SHOW

1
SHOW
dont tell
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create the story world

• good advice SHOW dont TELL
• put the reader into immediate physical contact
  with the story world
• observe first, then conclude(let the reader see
  for himself, and conclude for himself)
• telling language exposes a crisis in our
  confidence as writers

3
some sentences are unnecessary
She met him at the door with a glare that could
freeze lava. He could tell she was angry.
Which sentence just isnt needed?
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from In Our Time
They shot the six cabinet ministers at half-past
six in the morning against the wall of a
hospital. There were pools of water in the
courtyard. There were wet dead leaves on the
paving of the courtyard. It rained hard. All the
shutters of the hospital were nailed shut. One of
the ministers was sick with typhoid. Two soldiers
carried him downstairs and out into the rain.
They tried to hold him up against the wall but he
sat down in a puddle of water. The other five
stood quietly against the wall. Finally the
officer told the soldiers it was no good trying
to make him stand up. When they fired the first
volley he was sitting down in the water with his
head on his knees. Ernest Hemingway
SHOWING
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another version
Six cabinet ministers were terribly executed. One
was sick so they took him out to the wall and
tried to make him stand up. They did not care
that he was already almost dead with disease.
They brutally killed him without any feelings of
guilt or remorse. It was a sad event. Me
-)
TELLING
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(No Transcript)
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(No Transcript)
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from Light in August
There was a track and a station, and once a day a
mixed train fled shrieking through it. The train
could be stopped by a red flag, but by ordinary
it appeared out of the devastated hills with
apparitionlike suddenness and wailing like a
banshee, athwart and past the little less-than
village like a forgotten bead from a broken
string. William Faulkner
SHOWING
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another version
TELLING
There was a train station. Once a day a train
came through. It could be stopped by using a red
flag, but usually it just went through. Me
-)
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another example
TELLING
Mrs. Parker was nosey. She gossiped about her
neighbors.
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another example
Turning the blinds ever so slightly, Mrs. Parker
could just peek through the window and see the
Ford Explorer parked in the driveway. She
squinted her eyes so she could get a better view
of the tall, muscular man getting out of the
vehicle and walking up to Mrs. Jones' front door.
He ran the doorbell. When Mrs. Jones opened the
door and welcomed the stranger into her home with
a hug, Mrs. Parker gasped and ran to her
phone. "Charlotte, you are not going to believe
what I just saw!" Mrs. Parker peeked out the
window again to see if the man was still inside.
SHOWING
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from The Sea and the Wind that Blows
Walking or sleeping, I dream of boatsusually of
rather small boats under a slight press of sale.
When I think how great a part of my life has been
spent dreaming the hours away and how much of
this total dream life has concerned small craft,
I wonder about the state of my health, for I am
told that it is not a good sign to be always
voyaging into unreality, driven by imaginary
breezes. E. B. White
SHOWING
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from The Things They Carried
First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from
a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian
College in New Jersey. They were not love
letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he
kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his
rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day's
march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands
under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them
with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last
hour of light pretending. He would imagine
romantic camping trips into the White Mountains
in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the
envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been
there. More than anything, he wanted Martha to
love him as he loved her, but the letters were
mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love. She
was a virgin, he was almost sure. She was an
English major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote
beautifully about her professors and roommates
and midterm exams, about her respect for Chaucer
and her great affection for Virginia Woolf. She
often quoted lines of poetry she never mentioned
the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of
yourself. The letters weighed ten ounces. They
were signed "Love, Martha," but Lieutenant Cross
understood that Love was only a way of signing
and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it
meant. At dusk, he would carefully return the
letters to his rucksack. Slowly, a bit
distracted, he would get up and move among his
men, checking the perimeter, then at full dark he
would return to his hole and watch the night and
wonder if Martha was a virgin. Tim OBrian
SHOWING
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tips for showing more than you tell

• use specific, significant detailsdont say
  fruit say pomegranate
• use sensory images add in all five senses
• use good comparisons for your metaphorsnot
  clichés
• vary your sentence structure and match the rhythm
  of your writing to what you are writing about
• put the actions in the verbs and make the actions
  specific avoid be verbs and passive
  voicedont say He took a walk say, He
  sauntered down the street.
• take advantage of dialogue to reveal significant
  details
• dont pad it too much and dont be afraid to tell
  sometimes