I deliberately didn’t call this post Show vs. Tell, by the way. I have my reasons and I’ll elaborate a little later.

Ally Carter posted a really good piece on her blog about show vs tell. I think it’s worth reading, so please do. And check out her other posts as well while you’re there. You won’t regret it. There is some great advice there.

I realize most of the time writers are told "Show, don’t tell!" and it can get pretty tedious to hear it all the time. The little word "was" is condemned and pretty much has a "Kill on Sight" order against it. Poor little thing. What did it ever do so wrong?

There are times when showing gets tedious for the reader. There are times when you need to tell, rather than show. Sparingly, mind you. Just don’t think you have to eradicate every single instance of "was", because it’s telling.

For instance, I sometimes use it to show progress in a characters internal conflict.

He was going to tell her this time. She needed to know the truth. All this subterfuge had to end, no matter how much she’d hate him for being honest with her. He’d lose her, he knew it in his gut and almost changed his mind. No. He would tell her. Consequences be damned.

I was aiming to show character growth here. "He was going to tell her." hopefully tells you he’s still uncertain, that he planned to tell her a few times and kept quiet. He wants to, but his mind is not completely made up. He’s disecting the reasons for and against, struggling with the decision, until he finally makes up his mind. "He would tell her."
He made progress from uncertainty, to certainty. Sure, I could have used "He would tell her." both times, but to my mind, ending in "would" shows a resolve "was going to" doesn’t.

So the above was really a "Show vs. Tell".
That’s not what this post is about. Not at all.

Painting pictures for your reader is great, and you should aim to do this throughout. But having every single scene filled with minute description… *groans* Come on. Sometimes the reader needs a bit of a break, or they get lost in description and will be bored to tears. I’ve read books that told all the way through — and I threw them at the wall. It’s annoying. I’ve also read books that didn’t tell, ever, and I threw them at the wall too, because my brain went numb with all the tedious avoidance of "was" and "had been" and "going to". This resulted in flowery (and unnecessary) descriptions I could have done without, or sentence structures so convaluted, I had to read them four times to understand what they were trying to tell me.
They actually both failed at the very thing I’m trying to explain here.

The first one told me everything. It’s boring and kills all suspense.
The second told me nothing, but showed me every speck of dust on top of the TV. I got bored and dumped the book.

They both forgot to tell me the story they were trying to write. One by not paying attention to detail, the other by paying too much attention to detail.

No, I am not a published writer. I write mainly for fun, because I enjoy it. I have several stories finished and yeah, when I’m happy with the one I’m working on right now, the second draft of Vezien, it will be going out and I’ll try to find a home for it. Not just for that one, but for the entire series.
So why should you listen to me? What do I know?
Maybe nothing. I’m sure a great many wonderful writers will disagree with me. And some might not.
I still look at a story from a reader point of view. Is it interesting? Do I want to read it? Does it hold my attention? Or does it make me jump through hoops, trying to figure out what the hell a brocade drape on granny’s window has to do with a murder in a highrise apartment? And did I really need to know granny has a doily on top of the TV, with a porcellain swan on it, when we only get to see her once in the entire book?
Writing is storytelling on paper. Don’t forget that, while you eradicate those poor "was’es", and instead find a happy medium that works for you.

We all get so bogged down in rules sometimes, we forget to tell a story. We still write, but there is a difference between writing and storytelling. You need to do both, not one or the other. Bend the rules, ignore them sometimes when it fits the story. Don’t write and question every sentence you put down, analyse every word and phrase to death, rearrange every comma and semicolon just so it agrees with the do’s and don’ts, because while you do that, you’re not telling a story. You’re just arranging words according to a rule book and you will eventually lose the soul, the voice, the heart of your story and come to hate it.

That’s when you get stuck. That’s when your reader gets stuck and throws the book at the wall and never picks it up again.

So… let’s not get stuck, hm? Write and tell the story.

Show and Tell.

Now go and tell me a story, and stop worrying so much about "doing it right".

Tags: Advice, Rules, Storytelling