"Show, don't tell" - Is "telling" always evil?

[Lith]

Can I just call it "purple"? I guess it's technically "telling", as the details are presented in a straightforward manner, instead of tossed out offhand and left to the reader to discern.

[ctg]

Originally Posted by Zubi-Ondo

Is worldbuilding showing or telling? - and - Does it depend on how it's done?

Showing, and yes it depends on how it is done.

[gil]

The problem with "Showing not Telling" for me is that I can see strings nowadays, especially when the author isn't very good. Bad authors seem to feel that showing will improve their writing. Wrong. It just shows the cracks more obviously.

[Zubi-Ondo]

Originally Posted by ctg

Showing, and yes it depends on how it is done.

Could you elaborate? (show me?) Remember, I am talking about "Worldbuilding". Thanks,

- Z.

[ctg]

Originally Posted by Zubi-Ondo

Could you elaborate? (show me?) Remember, I am talking about "Worldbuilding". Thanks,

- Z.

Well isn't this obvious you already know the answer, and you want me blather here so a) you can have back up for your claims, or b) have a counter argument. Why should I bother?

I guess the simplest answer to your question is that 'World building' is creating settings around the drama. Badly done, and you present forest with a tree or then you hide the drama in middle of the jungle. Well done, and the audience can associate and really feel what it is to be inside your world (look Peter Pan for example).

When you use the World Building tool, you don't put all the eggs in the one basket, and hope that one line or chapter will do it, but you move the settings with the drama, and you only use the tool to build the overall feeling.

However, say that your drama is inside something, a sinking ship, five mile long colony (spaceship) or a house. In that case, you can enclose the world building in few paragraph or sentences to create the settings. Too much waffling and you know what happens - don't flood your ship with a information overflow.

George Orwell writing tips ...

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

One can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

[Zubi-Ondo]

Originally Posted by ctg

Well isn't this obvious you already know the answer, and you want me blather here so a) you can have back up for your claims, or b) have a counter argument. Why should I bother?

Well! You really come out of the box swinging, don't you? What's got your feathers all ruffled, old chap? I didn't make any claims my friend, I just asked a simple question. I might have my own views on the subject, but I wasn't trying to proffer them, or trick you somehow if that's what you thought.

I was assuming you knew something I didn't since you answered in the affirmative. I'm a very new writer and I'm just scouting for opinions is all. Didn't mean to upset you - Sorry. I really liked your answer after the initial flare-up. I liked the George Orwell reference material too. Thanks! All's well that ends well, they say.

- Z.

[ctg]

Sorry Z, the way you made your question made me think in my over-analytical mind that you already knew the answer. Please forgive me.

[ctg]

Originally Posted by Zubi-Ondo

Well! You really come out of the box swinging, don't you? What's got your feathers all ruffled, old chap?

If you live in the Internet as much as I do, then you start to come across people who want to shoot you down anyway they can. Flamewars are very popular way to entertain people in the chatrooms, and while debunking goes in the forums. You see this sort activity to come more popular, when some people start to give answers that others aren't willing or able to provide. In your case, my hairs started to stood up when I saw your brackets continued with the word "Remember..."

[Zubi-Ondo]

No problem! Why was I asking? It seems like the logical answer to the question "Is worldbuilding showing or telling?" is that it's showing. At least most published examples would appear that way. As a new writer, I struggle a little with the idea of just how much world-showing(?) I should do. There is a bit of a dichotomy about it from a writer's perspective (well, at least from my writing perspective) because ultimately what you're doing is describing. If you look up the word describe, it can mean either showing or telling. I think you said it best when you said "Well done, and the audience can associate and really feel what it is to be inside your world." And believe it or not, I get the idea of having the action blend with the worldbuilding. It helps disguise from the audience the fact that worldbuilding is going on, and it should just put you into the world as it occurs to the character. You think?

- Z.

[Sephiroth]

You've answered your own question there, Zubi. World-building can be either. You can 'show' the environment just as you show the actions/reactions of characters, or you can tell people about it using your narrative voice. The latter is imporant when there are things that we as readers cannot 'see', but need to know about.


Personally, I think my narrative style uses both in equal measure. The reason it's not as simplistic as 'show, don't tell' is that there are times when showing is not appropriate, or simply does not work - when dealing with the private thoughts of a character, for example, since the complexity of human thought cannot be conveyed by external action, it is necessary to tell people what is going on inside the character's head. This need not be done in a straightforward or prosaic way, but it is still telling, not showing. Not everything can be 'shown'.

Originally Posted by Lith

Malakin- your example reminds me of a part in Final Fantasy 7, where your slightly-effete Japanese hero is forced to wear a dress. You get to pick your response, and they're like: "dress", "shiny dress", and "sparkling, shimmering dress"- with more points for "sparkling, shimmering dress" than for the others, because of course your character is more in-tune with his feminine side than in the other cases... (anyway, it's a pretty funny part of the game!)

Ah, that takes me back...............

Don Corneo really fancied me.

[chrispenycate]

When I build a world it's all tell. Pages and pages and footnotes and links and reams of tell. Of course, I don't deliver this to the final consumer, it's for internal use only, but it's pure distilled tell, because it's easier and shorter. Small lumps of this could float in the final stew, but the newly constructed world reads like a text book.

The ideal is, of course, that the reader know all this at the end of the story without ever having noticed he was learning.

Not that I'll ever achieve that.

[ctg]

Z, this is a longer cut from the piece at the front page. Take a note on how I use world building ...

[10]

A single lightning bolt flashed from a bolt in the ceiling of the subway tunnel and grounded on the old iron sink on the cluttered floor. A few lightning bolt forks connected the old copper wiring that connected together the strip-lights on tunnel walls, and made them flare and cast an artificial light in the tunnel, that had not seen it for a century.

Soon there were more of them, dancing in the middle of the tunnel, around the widely turning tornado, that disappeared as soon as it had appeared. It midst, of a pool of dirty water and clutter that twister had thrown around, laid a man, holding a wet newspaper on his hand.

(note to ed – this chapter can be removed)

[11]

Tom awoke as shivering coldness seeped through his wet clothes. He lifted his head and looked around him, to only find out a nightmare vision opening before his eyes. It terrified him to the bone, and made him wonder on where he had come.

It definitely wasn’t the subway tunnel that he had set his foot some time ago, although the chipped wall painting that he could see behind the piles of rotten sacks and wet boxes was very similar to the old tunnel had walked through so many time. However, it wasn’t the same. Tom couldn’t remember the time when he had seen so much of rubbish in the tunnel, not talking about a old rusted Mini, that someone had managed to drive at the end the tunnel to block the way to the alleyway.

“This is freaking me out,” Tom muttered. “Where the hell I am?” He slammed hand over his nose at it caught the stench from the rotten clothes. Without waiting, he chucked the wet newspaper away, jumped on his feet and run out from tunnel in the middle of the overgrown bushes, and haze that seemed to surround everything.

Tom didn’t give two thoughts to the overgrown bushes or the haze, but pushed through to the alleyway that he knew would take him towards his house. The haze cleared up a bit and he could the image that made his shiver more then the coldness. The old pedestrian street that Tom had known for a long time, was in ruins. He took a few leaps forward to see it better. The vegetation had grown over the ruins of the street, where few lucky houses remained standing up, but it didn’t look like anyone had lived in them for ages.

“Am I in middle of some sort of movie set or is this real,” Tom said aloud as he scratched his neck and looked at the piles of rubble and junk. In midst of it he caught a piece of plastic, in shape of PSP, but it looked far more advanced the one that he had bought just last week with a one of his stolen credit cards. ‘How can that be’, Tom thought as he picked it up to study it. ‘I though I knew all models and upcoming ones…’ He shook his head as he chucked the piece of junk back in the pile it had come from. ‘I must be sleeping…’

“All right, I know what to do…” Tom said and pinched his hand. The pain was real … very real … almost too real for his comfort. “Damn, what the hell is going on?” He moved into the ruined pedestrian street and looked left to a place he had known as ‘Water Tower Roundabout’ and saw another horror. It full of rusted car wrecks, some of them being models that he definitely had not seen before. The reality of the situation was becoming painfully obvious. The vortex that had kidnapped him, had taken him in his visions nightmare future.

‘There must be somebody here’, Tom thought and opened his mouth to shout “hello.”

The only reply was an echo.

"HELLO,” he shouted as loud as he could, but no one replied.

Tom felt very lonely, so lonely that he thought he was going crazy. For over thirty years, he had lived in the one of the world biggest cosmopolitans, and never he had felt this lonely. The London never stopped. There was something going on every single day, not talking about the business that never slept. It had paused two years ago when the crazy terrorists had bombed the tube, but only for a moment. Over ten million people had lived there, and to Tom, that was just a yesterday. London had never been this quiet.

‘I still must have a home’, Tom thought. ‘I go there, go to bed, wake up and everything is all right.’ He pulled his jacket tighter around him and started to walk towards his small house in the Holland Park. The despair state of the city remained, but not every street was in such desolated condition as the one had just come from, however where he saw a door, it was hanging off from it’s hinges, were there was paint, it was chipping away and were there was a window, it was either dusty or broken. The overgrown vegetation was everywhere. Nevertheless, the creepiest thing Tom saw, was the skeletons, some in their houses, clutching to their possessions, while others sat in their cars wrecks, going nowhere.

The Holland Park - as Tom knew it - had been full of life, both poor and rich, all happily living next to each other. It wasn’t the most famous part of the London, but it certainly was one of the most controversial places, where one could see a film-star trotting on the same streets as everyone else. However, it a place where one could spot more Porches on the streets, parked next to the houses that cost millions of pounds … and next to them, as if everything was equal in nature, were the council houses. Nobody asked questions there, and the neighbourhood suited very well Tom alternative lifestyle.

When Tom finally reached his house, he found it had suffered the same fate as every other building. The nature had moved in. The hole in the collapsed roof created a perfect place for a young tree that grew up from top of the all the rubbish.

Tom collapsed on his knees and wept like a baby. The reality of the situation started to sink in ...

[Zubi-Ondo]

Originally Posted by chrispenycate

When I build a world it's all tell. Pages and pages and footnotes and links and reams of tell. Of course, I don't deliver this to the final consumer, it's for internal use only, but it's pure distilled tell, because it's easier and shorter. Small lumps of this could float in the final stew, but the newly constructed world reads like a text book.

This is amazingly similar to my process. In fact I was just doing that very thing before I checked in here.

Originally Posted by chrispenycate

The ideal is, of course, that the reader know all this at the end of the story without ever having noticed he was learning.
Not that I'll ever achieve that.

Sure you will Chris! I know you can do it. The classroom idea was a perfect example.

-Z.

Edit: ctg - Good stuff. I like it.

[ctg]

Originally Posted by Zubi-Ondo

Edit: ctg - Good stuff. I like it.

Well did you learn anything from it?

[Zubi-Ondo]

Originally Posted by ctg

Well did you learn anything from it?

I'd say I probably learn from almost everything I read, and this would be no exception. In general, I'd say the new thing I noticed here (I had not really looked for this before) is the way there is a paragraph break when you go from telling to showing, and vice-versa.

There are brief moments when you lost me a little, like when you say "had taken him in his visions nightmare future." I assume you meant "taken him into his vision of a nightmare future"?

But otherwise this does follow the idea of blending action with worldbuilding more or less the same way that I would go about it. Bravo!

- Z.