I avoid this problem by using things like - 'her gaze travelled over his taut body.'

If you can avoid using the word 'eyes' at all, it helps a lot.

I agree that things like 'rolling his eyes' are okay to use though.

I think the key is that the author should be conscious of what he's doing. If he isn't, the reader will sense it; or at least the sensitive reader will, even if they don't immediately stop reading.

I did a class on Show Not Tell yesterday, with very new writers. I prepared quite a few examples, didn't tell them who'd written what and asked them what they thought. Possibly, the two examples with the greatest difference were an extract from 'The Veldt' by Ray Bradbury and the start of a Jeffrey Archer short story. The class didn't like the Archer (although one said she'd probably read it anyway) because they could clearly see it was all Telling and not conscious Telling at that. 'No emotional content' one said; and I'd agree. By contrast, they found the Bradbury extract intriguing, full of sensual detail and very good at showing the characters' natures through precise but not Telling detail. A couple said they wouldn't have noticed this kind of thing before the class. But I'm not so sure; I think they would have registered it at some level. The difference, essentially, is that Archer may know what he's doing in terms of writing stuff that will sell but Bradbury definitely knows what he's doing in terms of craft.



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I also showed them an extract from a Theodore Sturgeon which is pretty much all Telling. But it's conscious Telling, designed to creat an atmosphere of implication about the nature of the character being described.

Hi Terry - a friend of mine recently handed me a book of Jeffrey Archer short stories because he was so convinced they were great so I couldn't refuse to try them and I could only stand reading one, because it was all Telling.

I think that if you've stuck with a favourite author over the years who hasn't changed his/her style then you might not mind the Telling, which these days seems old-fashioned. But if you're coming to an author fresh, or are used to reading stuff written in a more contemporary style, it's very obvious that it seems dated. Had to ditch an early Ed McBain for the same reason, also handed to me by a friend who insisted I'd love it.

Preparing this class, I thought quite a lot about why it is that 'Telling' writers can be so popular. I think the answer is lazy readers. A lot of pap works by giving the reader simple touch stones that hurtle them through the story to the presumably satisfying ending. Therefore, you tell the reader, say, that Sid loves Nancy; you don't bother to show that their relationship is actually more complex, and that pure love is a moot point. Lazy readers want 'pure' emotions, I think; but you only get those through Telling. But I don't think the lazy read ever produces long-term satisfaction. Take that Archer story: you don't have any emotional involvement in the character at all. So, while you know what's happened to her by the end, you don't really, deep-down care.

Forgive me if I'm repeating anything anyone's ever said, but various thoughts in no particular order.

I think even perfectly sensible things like:

"Fred's eyes flicked to the side" "his hand rested on her shoulder"

start looking odd as you stare at them, slightly - and then very - out of context. And once you're sensitised to them, such things going on looking odd, perhaps. In context, the reader picks up the essential meaning, and is already reading on. On the other hand "His eyes ran round the room" looks pretty daft however you read it.

Although Fred's eyes flicking make sense if we're in Alison's VP - that's what she sees - but not so much if we're in his. I think in his, it's more "Fred looked away"... or "Fred glanced at the dog". We don't consciously flick our eyes, in other words, except at the opticians. The heart of the action if we're in Fred's vp is the intention (in the Stanislavskian sense) .. but we certainly see others doing it.

I do a lot with look/gaze, I find, because it's the verb that's crucial for me: the action by an act-or in the scene. I always know where people are in the room, and who's looking where is crucial. A copy-editor picked up six looked/look/looking in one page - though a couple were of the 'it looked like rain" sort. I doubt if I've every made anyone's eyes do anything except water...

But I agree with Chris that you may not to do anything - if the PoV is reasonably clear and stable, we'll know through whose eyes we're seeing the vulgarity of the crystal vase, or whatever.

But it's conscious Telling,

In a course I'm teaching at the moment, someone asked why you might want to use the furthest-out psychic distances - i.e. the Telliest Tell - in fiction: why wouldn't you want to be telling the story from inside a character's point of view? And I bashed out the following examples. Not that I think they're great writing. But they're definitely Telling, and I certainly wouldn't balk at meeting them - appropriately used, in their particular kind of story:

A narrator's voice:

The new Voyager-class ships of the line had a longer, slimmer hull, and all those who had been concerned with their design and building were sure that now, at last, the Navy had a vessel which could both outrun and outshoot the very best that Fredrikshaven could make.

Or fairy-tale voice:

The red dragon lived at the top of Shard Tor, and those few who were foolish enough to seek out its lair, in the hope of treasure, were lucky to escape with only minor burns, and nightmares which lasted, on and off, until the end of their days.

That's interesting, Emma.

I think you've got a good point that once we're sensitised to something as writers, it's hard to be a reader and not notice it.

I started reading an Ian Rankin a while back and he seems to almost be playing some sort of game to find the maximum number of ways of avoiding saying "said". In one page of dialogue, he had people murmuring, confirming, asseverating, all sorts. But if I hadn't read loads of how-to books telling me that you should almost always use "said", I wonder if I would even have noticed.

Yes, I blogged about the business of getting sensitised to things


And it's also about the related question of all the times writers who don't want to learn about technique, and authors who... well, I won't go there ... both say "I don't think real readers notice [show/tell, adjectives, whatever]" - without discriminating between readers noticing technique, and readers being affected by writing which uses those techniques...

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2012/06/real-readers-wont-notice.html

As with many things, people often see the smooth skill of the craftsman as something that must be simple to do. They suspect he's working instinctively, which he probably is. But his instinct has been primed after he's spent probably years working through the complexity of understanding how the craft works.

So, I think new writers tend to Tell too much. They need to learn how to Show. Showing that's done well is magical, natural, more than the sum of the parts. But at first, it's difficult and complicated to do. Then, when a writer's got Showing into his instinct, he can use Telling again; only now, it has a similar effect to Showing: it creates atmosphere, feeling, or it positions characters and setting to be ready to support those things.

On the other hand, there are plenty of successful authors who don't appear to be interested in learning the Show/Tell craft. Or don't feel they need to. That Archer story reads like a tick-box exercise, getting through the plot points and on to the climax/resolution as fast as possible. Which makes it strange that Mr Archer claims he does around 17 drafts for each story. Maybe he's a Showing genius and has to do so many drafts to edit it out . . .