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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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In defence of telling

14/1/2014

16 Comments

 
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Show, don’t tell is something of a cliché in creative writing parlance yet, when I first encountered it, it felt like a paradigm shift. I’d been writing on and off all my life without knowing there were any rules about it, and I embraced this one with gusto. My stories unfolded through a series of scenes, generously seasoned with dialogue and real-world interactions. I aspired to make my colours vivid and my smells pungent and anything masquerading as an information drop became taboo. My writing wasn’t particularly lyrical, and I learned to love cutting the bits that weren’t earning their keep, but overall I wanted the reader to get so close to my characters it was as if they’d taken up residence in their bodies.

Even if I never reached my goal of emotional and sensory identification, at least I knew where I was headed. Telling was a cardinal sin and I’d been brought up to steer away from such transgressions.

Yet now and then, I found myself wanting to write differently. I’d write an entire short story with only the tiniest pinch of dialogue. Although I was sufficiently fond of these tales to send them out to magazines, I still suspected this wasn’t quite the real thing.

More disturbingly, I’d come across patches of telling in novels that I particularly admired. Could it be that this wasn’t wrong after all?

Emma Darwin advocates a balance between showing and telling and, through examples, illustrates the differences between good and bad telling. She demonstrates how telling can actually be quite show-y if it’s specific and appropriate to the point of view. Telling isn’t all bad, and it does move the story along.

Nevertheless, if telling is to be rehabilitated, it can still be a difficult judgement as to when to use it and how much. Emma points out that the archetypal telling-story is the fairytale (and Clare O’Dea illustrates her wonderful rant against the tyranny of show, don’t tell with examples from Goldilocks and the Three Bears). Something in the rhythms or the narrative voice compensates for the greater psychic distance. I hadn’t seen this post when I wrote My Father’s Love, recently published by Foliate Oak, but it feels like a vindication of a story that is not only 90% tell, but kicks off with something dangerously close to a once-upon-time:

When I was a baby in my cradle, or so the story goes, my father gathered up his love for me and fashioned a chalice of burnished gold.  He swaddled the chalice in a skein of silk shipped all the way from China and bedded it down in a drawer in his wardrobe where he used to store his cufflinks and bowties.  He locked the drawer with a silver key which he dangled from a string around his neck, beneath his shirt, inches from his heart.  When it was done, my father smiled, stood back and watched me grow.

Perhaps it’s the Hindu storytelling that’s done it, but I’m finding myself increasingly drawn to that style. I’m not sure if it’s another personal paradigm shift or redressing the balance that’s gone too far towards show, but I’m interested to see where it takes me. No doubt I’ll let you know.

How about you? What’s your take on showing versus telling? Is it an issue in your reading or writing or are you more concerned about other “rules”?

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
16 Comments
Gill James link
14/1/2014 12:33:59 am

Food for thought here indeed. Yes, I've thought for some time it isn't all that clear cut. And after all, storytellers "tell" stories.

Reply
Annecdotist
15/1/2014 02:23:48 am

Thanks for your comment, Gill, and lovely to meet you again in cyberspace. Good point: there are storytellers but I've never come across the word storyshowers!

Reply
Derbhile Graham link
15/1/2014 12:54:34 am

Interesting perspective. I was a big fan of show don't tell for years and still say it to my creative writing students so they can bring their writing to the next level. But after a while, you realise that a mixture of showing and telling makes a story crackle, and when you've learnt to show, you can learn to tell.

Reply
Annecdotist
15/1/2014 02:27:15 am

Good point, Derbhile. perhaps it's like painting (not that I know anything about that) and it helps to learn advanced techniques before you can be free to go back to the basic telling we learnt as children

Reply
Clare O'Dea link
15/1/2014 02:08:39 am

I have come to the conclusion that there must be a grey area and I'm glad to see you agree Anne. Every writer has to negotiate their own way through this and let the work speak for itself in the end. I think it's one of those rules that has been oversimplified. Like you I started writing well before I gave a single through the do and donts. I sometimes wonder how much of an advantage it is to have all the literary science at your fingertips.
Thank you for the link to my blog! Much appreciated.

Reply
Clare O'Dea link
15/1/2014 02:10:07 am

That should read 'a single thought to the dos and donts'. I'm also a bad typist!

Reply
Annecdotist
15/1/2014 02:32:41 am

I'm sure we would have forgiven this typo, but your amendment ups the comments tally – hurrah!

Annecdotist
15/1/2014 02:31:12 am

Thanks for your comment, Clare and interesting we're thinking similar things. (I'm pretty sure I've got another post in draft that links to you again!) I still think I'm a better writer for learning about showing, but in the end– or even in the beginning – we have to develop our own voice where we can pick and choose from the different rules. One of the great things about Emma Darwin's teaching is how she says what she thinks works but never does it in the form of rules.

Reply
Carlie Lee link
16/1/2014 06:44:14 am

Hello,
Have just sat for a good five minutes thinking about what you've said, and I wonder if it's to do with emotional response. It's a more sophisticated response for the reader to feel empathy through 'showing', but stories can have an impact in a different way if they are 'telling'.
Anyway, put basically - I like reading a 'telling' story, but after a while, I long for a 'showing'. Like a takeaway curry. And going to the Maharajah.

Oh, I'll shush. Great blog, and interesting responses.
Best,
C

Reply
Annecdotist
16/1/2014 09:48:53 am

Glad I got you thinking, Carlie. I agree, showing takes you closer to the character generally, but telling can (although won't always) do this in a different way that's harder to pin down.
Enjoy your curry – takeaway or restaurant?

Reply
Safia link
20/1/2014 10:15:28 pm

An interesting post, Anne and some salient comments too. I found your mention of Hindu literature pertinent. I am discovering the same tendency to 'tell' in Arabic literature and can understand why translators have a very difficult job in trying to reach out to an English language readership that is more responsive to 'showing'. Oral traditions and collective communal cultures are not doubt more comfortable with 'telling' perhaps, whereas, the West, with the long tradition of novel reading as an individual, private act (not to mention the great movie/tv/computer obsession in the modern era) expect drama and 'showing'. Just a thought that needs developing, but I do find it intriguing (especially as one who has been criticised for the cardinal sin of 'telling not showing' way too often). That's a very long sentence - I think I need a lie down ...

Reply
Annecdotist
21/1/2014 01:12:03 am

That's a really interesting point, Safia, about the cross cultural differences and I'm looking forward to your more extensive blog post on the theme ;).
I'll take this as a cue for a short rant about creative writing tutors/texts that equate fiction with film, as if forgetting the huge difference between sound and image versus the written word. *sighs*

Reply
Safia link
27/2/2014 10:05:54 am

Gosh, it's taken me a while, but finally, I published a post on 'show, don't tell'. It doesn't address the cross-cultural points we made above, Anne, but refers to Steven Spielberg's 'Lincoln' - my only movie of last year! You can read the post here: http://wp.me/p3v67c-9e

Reply
Annecdotist
28/2/2014 07:19:19 am

Thanks for coming back, Safia, and that's a great post. I love how we all spark ideas off each other. I'm sure the cross cultural element will come eventually!

Reply
Charli Mills
28/2/2018 10:58:10 pm

I'm so glad you linked to this as I did not know about Emma's book on writing historical fiction. I just bought it! An interesting post to go back and read, too.

Reply
Annecdotist
4/3/2018 12:29:56 pm

Oh, fab, I wish I’d thought of you when I first knew about this book. And I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it to my sister either. In fact, why didn’t I think of it when I began trying to write about the 1930s? Maybe I’d better order it too.

Reply



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