I've been thinking about this whole show not tell malarkey over the past couple of weeks.

If you're telling someone your story in the first person then surely telling is as equally valid as showing. To blindly follow this rule is folly, isn't it?

One of my favourite authors is very much of the tell camp.

So come on let's have it

Geoff

Geoff, all 'show' becomes quite tiring to read, all 'tell' is boring. I tend to favour a mixture of the two. Sometimes one needs to 'tell' a bit of backstory, or something necessary but less important. I've noticed too that some best-selling authors seem to be able to ignore the guidelines about 'show and tell', repetition, over-use of adverbs and adjectives with impunity. It makes me cringe. Perhaps once you become a best-seller you can write exactly as you like.

Nell - apropos, have you read (any of) the Da Vinci Code?! If not, don't! It'll make your soul curl.....


Mike

I keep hearing that about Da Vinci code. Is it really that bad? I'm going to have to get hold of it just to find out.

Talking about breaking rules and getting away with it, I just bought Nic Kelman's 'Girls' (probably the rudest book I've read for some time) and read it all on the day I bought it. It has no plot, just a series of vignettes about older men chasing (and catching) very young girls, and musings on their motives. It's written in 2nd person present (or sometimes future) tense, the voice people use to distance themselves from their own emotions and actions; it gets away with four successive sentences beginning 'because words are...' I can't imagine someone writing this and sending it out expecting it to be picked up; it just breaks so many rules. But it's absolutely rivetting. Mad, angry, cold ~ Nick Hornby with fangs.

But to get back to your point. I think it's sometimes hard to know what's showing and what's telling. It's only when it's OBVIOUS that a writer is telling you something, something you should be able to work out for yourself, that it really does damage.

Sharon

I have just started reading 'How Green was my valley' by Richard Lllewellyn. It's a beautifully written book with a mixture of showing and telling. For example:

[quoute]You could chew that toffe for hours, it seems to me now, and never lost the taste of it, and even after it had gone down, you could swallow and still find the taste hiding behind your tongue.