To combat a post I saw on my dash because bad writing advice is like my new Thing that makes me Really Annoyed:
1. Show, Don’t Tell is not the golden rule of novel writing. If anything, it’s the golden rule of screen writing, which is a visual medium and uses different rules than novel writing. Not all types of writing are created equal and use the same rules so it’s not a one size fits all industry. Conventions even differ from genre to genre with novels, so this is not the good, all around advice it’s lauded to be.
2. Yes your character IS sad, devastated, furious, and heartbroken. You can and SHOULD use these words to describe how they’re feeling, but you incorporate them with descriptions that emphasize the emotions – the way someone’s hands are shaking, how their fists are balled so tightly their nails are cutting into their palm. These will help the readers get into the head of your character without risking them losing the scene because it’s too vague to emotionally connect to. The words sad and devastated, etc, will then just disappear into the background while still guiding your reader towards the reaction you want them to have.
3. Every character has a different perception of their surroundings. If you treat characters like the have universal emotional reactions to everything – ie, obsessively noticing the details on a small car to show that they’re “in love” with it – all your characters are going to end up super samey. Also, not every single person is going to see the loss of their lover as a “thing they just lost in battle”, instead, they’re going to get angry, they’re going to rain fiery justice down on their foes like a god of death.
Instead of having to write one-size fits all reactions, consider what sort of person your character is. Are they more introspective? Are they a man or woman of action or are they a more reserved person? I know for a fact that the two characters I write the most would react completely differently to losing their lovers in the heat of battle or discovering someone did something super touching for them, and they actually both have quite a few things in common. Instead of using generic writing devices to try to give your story more depth, focus instead of really telling the story of your specific character in that moment by fleshing them out and treating them like a person.
4. Again, on the matter of dialogue, not everyone has a universal human reaction to their own emotions. Some people are more likely to be more honest when they’re sad than they are when they’re happy because they feel like they have nothing left to lose. Or maybe your character is in even MORE control of themselves when they’re angry because their anger isn’t the irrational kind of anger, it’s the slow burning deliberate kind of anger that turns them into a scheming mastermind. If you’re not considering the individual motivations of your characters and the people around them, no matter what you do with your dialogue to “show and not tell”, it’s going to come off as stiff. Your character should be able to start a conversation in the same way with two different people and have the conversation turn out differently just because dialog should incorporate the personalities and individual voices of your cast before it ever incorporates pulp psychology.
5. And I saved this counterpoint for last because this is the point that annoys me the most – The entire post I’m referring to treats everyone like they’re exactly the same and will universally have the same responses to things in the lieu of giving good advice. If you write everyone like they have low inhibitions when they’re highly emotional, you’ll end up writing your cast like they’re all teenagers.
If you have a cast of only teenagers, this might be fine, but as people get older, they generally gain more of an ability to control themselves, and even all teenagers aren’t exactly alike. I was a very reserved teenager who was very in control of myself, because even young, stupid, emotionally charged me was still a very sensible person… Just not quite as sensible and in control of myself as I am now.
It’s okay to write characters doing this if you’re writing people who are just this way or who are exhausted and emotionally vulnerable or who are drunk and no longer have inhibitions, but most people will have things that hold them back from losing control. We need to consider what these things are for each of our characters, how they apply, and what they mean. Only once we have a good grasp of characterization and our cast can we really start to form complex worlds and scenes.
And it doesn’t really matter how you come to those characters, either. You can construct them deliberately like someone building a machine and view yourself as their master and them as tools, or you can lovingly grow your characters and treat them like real people, but if you don’t start with having a strong idea about your cast if you’re writing pop fiction (where that is GENERALLY why most people follow your stuff) you might end up with a weaker story.
Generally, writing advice isn’t once size fits all.
There is any myriad of ways to write well, and the style the person describes does have merit, but not to everyone. It especially might not fill the bill for those of us who ARE novelists and need to be able to really get into the nitty gritty of our settings and characters.
Being so zoomed out for our cast, which is what showing and not telling can sometimes do because it compromises personal narrator voice in a lot of ways, can really compromise the integrity of a strong character driven work.
Even in character driven works, there will be places where you DO want to show instead, of course, but we should never throw out telling as a part of our repertoire. Sometimes it just fits a scene or character better, and sometimes? Sometimes what you really need is to do BOTH and ass what the “experts” say.
Much like art, writing is like finding a style, and you can have a good style even if you don’t follow the template of the classics.
Never be afraid to break or bend the rules. There are ways you can improve, but so much about writing is just as subjective as visual art, so never be afraid to stand by your guns and go out and find your audience.
After all, just because someone doesn’t like a manga style artist’s work doesn’t mean it’s not technically skilled and that NO ONE will like it. It’s the same for different styles of writing, and you don’t have to subscribe to “show, don’t tell” like it is the single most golden rule a writer can have if you don’t want to.
Ultimately, it’s just a tool to tell your story.
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