Blogflog - Show, don't Tell
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lkh_lashoutsLink: Show, don't Tell
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.
Writers are always being told – show, don’t tell. That’s great advice, but what the heck does it mean? It took me years to figure it out as a beginning writer, but once I did it became a filter I ran scenes through whenever my writing felt flat, or lifeless. If you’re a beginning writer thinking, great for her, but how does that help me figure it out, just be patient, because I’m going to give you some examples from the book I’m currently writing. It’s the twenty-third novel that I’ve written in my Anita Blake series, and my thirty-sixth novel counting one short story anthology, called Strange Candy. Why not tell you the title of the book I’m going to use as an example, because it’s still untitled.
Jean-Claude was first introduced in, Guilty Pleasures in 1993. One of the true challenges of being a series writer is to keep long running characters fresh for you as a writer, and for the readers. Both the ones that have been reading from the beginning and for the ones that have just discovered your books, and jumped in at the end. If you’re just starting out and haven’t got first book published, you may think, why should I care? Well, hopefully years from now you’ll be writing your twenty-something book, and then you will care, or I hope you will care as much about your characters as I do mine.
I wrote Jean-Claude’s first introduction in my current novel like this:
“Jean-Claude sat behind that huge desk and that gleaming display of matrimonial treasure, but none of it was as pretty as he was, and I didn’t think it was just me being in love with him that made me think that. He had been a ladies’ man for more centuries than our country had been in existence. He still occasionally appeared on stage at Guilty Pleasures, the strip club he owned, and had managed for years. On nights when he was billed as the star attraction we couldn’t get all the customers in the club, even if we were willing to make the fire marshal unhappy.”
It’s not a bad start, but it tells you Jean-Claude is attractive and sexy enough to be a stripper and a seducer of women, but that doesn’t tell you anything about what he really looks like. People have very different ideas of what attractive means, so the reader may fill in the blanks with the a totally different looking character from the above, because I’ve told them he’s handsome, even sexy, but I haven’t shown it, I haven’t proved it to the reader, and that’s really what showing vs. telling is, proving to the reader that the character is handsome, sexy, or whatever. You have to make your reader, see, feel, taste, touch, believe.
So I rewrote the scene:
“Jean-Claude sat behind that huge desk and that gleaming display of matrimonial treasure, but none of it was as pretty as him. His black hair curled softly past his shoulders mingling so perfectly with the velvet of his jacket that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. The shirt that peeked from the jacket was scarlet, a red that looked fabulous with the hair and that unearthly white skin of his, a perfect whiteness that no living skin could rival. he was very pale tonight, no blush of color to his face at all which meant he hadn’t fed yet. There was a time I couldn’t have told, but I’d been studying his face and moods for years. Once I had refused to be food for any vampire, even him. Now the thought that he hadn’t fed, and that it could be part of our foreplay tightened things low in my body so hard and sudden that I had to reach for the edge of the desk to steady myself, and I hadn’t even gotten to his face.
I raised up to finally look into that face and that near perfect curve of cheek, the kissable lips, and finally the coup de grace of his eyes. They looked almost black in the overhead lights, but some gleam always seemed to show that swimming blue like deep sea water where the monsters swim, and there are wonders to behold. His dark eyelashes were actually double-rowed on top so they looked like he’d used mascara, but he never had to, and then the perfect arch of black eyebrow . . . he looked too beautiful, too perfect, like a work of art instead of a person. How did this man love me? But the smile on his face, the light in his eyes, said plainly that he saw something wonderful when he looked at me, too. I didn’t know whether to be flattered, amazed, or ask why me? Why not a thousand more traditionally beautiful women? he could have had movie stars, or models, but he’d chosen me. Me, too short, curvy even with my gym workout, and scarred from my job, still struggling to heal all the issues life had saddled me with, and yet, he smiled at me, held his hand out to me. I went around the desk to take that offered hand, but I didn’t feel like the princess to his prince. I felt like the clumsy peasant to his very, regal King. ”
Do you see what happens when you show, rather than tell? The above didn’t just show that Jean-Claude is gorgeous, but it also revealed Anita’s character and inner world, too. It also says something about Jean-Claude that wouldn’t have been on the paper if I hadn’t shown his appearance through Anita’s eyes, and let her show her feelings about him and herself.
Telling is literally telling the reader what they should believe, but showing let’s them see it, feel it, experience it for themselves much more viscerally. Telling skims the surface like a bare brush of lips, the way your aunt kissed you when you were a kid. Showing digs deeper, it’s a lover’s kiss, that presses so hard against your mouth that you have to open our lips to them, and let their tongue slide inside you. Telling is having to kiss someone; showing is wanting to kiss someone.
I don’t want to tell you that Jean-Claude is hot, and Anita is uncertain of her own beauty, I want to show you.
Show, don’t tell.
Jean-Claude by Brett Booth from the comic adaptation of Guilty Pleasures
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.
Writers are always being told – show, don’t tell. That’s great advice, but what the heck does it mean? It took me years to figure it out as a beginning writer, but once I did it became a filter I ran scenes through whenever my writing felt flat, or lifeless. If you’re a beginning writer thinking, great for her, but how does that help me figure it out, just be patient, because I’m going to give you some examples from the book I’m currently writing. It’s the twenty-third novel that I’ve written in my Anita Blake series, and my thirty-sixth novel counting one short story anthology, called Strange Candy. Why not tell you the title of the book I’m going to use as an example, because it’s still untitled.
Jean-Claude was first introduced in, Guilty Pleasures in 1993. One of the true challenges of being a series writer is to keep long running characters fresh for you as a writer, and for the readers. Both the ones that have been reading from the beginning and for the ones that have just discovered your books, and jumped in at the end. If you’re just starting out and haven’t got first book published, you may think, why should I care? Well, hopefully years from now you’ll be writing your twenty-something book, and then you will care, or I hope you will care as much about your characters as I do mine.
I wrote Jean-Claude’s first introduction in my current novel like this:
“Jean-Claude sat behind that huge desk and that gleaming display of matrimonial treasure, but none of it was as pretty as he was, and I didn’t think it was just me being in love with him that made me think that. He had been a ladies’ man for more centuries than our country had been in existence. He still occasionally appeared on stage at Guilty Pleasures, the strip club he owned, and had managed for years. On nights when he was billed as the star attraction we couldn’t get all the customers in the club, even if we were willing to make the fire marshal unhappy.”
It’s not a bad start, but it tells you Jean-Claude is attractive and sexy enough to be a stripper and a seducer of women, but that doesn’t tell you anything about what he really looks like. People have very different ideas of what attractive means, so the reader may fill in the blanks with the a totally different looking character from the above, because I’ve told them he’s handsome, even sexy, but I haven’t shown it, I haven’t proved it to the reader, and that’s really what showing vs. telling is, proving to the reader that the character is handsome, sexy, or whatever. You have to make your reader, see, feel, taste, touch, believe.
So I rewrote the scene:
“Jean-Claude sat behind that huge desk and that gleaming display of matrimonial treasure, but none of it was as pretty as him. His black hair curled softly past his shoulders mingling so perfectly with the velvet of his jacket that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. The shirt that peeked from the jacket was scarlet, a red that looked fabulous with the hair and that unearthly white skin of his, a perfect whiteness that no living skin could rival. he was very pale tonight, no blush of color to his face at all which meant he hadn’t fed yet. There was a time I couldn’t have told, but I’d been studying his face and moods for years. Once I had refused to be food for any vampire, even him. Now the thought that he hadn’t fed, and that it could be part of our foreplay tightened things low in my body so hard and sudden that I had to reach for the edge of the desk to steady myself, and I hadn’t even gotten to his face.
I raised up to finally look into that face and that near perfect curve of cheek, the kissable lips, and finally the coup de grace of his eyes. They looked almost black in the overhead lights, but some gleam always seemed to show that swimming blue like deep sea water where the monsters swim, and there are wonders to behold. His dark eyelashes were actually double-rowed on top so they looked like he’d used mascara, but he never had to, and then the perfect arch of black eyebrow . . . he looked too beautiful, too perfect, like a work of art instead of a person. How did this man love me? But the smile on his face, the light in his eyes, said plainly that he saw something wonderful when he looked at me, too. I didn’t know whether to be flattered, amazed, or ask why me? Why not a thousand more traditionally beautiful women? he could have had movie stars, or models, but he’d chosen me. Me, too short, curvy even with my gym workout, and scarred from my job, still struggling to heal all the issues life had saddled me with, and yet, he smiled at me, held his hand out to me. I went around the desk to take that offered hand, but I didn’t feel like the princess to his prince. I felt like the clumsy peasant to his very, regal King. ”
Do you see what happens when you show, rather than tell? The above didn’t just show that Jean-Claude is gorgeous, but it also revealed Anita’s character and inner world, too. It also says something about Jean-Claude that wouldn’t have been on the paper if I hadn’t shown his appearance through Anita’s eyes, and let her show her feelings about him and herself.
Telling is literally telling the reader what they should believe, but showing let’s them see it, feel it, experience it for themselves much more viscerally. Telling skims the surface like a bare brush of lips, the way your aunt kissed you when you were a kid. Showing digs deeper, it’s a lover’s kiss, that presses so hard against your mouth that you have to open our lips to them, and let their tongue slide inside you. Telling is having to kiss someone; showing is wanting to kiss someone.
I don’t want to tell you that Jean-Claude is hot, and Anita is uncertain of her own beauty, I want to show you.
Show, don’t tell.
Jean-Claude by Brett Booth from the comic adaptation of Guilty Pleasures
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no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 08:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 08:56 am (UTC)I feel a bit cruel for hoping that the people who find this as profound and inspiring advice get eviscerated by beta readers/editors/agents and hopefully learn that showing actions/reactions/consequences will inform a reader so much more about a character than giant slabs of descriptive text ever will.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 01:37 pm (UTC)This means true love or something.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 01:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 10:56 am (UTC)The first version is so much better than the second there's no comparison. Are we really sure she's not trolling us? REALLY TRULY SURE?
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 11:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 11:05 am (UTC)Someone do a better recap of SDT please, because I'm sure one of you can do it far more accurately and without all the ego stroking she's just given herself.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 11:52 am (UTC)Does she really think readers, even new ones, would go "trol lol lol OH MY GOD THIS MAN IS NOT BLOND AS I IMAGINED! DESTROYED! OMG... he's a VAMPIRE????" and be completely unable to continue with the book? (I was reading a book the other day and didn't realise the main character was a girl for about three chapters. Did it make me unable to enjoy and comprehend the novel? No.
Also it's really really important that readers relearn every time that Anita is uncertain of her looks compared with her blindingly beautiful boyfriends.
Also what the hell is up with Cartoon!JC's neck?
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 03:24 pm (UTC)LKH needs to just... stop. We all know what JC looks like, we don't need to read endless descriptions of it because IT IS SO FREAKING BORING.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 12:45 pm (UTC)no. words.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 01:39 pm (UTC)Okay, so where's her real example of show, don't tell?
Wait. That was it? It wasn't a joke/trick?
Well, that explains a hell of a lot.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 03:22 pm (UTC)Also, So much second-hand embarrassment for that second passage. She can't even look at a guy without crippling arousal.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 03:26 pm (UTC)I cannot believe that sentence was written by someone who gets paid to write for a living. I know she means something like, "Why not tell you the title of the book I'm going to use as an example? I can't, because it's still untitled." As it reads, however, that line makes no sense.
b) JC's skin looks painful in that drawing.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-03 04:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 11:23 pm (UTC)I'm a fan of Tim O'Brien's minimalist style, but he achieves that style by writing everything out, and then going back through his stories and taking out words he considers unnecessary.
Step 1 is getting the story out of you. Step 2 is making it better.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 01:09 am (UTC)Best, simplest explanation of writing I've stumbled across yet. Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 05:53 pm (UTC)Also, does anyone else with the same parts Anita has feel "tightening" when aroused? Because that's not what it feels like for me at all. I'm not sure how I'd describe it, to be fair, but it definitely wouldn't be that. Is it different for everyone, or is LKH just showing her utter LACK of sexual knowledge and/or inability to phrase things well again?
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 06:23 pm (UTC)No, and even if someone does, she or her trus will just toss out the fact that she's published all those books, so she obviously knows what she's talking about, even though she's completely wrong.
I can't address your second question, as I am lacking in the necessary equipment.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 06:29 pm (UTC)Also no? I think it's more of a case of LKH being unable to phrase things well since she has that crippling lack of ability to say "penis."
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 07:52 pm (UTC)When suddenly and extremely aroused, yes. It's a definite thing. I mean, I think it is anyway -- my spleen's never tightened when I'm aroused, and considering that she only refers to "things low on my body," maybe that's what she's talking about.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 06:35 pm (UTC)Dear lord, why is this woman still being published? Especially when she posts stuff demonstrating her anti-talent for all to see?
Also, that drawing makes JC look like a male prostitute on the clock.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 09:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 11:42 pm (UTC)I froze, my darkened brown eyes gazing into his abyssal blue ones. I used to meet his eyes in defiance. Now meeting his gaze was difficult, but I forced myself to do it anyway. "You know the answer is still no."
"Non?" his voice was gentle, coaxing. He stood up, his unbuttoned shirt revealing more of his chest cut like white marble.
"No. You know I have a harem to think of. I can't favor any of you, pick just one of you, even for politics. If I were to choose, the rest might die." I tilted my head up to hold our eye contact, determined to win this battle of wills before I got a crick in my neck. I was tired from my night job raising zombies, and I still had chicken blood to clean off my gray blazer.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Other than the matrimonial treasures, she really didn't give any hint of what might be going on, so it's rather hard to rework because nothing was happening besides Jean-Claude sitting at a desk. I had to invent the reason from whole cloth.
And while I'm not a fan of her over-describing, presuming this is the introduction of the characters in the book, something needs to be said about what they look like for the new readers. A lot of what she wrote was junk (no need to mention the strip club or ladies man thing unless they become pertinent to the plot, nor Anita's self doubts that ultimately amount to nothing). But some of it was necessary junk.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 11:11 pm (UTC)Yeah, in my mind I see two characters staring at each other for several minutes with doofy grins on their faces. Then I hear Mike Nelson from Rifftrax saying, "Uhh...line?"
no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 04:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 07:01 am (UTC)Truth be told, her writing would probably be a lot better if she could just link to various pictures and shut up about physical descriptions.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-31 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-01 01:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-01 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-01 01:54 pm (UTC)