Understanding Show, Don’t Tell (And Really Getting it) by Janice Hardy and Show, Don’t Tell: How to write vivid descriptions, handle backstory, and describe your characters’ emotions by Sandra Gerth. Recently I began reading two e-books about this subject. Show me his anger, was he clenching his fists or not? I can’t really see his anger otherwise.” Apparently, however, that’s how anger has to be explained to avoid the sin of “telling.” If you are telling your friends about how a guy you know “got terribly angry,” I doubt anybody would stop you to tell you “yes, that’s all fine and good, but don’t tell me he was terribly angry. Despite presenting itself as natural and direct, “Showy” writing is cumbersome and unnatural, padding out perfectly fine sentences and with a fixation on trivial details that can easily stop the flow of a story. Second, when we tell stories to each other in real life, whether made up or not, we er. Pretty much everything written before the last 100 years was 90% Telling, with Showing sparkled here and there to enhance or highlight certain key passages.
First of all, the entire history of human literature. There are also some elephant-in-the-room-sized clues hinting that all this Show, Don’t Tell thing may be, at best, platitudes, and at worst, nonsense.
I have written other posts criticizing common bits of advice given to writers, and I have in fact hinted that I believe the emperor to all of them is naked, so here it is: Show, don’t tell.
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