You'll actually understand "Show vs Tell" after watching this

show don't tell this is common advice given to writers about how they should be showing in their writing instead of telling and just like most advice for writers it's not all that helpful it's like that advice oracles give in movies and stories where it makes no sense in the moment and it's not until later when the protagonist has already figured out everything that it actually makes any sense so over the last eight months we've had over a hundred students go through our writing workshops and actually written scenes and turned them in and gotten feedback and there's nothing like having to stare into the eyes of students and try to explain this to them that will actually force you to learn how to explain it and so I've gotten really good at helping writers overcome the propensity to tell and really understand what it means to show in their writing and I'm going to share all of that with you right now in this video so by the end of this video you're going to understand what show vers tell really means and how to make sure you're showing you're writing instead of telling so let's just start with the definition showing is description of what is observable and the two most important words in that are description and observable so we're taking what can actually be observed in the world and we're describing it now at this point you may be thinking well that's not any more helpful than just telling me to show instead of tell and you're absolutely right I'm going to explain what this means in a lot of detail but I'm going to keep coming back to this definition so once you understand it this is what I want you to hold in your head showing is description of what is observable so let's talk about that second word first what do I mean by observable what does that mean we're going to look at how we perceive things how you and I actually perceive the world around us and we're going to split it into two groups and I came up with really fancy name for these groups group one and group two group one we're going to call this green and green is our senses are hearing seeing smelling tasting and touching and then group two is our feelings in our thoughts so we have senses in group one that's the five senses and then group two we have all of our feelings and thoughts now group one is all about the objective things things that are objectively happening and then our feelings and thoughts go in the subjective category score so let me give you an example of what I mean by this so let's say I pick up my water bottle here and I turn around and I just slam it into my bookcase my books fall down Legos go everywhere and later I go to each of you that watch this video and I interview you and I say what did I do 100% of you will agree that I picked up my water bottle I turned around and I slammed it into my bookcase you picked that up with your senses what you could see and what you could hear and that is something that I objectively did now how you feel about that and what you think about that becomes very subjective that depends on what you think of me your experience with me in the past people like me it might have made you afraid it might you might have thought it was funny you might have thought I was losing my mind so while 100% of you would agree that objectively I picked up my water bottle and I slammed it against the bookcase you all would start having different thoughts and feelings about that because those are subjective so now let's take this a little further and look at how this actually works in the real world so whenever two people are interacting so you're interacting with somebody else or even really we're interacting on this video we're only interacting on the green level we're only interacting using our senses based on what we can see what we can hear what we can smell what we can touch and what we can taste that is how we interact with the world we do not interact with the world on the feelings and thoughts level I can't interact with you on the feelings and thoughts level my wife and I have been married for over 21 years and yet I can't crack her head open and see for sure what she's feeling and thinking when we're interacting I'm watching her I'm listening to her I'm paying attention to her movement and then then I'm inferring her thoughts and her feelings and then she's doing the same thing to me she's taking how I'm acting what she can see what she can hear all of that and she's inferring my thoughts and feelings this is how the world works you can never know for sure what people are thinking and feeling even if they tell you you don't necessarily know for sure that they're telling you the truth so you're still just watching and listening and you're using all of your thoughts and feelings and how you've interacted with people in the past and you're inferring their thoughts and feelings so we can never know what the other person is thinking and feeling we're taking what they're doing what they're objectively doing in front of us we're mapping on our own thoughts and feelings and inferring their thoughts and feelings this is how the world works and here's the thing we're really good at it we've been doing this since we are a little tiny baby where we're constantly watching the people around us and we're trying to guess at what they're thinking and feeling so that we'll be safe in the world we have good relation ships we are in our Social Circles our tribe takes care of us and we can take care of them we're really good at seeing what people are doing and inferring their thoughts and feelings and so let's go back to my definition of showing showing is description of what is observable so here's what I'm telling you to keep your writing showing instead of telling you're going to just write down the green write down what you can pick up with your five senses and that is it so let's imagine you walk into a coffee shop and you go up to the counter and you look at the Barista right we probably all been in this situation how will you know what's going on with that Barista how will you know if she's stressed how will you know if he's happy how will you know if he hates his job or she loves her job how do you know if she's bored how do you know if she actually cares about you the customer or doesn't care about you the customer obviously you're not C backing up in their head and seeing their thoughts and feelings you're taking what they're doing and you're inferring that if they're rolling their eyes a lot if they're staring at their phone you kind of think they don't care if they're smiling at you they're engaging in you they're asking you questions they're saying good morning in the right kind of way then you know that they actually care so when you're trying to get down on the page what the characters in your story are actually feeling and what they're experiencing just write down what you can see and hear and experience through the senses just like you do in real life this allows the reader to infer the thoughts and the feelings of the characters themselves because they're really good at it so here's a little trick I use for my own writing and then I teach my students as well so let's imagine we're at a diner in real life and we see these two people at the diner and we see them interacting how will we know what's going on we've all done this we've been at a restaurant and we see a couple that seems like they're fighting or seems like they're in love and we can just tell by their emotions and how they're interacting we can't even hear what they're saying and so what I want you to do when you write your next scene is pretend like you're just a ghost in the scene and you're just watching what's happening and Reporting what's happening you can't know for sure what the man is thinking or the woman is thinking you're just describing what you're seeing you're describing what can be observed that's the only thing you're allowed to put on the page and you have to put it on the page where the reader can understand what's going on now this does not mean you're just passively describing what's going on like some sort of news reporter that doesn't have an opinion of course as an author your opinion should go on the page and at this point you may be wondering okay you're telling me I'm only allowed to describe what is actually happening what's actually observably objectively happening and yet I'm supposed to get my opinion on the page as the author how am I supposed to do that now I have two videos that go deep into this it's all about how to use nouns verbs and descriptors and how to veilance your language there two videos the links are down in the description you're going to want to go through those deeper after this video but I'm going to give you a quick version of what I teach in that so let's imagine I'm driving home and a person Cuts me off in traffic this object effectively happened anybody that was there would have seen that a person cut me off in traffic so now I get home and I'm telling my wife what happened and I'm just going to replace those first two words a person and I'm going to replace them with some so I come in the door and my wife's like how's your day and I say some cut me off in traffic now objectively that's what happened a person cut me off in traffic but I dep picted noun that gave my opinion of how the whole thing went down by saying some cut me off in traffic now what if I replaced a person with instead of saying some I said this poor old lady so I come in the door my wife asked me about my day and I say this poor old lady cut me off in traffic well I am still describing objectively the exact same thing and yet it has two completely different tones to what actually went down this is how you put your opinion on the page while still just describing What You observe so let's go over a few examples I've pulled from books you can call me thewit easy the white man said I could tell by his handshake that this guy was up to no good so here I am not showing you what's going on this is telling I could tell by his handshake that this guy was up to no good so here I am telling you what I think you should think of about this white man that I just shook the hand up this is the actual line from Devil in a blue dress by Walter Mosley you can call me dwit easy the white man said his grip was strong but slithery like a snake coiling around my hand so here the author is just describing how the handshake felt but he did it in a way so the reader knows what he thinks about this man without having to directly say what he thinks about this man all right let's look at another one Jack smiled wide trying to impress man so again we're just telling the reader why Jack smiled right we're not letting the reader see Jack smile and then infer why he's doing the smiley that's what we need to do just say what we saw and let the reader figure out whether or not he's trying to impress alond here's the actual line from The Shining by Stephen King Jack smiled a big wide PR smile so that's just describing what he observed but now you know what Jack is doing when he's smiling he's faking it so he can impress this guy let's look at a third example Prospero the enchanter is not happy to meet his daughter so here we are just describing what the character is feeling and not letting the reader infer that on their own so this is the exact line from the night Circus by Aaron Morganstern prospera the enchanter's immediate reaction upon meeting his daughter is a simple Declaration of well so now we know the same thing that Prosperity the enchanter is not excited to meet his daughter but the author didn't tell me that they just described what they saw they described what they observed and we picked up as the reader what was actually going on so when you're writing your book or you're writing your next scene make sure you focus on just describing what you can observe as the narrator whether it's in first person or third person or whatever you're just describing what can be observed and you're letting the reader infer the thoughts and the feelings of the characters and everything that's happening in the scene now at this point I inevitably get the question well what about what's going on in the character's heads can't we go up in the character's head what about memories or imaginations or sharing what a character is thinking are we never allowed to do that and of course you are but this is going into the character's heads and this is where it can get a little weird but I'm always going to keep coming back to describing what is observed so let's just step through this a little bit now the caveat here is to always remember your job as the Storyteller is to constantly keep moving the story forward your reader wants to know what happens next and so whenever you're dropping into your character's heads make sure it's serving moving the story forward but of course that is a part of telling a story so how do you do that well once again we're going to focus focus on the green only what can be picked up by the senses and we're going to describe what can be observed but how does that work so let's address how we do this for the past the present and the future so let's start with the past so if we go into the memory of one of your characters so we're dropping into their head they're remembering something that happened and we're going to put that on the page well you're still just going to describe what can be observed instead of now you being the author or some other character being the author whoever character you're in the head of that is now the author and they are the person that is describing what is observed now if you've been writing in first person that's relatively straightforward if you're in third person and you drop into a memory of a character you have to tell it as if it's the character telling what happened they're still describing what is observed you still have to follow all the same rules if you want to see this in action by a master writer go look at breathing lessons by Anne Tyler it won the pullit are Pride it's a fantastic book and there's huge sections of the book where the main character is remembering things that happen so we go into the past but what you'll notice if you pay attention is it's being described this exact same way where it's only describing what can be observed the character is using her five senses and describing what can be observed and she's using her language to help you decide how you should feel about that but you the reader still have to infer the thoughts and the feelings of the character is because she's just describing what happened so when we look at memories it's the exact same way as if they were happening in real time and you're just describing what is happening now if we go into the future it's still the same thing we're still going to paint a picture for our reader describe what we can observe and let them infer so I'm going to show you a short clip from another an Tyler book called Accidental Tourist this is from the third chapter of The Accidental Tourist and right here is where I want you to pay attention this is where Mak the main character and the protagonist of this scene is having a conversation with his estranged wife on the phone and he's trying to reconnect with her and at this point he jumps into the future and starts imagining what it will be like when she comes over to the house she would stop by for the rug and he'd invite her in he'd offer her a glass of cherry they would sit on the couch with their Sherry and he would say Sarah have you missed me or no he'd say I've missed you Sarah she would say and then she said I thought I'd drop over Saturday morning and we're back into the present because she started talking again on the phone and interrupted his thoughts but you'll notice he's not saying oh she'll come over and we'll reconnect and fall back in love no he's painting a picture then just describing what's being observed she would stop by he would invite her in they'd have a glass of cherry so once again we're just describing what can be observed can you see the pattern here where we're just painting a picture of what's actually happen happening and describing it for the reader and letting them infer like in this case that Mak wants to reconnect with his wife so now what about in the present sense what if we go into the thoughts of the character in the present if we want to show that our character is really upset about something and we want to show what she's thinking about right then so let's look at an example of that Sarah was so mad at John because he left his stuff everywhere like usual causing her to trip over it so once again we didn't show what happened in this line we just said what Sarah was thinking and why she was thinking it we explained it instead of showed it so here's another version of that she thought of the previous morning when the doorbell rang and she had lurched out of bed she took her first groggy step slipped on Jon's dirty underwear and crashed to the floor slamming her head into his pile of half empty Miller lights from the night before so once again did not say she was mad did not say what she was thinking did not explain any of her thoughts or feelings but you as the reader Feel The Rage of what that must have felt like to have that happen to you so once again it lets the reader infer the thoughts and feelings because the author just described what was observed so I keep coming back to this idea of just create a picture and then describe what is being observed so whether it's a memory or something we're imagining in the future or something that's happening right now in the head or outside the head we show what's Happening we just observe what's happening and we describe what's happening but there are times where that doesn't quite work we do want to show the reader what the characters are feeling and it's not as simple as just describing what is being observed and this is where we use figurative language like similes analogies metaphors and we still paint a picture and then describe what is being observed so don't tell the reader that your character is feeling stressed say your character feels as if they're carrying a semi truck on their shoulder this gets the same thing across to the reader but it lets the reader decide what that feels like you're just painting a picture and describing it so this is why figurative language is so common in great writing because it's painting a picture and letting you the reader decide how to think and feel about that thing so whenever you can just describe what's being observed if you need something extra use figurative language so we've covered how to do this but what is the real problem with telling why is telling bad writing and why is it something you should stay away from 99% of the time first of all it doesn't feel real remember that how we all interact is we observe things and then we infer the thoughts and feelings of other people that is no matter how long you've known somebody that is still how we all interact and so when you do that on behalf of your characters you just tell the reader what everybody's thinking and feeling constantly it doesn't feel real that is not how real life works works the second and worst thing is that you're robbing from the reader the ability to co-create the story this is what's so great about writing is we're co-creating the story with the reader so we're showing them what's happening describing it and letting the reader create all the backend thoughts and feelings themselves and this is how they fall in love with your writing now why don't writers do this why is this something that writers tend to fall to the telling instead of the showing well first and foremost it's just a skill thing you're not very good at it yet that's what I see over and over is this is really hard to do this took me years to figure out how to do lots and lots of practice lots and lots of feedback from experts showing me oh you're still telling there you're still telling there it's a skill so for most people just like most people can't swing a bat and hit a home run it's a skill that you have to build over a long period of time so the number one thing is skill and then the number two thing is there's these moments where we as writers get nervous that the reader won't know what we mean and so we just tell them and we're like well maybe I my writing is not good enough so we just tell them and I see this even in published books happening a lot where there's this moment where I already know what's going on because the writer is really good and I understand and then the writer gets a little nervous and they just drop in some telling to make sure you understand exactly what's going on but by far the number one thing that causes this is just a lack of skill and this is what we teach in our workshops this is why I'm doing this video to help you understand how to do this so I've got some rules of thumb for you that should help you along your way as you're trying to put this into practice first force yourself to describe what you the narrator whether first or third person can see hear smell taste and touch and that's it see if you can write a whole scene with only this if you do this writing will immediately get way better number two if you want to convey an emotion and you can't do it by Straight describing the observable use figurative language to create something observable and then describe that again analogies similes metaphors number three when you are rereading a draft of your writing be on the lookout for anything that is not describing what is observable even if it's in the character's head I'm not saying you're never ever ever allowed to have any of this red and blue on the page but it should be a very very tiny portion of your writing and if you want to get better at this practice putting no thoughts and feelings on the page and sticking to describing what is observable and I'll just mention here this is really hard to catch on your own you think you're doing it and then somebody else can look at your writing that actually knows what they're doing and they'll still find telling in there and so this is why we run the workshops where you get oneon-one feedback where each week you turn in a scene we look at it we tell you what you did right what you did wrong and how to get better and then you write another scene so if you want to find out more about our workshops that's down in the description if you're wondering who I am my name is Tim Gro I'm the CEO of story grid and I'm the author of the threshing running down a dream and your first 1,000 copies my partner Sean coin is the Creator and founder of story grid and everything we teach on this video and this Channel and that story grid is based on his 30 plus years writing editing and researching if you want to keep going on this whole showing vers telling thing I've got the next video you should absolutely watch and that's going to pop up on your screen shortly if you want to dig deeper into story grid go to story grid.com check out all the free resources we have available there sign up for the newsletter cuz that's where we send out the latest and greatest stuff but as always thanks for being a writer thanks for being a part of our community here at story grid and I'll see you next time

Channel: Story Grid

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Id: XpFbekAF1oQ

Length: 23min 22sec (1402 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2024