles, browsing the steel, wood, and other more 'exotic' metals."
- Here, you're TELLING that it's cluttered by SHOWING the scene.
Both are good, but in different ways. And yes, I wrote this in 2nd person, as I just finished DMing a DND game. I'm not back in the mindset of 1st or 3rd person yet. In short, I use a bit of both showing and telling.
"Show, don't tell" is terrible advice because both showing and telling can be useful, as long as it sets the stage effectively for the audience.
It really depends on your style but overall you should be aiming to do both showing and telling. Showing helps when it comes to describing your scenery or conveying an emotion while telling can help quicken the pacing or give some vackstory that may not work when made into a flashback
There's this website from an editor who gives great advice on how to use both show and tell: https://btleditorial.com/2021/03/04/show-and-tell-in-novel/
Let us call them what they are: Tools, that’s all.
Welcome to my Tool Talk.
You can Tell and Show all you want, but there is meaning also in what you do not say. In where you put spaces. Punctuation. Assonance. Consonan- DISCORDANCE——— the subtextual, the hypertextual, the intertextual.
Context, layered truths, a vision for your narrative: You are in control: you hold all the keys: you have all the power: USE IT!
Typefaces, images, typefaces, images, repetition and word association.
You choose where you start. First line, Last line, First sound, Last sound, RHYME.
You have meter, words have rhythm, IMPACT, baggage. Your every word's a choice, it’s yours: the literary device.
I do think it a terrible shame that we should tell anyone to show and tell: that was cute in second grade (as noted by honourable Envy above), but I do not like it.
It’s such a ridiculous preconception of how stories are framed:
Show and Tell are just tools in our trade; no greater than a hammer and its nails, but without the wood, without the carpenter, without the mathematics, the measurements, the materials: however are you to build a house with them?
By what foundation will it hold itself up? How will it function as a house without furnishings? WHO WILL LIVE THERE? Is it watertight? Fire-resistant?
Does it have a pest problem? How about plumbing? Electricity? Do the walls have great gaping holes in them? ARE THE NAILS STICKING OUT? Did the HAMMER hit the WALL???
…And is the neighbourhood nice? The neighbours, nice? The town in which the house sits, could you find it on a map, or is it a house all alone in the world?
What use a hammer and its nails… when you have nothing to build with them, no place to build it, nobody wanting to live there?
What use all the nails in the world, without a hammer to drive them? What use a hammer in your hand, when you have no nails save for those on your fingers and toes?
Showing without telling and telling without showing are such nonsenses, and the both of them together will build you nothing: you need the other tools in your kit to do anything interesting.
You need these bad boys and girls:
In your toolkit are: refrains, pronouns (a specified aspect so used by recollections/callbacks and foreshadowing/callforwards by-any-other-name that it gets a special existence for many people, including myself (wouldn’t want to hear anything but she… for he makes a girl feel pretty ugly, inside and out — this is called an aside by the by, and I just broke your fourth wall; giggidy)). <— and by way of alluded directionality arise thoughts carefully hidden but not unbidden.
Alliteration (I will not alliterate this once, don’t worry) can be jarring and irritating done poorly, but it is a little tool in your kit and a feather in your very fine leather cap should you manage to do it all subtle-like. Psyche >__>
Characterisation, dialogue, secrets, omissions, narrowly hidden truths nestled in what looks like exaggeration and hyperbole, understatement, euphemism, and the nonsensical technical distinctions between similes and metaphors and analogies! Oxford commas can take my allegorical metaphorical boot up their blimey British backsides like the serifs they would sans down if they could.
The possibilities of language are literally endless.
You can write rhetorically, prosaically, poetically, and badly too! A good misspelling or dialectical marking can really accent a piece.
You have access to built in formats (like i did above), you have access to freeform artistry with how your words are presented: big, small, italicised and emboldened, underlined and struck right though.
I cannot reiterate it in enough ways, I can never reiterate it in enough ways:
You are the GOD of your written world.
Play. Ignore. Care for. Prey upon. Make them suffer. Laugh over their broken plot armour. Resurrect them just to kill them once more. Make them happy you did it, and conscious of the fact that you are going to do it again, and they can’t stop you! Drop the people you wrote into existence into an unmarked drawer and let their world be covered in dust — or burn it, destroy it!
There is far too much at your disposal to reduce the truest kernel of written advice to ‘SHOW AND/OR TELL’.
Your story itself is at stake here: are you telling your story as you think it best told? Do that. Are you looking to improve your storytelling ability? Write more and read it back to yourself aloud.
I think rhetorical function is the better rendition of writing: a logical through line, an emotional resonance, and be confident about it!
If you put on the page what you *intended* to, it will *resonate*. That is your perfection to chase — not cadence, not showing or telling, but resonance. Rhetoric requires an audience, just as resonance requires an audience: they are one and the same by function.
And if we’re telling people our favourite literary phrases?
Keep it secret:
Your one lie is that you are writing Fiction; you are the World-Maker.
You create not characters, but people. People who live and breathe through your words alone. Every word a choice, a breath of your own life, an investment of your finite time, crafted to be worth another’s finite time.
Don’t waste it telling a story without rhetoric. Don’t throw it away showing off a world that does not resonate!
Your readers are looking for meaning and for entertainment, yes…. But what they want more than anything: is connection.
They want it to feel real. They want to be immersed in your reality.
So take them there on wings of words, and never let them go.
A better version of "show don't tell" I've heard is "know when to expand and contract".
@Tyranomaster was touching on it, but a more useful skill as a writer is knowing when a scene is better expanded - that is, including more detail - or when a scene is better contracted. I often contract scenes that aren't useful to the plot - most often, time skips. If nothing particularly plot relevant happens for a week or more, I just write some kind of segue to indicate time has passed between scenes. Could just be "a few days later they [scene start]", or something like "he practiced sword fighting over the next few weeks." Sometimes, when writing more of a segue, I'll realize a scene does actually have more plot relevance - then I'll expand it into and actual scene. Like if I realize someone visits a character during the sword training, and that the conversation they have is something that should actually be written out. (Say, the MC's dad showing up to talk about why he gave up being an adventurer and the MC's reaction, versus the MC's sword trainer just checking his progress.)
Though as a counterpoint, how you describe things is a great way to establish character voice. It can be a tricky balancing act, but you'd expect a different level of detail from a botanist MC talking about plants than a mercenary doing the same. (Though a mercenary with a hobby for botany sounds like a fun character, actually lol)
I accidentally default to "telling" a lot, due to my background as a Dungeon Master for decades, I feel.
I also tend to have a bit of a pedantic streak and like to use precise vocabulary.
That said, I notice that I will "Tell" a lot more when I don't want to spend too long on a specific element of a scene. If the point of a scene is about a heart chat between two characters, it's probably not the best time to spend ten paragraphs telling the reader about the quality of the wolf pelt on the wall.
But it's probably the right time to show WHY something that was just said hurts, rather than simply telling why it did.
