Hi guys, thank you for all of your advice so far. The phrase, 'show not tell' keeps coming into my mind. Does this mean that one shouldnt have just a lot of narrative no matter how interesting? Do you always have to break it up with dialogue? Are two pages of pure narrative too much without dialogue? Help please!

Not always; it's also to do with how you show characters' feelings. If you show the physical signs rather than saying how they feel, it is seen as better storytelling because it involves the reader - makes them do a bit of work.

Something as simple as:

her shoulders slumped rather than she felt disappointed.
He slammed his fist on the desk and yelled rather than he shouted angrily

Long narrative can be a bit dull, especially if you simply spell out a character's CV. The better way is to give hints at their skills and bring out the explanation out through story and events.

Colin M

happyhour, 'show not tell' is all about showing the reader what is happening, rather than telling them. This makes them feel more involved. It can be done via narrative or dialogue.

eg

Bob made his way through the woods, stopping every now and again and listening; biting his lip, he'd then start again, wiping his sweaty palms against his trousers. SHOW

Scared, Bob walked through the woods cautiously. TELL


"Just leave it, Mum," I said, pushing away my favourite supper. "I... I'm just not hungry." SHOW

"Just leave it,Mum," I said, too depressed to eat. TELL



Not brilliant examples, but you get the gist.

Hi, happyhour. It all depends on the type of novel you're writing. A memoir-type of novel is going to have loads of Tell, whereas a crime or thriller novel will be mostly Show - and there are degrees inbetween.
The sort of Tell to avoid is information dumps, especially in the form of blocks of background info. about your character(s) or the political setting. Usually best to simply move these blocks into a separate file marked 'Notes', because they are of more use to the writer than to the reader.
Often writers have blocks of summary in the text where they skip over stuff in their rush to reach a certain point in the narrative. It can often be useful to go back and delete those sections, or develop them into scenes in their own right.


- NaomiM

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A good example of a novel with lots of Tell is Fannie Flagg's Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man

Thanks for that, makes it clearer. To pick up on a point from Naomi, regarding chunks of narrative background about the characters. Is this ever ok? The backgrounds our mainly of the victims of the murderer. Helping you care for them, rather than just been faceless victims of crime? Help!(again!)

Well, to make a sweeping statement, murder victims are just plot devices to kick off the novel, and the reader isn't meant to empathise with them - at least, not from the outset. Instead the reader emphasises with the detective (or whoever is investigating the murder, be it a pathologist or psychologist, or whoever), and with the family &/or friends who have to identify the body, and are left to cope with the loss.
As the novel progresses it is the investigator's job to build up a picture of the victim, and use that to idenitfy the murderer. If you give it all to te reader in a block of bioraphical narrative in the early chapters, there's not much left to encourage the reader to read on (hunting the murderer may not be enough). That biographical background info is more for the writer's use - as an aide de memoir, and only a small part needs to be shared with the reader (eg, used as clues to help the investigation), as for the rest of it, it's best to leave that for the second half of the novel.


- NaomiM

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The reader comes to care for the victim through the eyes of the characters that feel their loss.

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You could convert the background detail into scenes where the investigator(s) is interviewing family and friends about the victim(s), and that will help to break it up into smaller chunks.

I always ask the question in any scene 'does the reader need to know this?'
Would they be able to fill in the gaps themselves without me leading them by the nose?
Would their enjoyment be just the same without this detail?

If either answer is no, then I need exposition. But I'm strict, particularly with the enjoyment factor. This has nothing to do with my feelings or my attachment to the detail.

HB x

I set myself a Show not Tell task recently, which was to write a fantasy story focussing on a stand-up comedian (which I think might be something of a first). The task was to include extracts from his actual routine, which hopefully would make readers laugh, rather just tell them he was funny, and how the audience split their sides, etc.

And there is another reason Show is more effective than Tell, apart from transferring actual emotion to the reader instead of described emotion. Showing multi-tasks in that, in this example, the reader gets to see how the character's beliefs, attitudes and approach flavour the humour. Which means you get the direct emotion along with useful and real hints at the depths of the character too. This simply can't be done with Telling, e.g. 'he was a very funny stand-up comedian, who had everyone rolling in the aisles; not only that but his humour reflected that he was also a bitter man hiding a guilty secret'. In this, there is no actual humour, of course, but also 'bitter' and 'guilty secret' are nothing but flatline descriptions of a vague condition. If you can inject actual bitterness into his routine, along with the suggestion that some of the cruelty in the humour could be an attempt to avoid his own misgivings about what he's doing, the reader will sit up and take notice, instead of feeling that they're being lectured. They're also want to find out more, which is crucial to any story-telling.

Terry