Recently a few of my reviewers have pointed out that I should ‘show’ more and ‘tell’ less. Previously I was repeatedly charged with ‘overwriting’. Are these helpful souls pointing out to me universal truths of literature, or have they merely read the same ‘how to write’ books? That is to say, are there rules for good writing?

In the manner of Robin Williams in the ‘Dead Poets Society’, I am currently tearing apart the Gospel on Good Writing, reserving particular malice for the pages entitled ‘Show, Don’t Tell!’ I have hired a troupe of pubescent school boys to assist me in my vandalism, and expect to be arrested soon.

My beef with the ‘show, don’t tell’ rule is as follows:

1. Rules homogenize
2. I don’t believe in behaviourism, i.e. I don’t believe all, or even most mental states are expressed physically or even verbally – ask mutes and paraplegics, or even better mute paraplegics.
3. ‘Show, don’t tell’ turns novels into poor imitations of movies, forgoing the medium's great advantage, i.e. direct access to the character’s inner world.

So is ‘show, don’t tell’ a good rule? Are there any good rules? I would appreciate some views before I start work on my ground breaking novel ‘The Secret Pain of Mime Artists’ Copyright

Really? I think I could point out a group of published authors who follow the rules more often than not yet produced extremely disparate works.



What a great belly button gazer! But before addressing this one, let me ask: if a writer can't express a character's mental state via either physical or verbal expressions, then how exactly?

I agree with you in that there are indeed mental states so complex, or so subtle, that no physical expressions can be seen of them and any words of speech or thought must fail.

But how bland, how superficial, how misleading, how inadequate, if the writer tries to capture such states by merely "telling" the reader about them verbally.

Better, I think, to be more oblique, to suggest, via dialog or action (i.e., via "showing"), the state in question, so that readers can fill in the missing dots, or connect the dots, whichever the case may be. Showing is an ancient form of communication; it predates speech; it is all we have when words fail.



Agreed, when the rule is taken to the extreme. On the other hand, it so often rings so false when the author is telling me exactly what a character is thinking. It's a nineteenth century conceit. It's why I read Conrad for the wonderful description while barfing at the supposed insights into the minds of his characters.



Yes, it's a good rule, especially for beginners, and there are a lot of good rules. It's only the pros who know how to break them expertly.

Below are Elmore Leonard's 'ten rules of writing', just in case you haven't seen them before, though they're pretty well-known. Good food for thought.


WRITERS ON WRITING; Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle

By Elmore Leonard

These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

1. Never open a book with weather.
If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

2. Avoid prologues.
They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want.
There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's ''Sweet Thursday,'' but it's O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: ''I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy's thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.''

3. Never use a verb other than ''said'' to carry dialogue.
The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with ''she asseverated,'' and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb ''said'' . . .
. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances ''full of rape and adverbs.''

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

6. Never use the words ''suddenly'' or ''all hell broke loose.''
This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use ''suddenly'' tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories ''Close Range.''

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's ''Hills Like White Elephants'' what do the ''American and the girl with him'' look like? ''She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.'' That's the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.

9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
Unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you're good at it, you don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

And finally:
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he's writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character's head, and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care. I'll bet you don't skip dialogue.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.)
If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character -- the one whose view best brings the scene to life -- I'm able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what's going on, and I'm nowhere in sight.

What Steinbeck did in ''Sweet Thursday'' was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. ''Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts'' is one, ''Lousy Wednesday'' another. The third chapter is titled ''Hooptedoodle 1'' and the 38th chapter ''Hooptedoodle 2'' as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: ''Here's where you'll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won't get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.''

''Sweet Thursday'' came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I've never forgotten that prologue.

Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.

* * * * *

I've started noticing people trying to observe this rule, particularly in unpublished writing.

And now and then, I can't help wishing the author would just say, 'Max looked puzzled' instead of 'Max's eyebrows drew together, then lifted as he looked at me'.
Lexi

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I have the same impulse sometimes, and it's usually because the "showing" has no style and often no word economy. If instead the line had been something like: "Max's eyebrows bunched into a line of Arabic" you might've liked it.

It's because the first quote is genuinely showing, whereas the second is some kind of hyper-corrected showing, written by someone who has heard the rule but doesn't understand it. Stick with your impulses!

Tom

In the example, I've simply used figurative as opposed to literal language to show. I think I understand the rule just fine, thank you very much.

Things happen and people react.

The reaction is usually flight or fight...pure emotion first. Then action. Finally speech.

Now how the character reacts and what he does or says (if anything) depends upon the character. But he or she still reacts that way, and in that order.

If he needs to betray no emotion, then stay internal and show us the self control involved. The reader will share it.

That would be "show".

(It is possible to just give us extenals and dialogue, if you want. but that would be very spare and requires a special skill.) "...the likes of NickP can rant on if they like"

I occasionally rant on at http://amonsterinthemirror.blogspot.com/