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?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-19 09:56 pm (UTC)*grins*
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-19 09:58 pm (UTC)n.x :)
Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 09:59 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 10:00 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 10:01 pm (UTC)n.x :)
Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 10:10 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 10:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-19 10:12 pm (UTC)If you want to analyze any of my fanfic, you may feel free. We don't really know each other and I just read your journal because, well, you have a habit of posting great stuff like this, so hopefully you wouldn't be biased, and heck, nothing really offends me. (So feel just as free not to pick my stuff. :D)
My stuff can be found as follows:
http://ubiquitously.gr33nsl33v3s.com/archival/viewuser.php?uid=4 (Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, One Piece, Lord of the Rings)
http://www.fanfiction.net/~calicokat (One Piece, X/Tokyo Babylon, Guilty Gear, Lord of the Rings)
http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=calichan (Sharpe's, Lord of the Rings, Equilibrium)
Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 10:14 pm (UTC)wtf??
is this your bathroom reading? what do you read when you *really* want to relax??!!
n.x ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-19 10:29 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 10:31 pm (UTC)I'll do In the name of research; is that okay?
Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 10:33 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 10:37 pm (UTC)And yes, um, I did read Genette in the bathroom today. And when I really want to relax, I read Resonant's Transfigurations or a contemporary novel (I love Ann-Marie Macdonald and David Mitchell). But at the moment I haven't got a good one. And when I really, really need comfort food, I read Jane Austen. :-)
(Reply to this) (Parent)
Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 10:41 pm (UTC)But what I liked about Genette, actually, is that he argues that there *aren't*, in fact, two modes. There *is* only telling. So when you say that you wrote a fic in only tell-mode or that Pat Murphy's book is in tell-mode, I don't think that's quite Genette's point. Because what I loved is that he gets *beyond* that restricting dichotomy.
I don't want to take sides. I think that's been bothering me. That either you do the show (good) or you do the tell (bad, or perversely good if you feel stroppy). I just like getting beyond the whole "vs" thing.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 10:42 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 10:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-19 11:21 pm (UTC)aesthetics in the Anglo-American normative vulgate
I love this, am memorizing and will use it as often as possible.
Tell, tell and more tell, and different degrees of tell some of which give the illusion of show.
Of course, in the end it's all just words on a page. And words can paint the most fabulous and detailed pictures and actions, which I suppose is a form of showing, but it's all fundamentally, still telling.
I had a similar epiphany today, probably around the same time you were writing this. mindmeld, omg I was working on getting back in touch with my "original" Sue, and in doing so, I had to illustrate a few things about the character that could only be accomplished by "telling." Now it's possible that I'll be able to go back and find some other way to illustrate these thoughts and attributes more dynamically, but it will still just be another form of telling.
The more I write, and the more good fiction I read, the more I resist all of these "rules." They may have their place as a way to avoid common mistakes and cliches, but when a story really takes flight, they just get in the way.
Yes of course; how can writing ever be anything but telling?
Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 11:47 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 11:50 pm (UTC)Now if only people could realize that for the hundred other things they need it to dawn on them for in fiction and in fandom. XP
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-19 11:55 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-19 11:55 pm (UTC)I know! Isn't it just great?!
Also the scathing remarks one can imagine smiting people with: "Oh, show and tell? That tired old Ormazd and Ahriman..." *cackles fiendishly* Another good bit which I didn't copy down consist of criticizing that neo-Aristotelian valuing of the mimetic. However, nothing beats the vulgate!!!
mindmeld, omg *falls over*
The more I write, and the more good fiction I read, the more I resist all of these "rules." They may have their place as a way to avoid common mistakes and cliches, but when a story really takes flight, they just get in the way.
Yes, yes, that's so well put: 'when the story takes flight' (a real Memphis Belle metaphor!). I like knowing and reading about the "rules" but then it's good to get away from them. I also liked the way Genette historicised the rule for me. Instead of this grand Truth, the show vs tell turns out to be a particular mode of talking about fiction, invented by particular people at a particular point in time, and turned into normative Golden Rule by later how-to advice book authors.
how can writing ever be anything but telling
There's only good!telling and bad!telling. And some of it's terse or descriptive and feels like 'show', and some of it's introspective or summarises events and feels like 'tell'.
Now I want to read Henry James and Percy Lubbock who started all of this. Die haben uns das eingebrockt!!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-20 12:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-20 02:07 am (UTC)I'm in waaay above my head, and have not studied literary theory or anything close to it. I'm just a wanna-be writer who has taken a writing class, and has read umpteen books on writing, and have heard the advice "show don't tell" a thousand times (or so it feels). Critters of my writing have pointed out "tells" in my writing and I have done the same for other writers when critting their work. I've worked my butt off at times to "show" rather than "tell" when warranted, and tried to know when to do both.
I don't claim to be all that comfortable with this kind of discourse, but I'll give it a try. What Genette says is, in essence, that all is "tell", just that some tell has more of an "illusion of show" than others. That it has become fashionable in modern American literary works to go heavy on the side of the "illusion of show" rather than the more straightforward "tell".
Does he explain why it has become fashionable in "Anglo-American normative vulgate"? Do non-Anglo-American works follow a different course? Is work that strives for the illusion of show better than writing filled with straight-forward telling?
I'm wondering what implications your read of Genette has for someone like me ...
Re:
Date: 2004-02-20 03:52 am (UTC)Or, as my mother puts it to her classes of mad 13-year-olds, you have to know how the "rules" work and why before you can break them.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-20 04:32 am (UTC)sexuallinguistic favours?Like all the "rules" of writing, "show don't tell" is horrifically simplistic and doesn't cover all the bases and, in fact, once the author reaches a decent level of skill, can be gleefully cast aside in the pursuit of further experimentation and excellence. But it's a damn good guide for beginners.