show vs tell
Feb. 19th, 2004 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321Ever since I started to read 'how to write novels and short stories' books and read fellow slashers' rants and musings on this topic, I have been uneasy about the
show vs tell
dichotomy. And just now, on the loo, I read Gérard Genette's thoughts on the matter and got very excited!
Genette, from Narrative Discourse (1972), pp. 162-4:
First, he talks about Plato's contrasting of two narrative modes:
1) pure narrative or diegesis: reported speech
(the poet himself is the speaker)
2) imitation or mimesis: direct speech
(the poet delivers the speech as if he were such-and-such a character; borrowed from the dramatic convention of theatre)
Then Genette goes on to write this:
We know how this contrast [between diegesis and mimesis] ... abruptly surged forth again in novel theory in the United States and England at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, with Henry James and his disciples, in the barely transposed terms of showing vs. telling, which speedily became the Ormazd and the Ahriman of novelistic aesthetics in the Anglo-American normative vulgate.
(Ormazd and Ahriman: the Zoroastrian good and evil principles, respectively; the first created and governs the world, while the second seeks to destroy the other's beneficent work)
Don't you just love it??!! The aesthetics in the Anglo-American normative vulgate! *falls over with glee* (Now I know the perfect retort to anybody who appears and goes on about show not tell. "You aesthete of the Anglo-American normative vulgate school, you!" *squeals*)
OK, Genette goes on to explain why the show vs tell is up the garden path:
... the very idea of showing, like that of imitation or narrative representation (and even more so, because of its naively visual character), is completely illusory: in contrast to dramatic representation, no narrative can "show" or "imitate" the story it tells. All it can do is tell it in a manner which is detailed, precise, "alive", and in that way give more or less the illusion of mimesis -- which is the only narrative mimesis, for this single and sufficient reason: that narration, oral or written, is a fact of language, and language signifies without imitating.
God, I love good, clear theory. *falls over with hyperbolic love*
What I love here is that Genette debunks and describes. It makes me realise that what I don't like about the show-not-tell dicta is that they are so prescriptive. And I do not like being told what to do in my writing. I like much better to read descriptions because they present you with options, and then I can choose what I myself prefer to do.
Just to finish off with Genette (continued from above):
Unless, of course, the object signified (narrated) be itself language. [me: that is, you can imitate direct speech] ... But what happens when we are dealing with something else: not words, but silent events and actions? How then does mimesis function, and how will the narrator "suggest to us that ... he is someone else?" ... How can one handle the narrative object so that it literally "tells itself" (as Percy Lubbock insists) without anyone having to speak for it? ... The truth is that mimesis in words can only be mimesis of words. Other than that, all we have and can have is degrees of diegesis. So we must distinguish here between narrative of events and "narrative of words".
Yes! *punches air* There is no show vs tell! There is only tell! Tell, tell and more tell, and different degrees of tell some of which give the illusion of show.
OK, I do have some quibbles with Genette but on the whole, I find his dissection of the whole show vs tell business very liberating. And it's interesting to me as well because of the book I'm writing on visual narrative, because paintings do nothing but show, of course. So it's something I think about.
I am plotting a narratological analysis of slashfic. I will take one or two short fics and do a narratological exegesis of them, using Genette's and others' terminology and methods. *rubs hands* This will be fiendish fun. The only thing is: whose fic to pick? If I pick one of mine, nobody will take offense but I may be biased or blinded.
Will anyone offer themselves up as willing guinea pigs?
dichotomy. And just now, on the loo, I read Gérard Genette's thoughts on the matter and got very excited!
Genette, from Narrative Discourse (1972), pp. 162-4:
First, he talks about Plato's contrasting of two narrative modes:
1) pure narrative or diegesis: reported speech
(the poet himself is the speaker)
2) imitation or mimesis: direct speech
(the poet delivers the speech as if he were such-and-such a character; borrowed from the dramatic convention of theatre)
Then Genette goes on to write this:
We know how this contrast [between diegesis and mimesis] ... abruptly surged forth again in novel theory in the United States and England at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, with Henry James and his disciples, in the barely transposed terms of showing vs. telling, which speedily became the Ormazd and the Ahriman of novelistic aesthetics in the Anglo-American normative vulgate.
(Ormazd and Ahriman: the Zoroastrian good and evil principles, respectively; the first created and governs the world, while the second seeks to destroy the other's beneficent work)
Don't you just love it??!! The aesthetics in the Anglo-American normative vulgate! *falls over with glee* (Now I know the perfect retort to anybody who appears and goes on about show not tell. "You aesthete of the Anglo-American normative vulgate school, you!" *squeals*)
OK, Genette goes on to explain why the show vs tell is up the garden path:
... the very idea of showing, like that of imitation or narrative representation (and even more so, because of its naively visual character), is completely illusory: in contrast to dramatic representation, no narrative can "show" or "imitate" the story it tells. All it can do is tell it in a manner which is detailed, precise, "alive", and in that way give more or less the illusion of mimesis -- which is the only narrative mimesis, for this single and sufficient reason: that narration, oral or written, is a fact of language, and language signifies without imitating.
God, I love good, clear theory. *falls over with hyperbolic love*
What I love here is that Genette debunks and describes. It makes me realise that what I don't like about the show-not-tell dicta is that they are so prescriptive. And I do not like being told what to do in my writing. I like much better to read descriptions because they present you with options, and then I can choose what I myself prefer to do.
Just to finish off with Genette (continued from above):
Unless, of course, the object signified (narrated) be itself language. [me: that is, you can imitate direct speech] ... But what happens when we are dealing with something else: not words, but silent events and actions? How then does mimesis function, and how will the narrator "suggest to us that ... he is someone else?" ... How can one handle the narrative object so that it literally "tells itself" (as Percy Lubbock insists) without anyone having to speak for it? ... The truth is that mimesis in words can only be mimesis of words. Other than that, all we have and can have is degrees of diegesis. So we must distinguish here between narrative of events and "narrative of words".
Yes! *punches air* There is no show vs tell! There is only tell! Tell, tell and more tell, and different degrees of tell some of which give the illusion of show.
OK, I do have some quibbles with Genette but on the whole, I find his dissection of the whole show vs tell business very liberating. And it's interesting to me as well because of the book I'm writing on visual narrative, because paintings do nothing but show, of course. So it's something I think about.
I am plotting a narratological analysis of slashfic. I will take one or two short fics and do a narratological exegesis of them, using Genette's and others' terminology and methods. *rubs hands* This will be fiendish fun. The only thing is: whose fic to pick? If I pick one of mine, nobody will take offense but I may be biased or blinded.
Will anyone offer themselves up as willing guinea pigs?