More show-and-tell ranting, plus characterization stuff

Found this in a batch of older questions: When one conveys descriptions, actions, or background information through dialogue, does it count as showing or telling?

The short answer is, the writer is “showing” two characters in conversation. People in conversations are of course “telling” each other things; that’s how conversations work. Don’t worry about it.

However, the question totally misses the point of the “show, don’t tell” supposed-rule. (Which isn’t a rule. There Is No One True Way, there are only three rules for writing but nobody knows what they are, etc. Nobody—not editors, and definitely not readers—is sitting around checking whether something “counts” as showing or telling. I promise.)

Besides, taken literally, “show, don’t tell” means that nobody can ever write a story that is meant to be read. Movies, TV, stage plays—those “show,” but everything in a novel is, technically, told. (This is why it is called storytelling.) And really, all fiction “tells” a story, one way or another, even movies and TV and comics (all of which tell their stories visually, which is the basic definition of “showing”—to make something visible).

“Show, don’t tell” is a snappy, three-word summary of a rule of thumb that is about as far from a clear and absolute law of writing as any piece of writing advice I have ever seen. The problem, as evidenced by the above question and by all the terrible examples people use to explain it, is that it doesn’t define exactly what “showing” is, compared to “telling.”

You can tell this is the case because at least 99% of the time, someone giving an example of “telling” vs. “showing” gets it wrong. The last one I saw claimed that “He got up and had breakfast” was “telling,” and three paragraphs of “He got out of bed. He showered. He shaved…” through making breakfast and eating it was “showing.” Providing extra details doesn’t change something from “telling” to “showing,” any more than eliminating details changes it from “showing” to “telling.”

Since there isn’t actually a definition of what showing or telling is, I’m going to tell you what I think it is: “telling” is providing an opinion of a character, action, place, etc. without giving the reader any evidence that they should believe said opinion; “showing” is providing a reader with evidence on which to form an opinion of their own. “Telling” is, therefore, frequently abstract (“He had a slow morning;” “The room was beautiful;” “She was a mean girl”); “showing” is concrete or (in the case of characterization, especially) dramatized.

Unfortunately, “showing” or dramatizing information is subject to interpretation. One reader may interpret a character’s behavior as believably happy and cheerful, while a different reader may see it as manic or a forced way of covering up depression. Nothing can be done about this. Different readers have different life experiences, and they will interpret character behavior accordingly.

To make it a little clearer: “Harold was a tremendously generous person” is abstract. It’s the writer’s opinion of Harold; it’s what the writer wants the reader to believe about Harold; but it does not give the reader any evidence that Harold is, in fact, more than normally generous. A conversation in which two other characters comment on Harold’s generosity is more likely to be persuasive, especially if the speakers give examples, or if the reader has reason to think those characters would know of incidents that they’re not giving in detail. A scene in which Harold signs the title to his new car and gives it to a homeless family gives the reader direct evidence of Harold’s behavior, which the reader can interpret as illustrating Harold’s generosity…or as an example of him being stupidly impulsive. Or, indeed, both.

This is one reason why some writers default to simply saying “Harold was tremendously generous.” It seems like a more reliable way of giving the reader the “right” information. The trouble is, that this “telling” is also subject to reader interpretation based on experience. To one reader, “tremendously generous” may mean making a larger-than-average dollar donation to a couple of charities at Christmas, while to another it implies contributing some time and money all year long, and to a third it means the character is going without things he/she wants in order to be able to donate more to their favorite causes. When, later in the story, the character impulsively gives away his new car, some of these readers will be disappointed, because the character isn’t portraying the specific kind of “tremendous generosity” those readers expected.

The most effective way of getting readers to share the writer’s opinion of a character is, therefore, a combination of approaches. We learn about real people based on what we see them do and hear them say, as well as what other people tell us about them. If what we see and the way we interpret it agrees with other people’s interpretations, we tend to be pretty confident in our judgement. When someone’s observations differ from what others are saying, most people give at least some consideration to the alternate interpretation…and either they revise their own interpretation of the behavior, or they revise what they think of the people giving the alternate interpretation, or both.

So the combination approach is a two-fer, or even a three-fer. If the writer describes Harold as generous, then provides a scene in which Harold behaves generously, it confirms for the reader that Harold is, in fact, a generous person. It also confirms that the reader can trust the writer’s opinion, because what the writer said has turned out to be true, as demonstrated by Harold’s behavior. If two other characters later on discuss Harold’s generous action, the reader will weigh their opinions against both the writer’s original statement and the reader’s own observations (the scene wherein Harold behaved generously), and come to conclusions about the reliability of everything—the writer’s opinion of Harold, Harold’s actual behavior, the other characters’ opinions of Harold (and how much their opinions/comments can be trusted, depending on what the reader has decided about everything else).