![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321Last year, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
julad wrote: 'To me, disembodied dialogue is one of the warning signs that I'm telling-not-showing'.
I'm glad I just got linked to this via a later sga workshop discussion because this is precisely what I have been thinking about these past few days.
There is a confusion of concepts at work in most of what people say about show and tell. The concepts were coined by Percy Lubbock in the 1920s who based himself on Henry James novels but, ultimately, they go right back to Aristotle's distinction between mimesis and diegesis.
Mimesis is imitation of action. According to Aristotle, this is only possible in theatre where events are literally acted out before our eyes and the characters actually speak the lines.
Diegesis is story-telling. According to Aristotle, this is the mode of epic. For us, today, the dominant mode of story-telling would perhaps be the novel. Diegesis can only represent action, not imitate it. The only way that mimesis can occur within epic is through direct speech which comes close to imitation. (This is why Aristotle thought that Homer was a sort of mixed form because he combines diegesis with mimesis/direct speech).
So, to get back to Julad's sentence: To me, disembodied dialogue is one of the warning signs that I'm telling-not-showing. In Aristotelian terms, at any rate, dialogue is a pure form of mimesis. And I guess we could (sort of) equate mimesis with showing. So dialogue is not 'telling'!
But then maybe we cannot really equate Aristotle's terms with Lubbock's because Aristotle was sharp as a nail and Lubbock is a woolly ass whose stupid show-and-tell distinction has addled the brains of would-be writers for the past 80 years. I am every day trying to free myself of the fetters of Percy bloody Lubbock!
End of rant. For now! To be continued once I get my notes on Lubbock's book out and really dissect his discussion. *whets knife*
julad wrote: 'To me, disembodied dialogue is one of the warning signs that I'm telling-not-showing'.I'm glad I just got linked to this via a later sga workshop discussion because this is precisely what I have been thinking about these past few days.
There is a confusion of concepts at work in most of what people say about show and tell. The concepts were coined by Percy Lubbock in the 1920s who based himself on Henry James novels but, ultimately, they go right back to Aristotle's distinction between mimesis and diegesis.
Mimesis is imitation of action. According to Aristotle, this is only possible in theatre where events are literally acted out before our eyes and the characters actually speak the lines.
Diegesis is story-telling. According to Aristotle, this is the mode of epic. For us, today, the dominant mode of story-telling would perhaps be the novel. Diegesis can only represent action, not imitate it. The only way that mimesis can occur within epic is through direct speech which comes close to imitation. (This is why Aristotle thought that Homer was a sort of mixed form because he combines diegesis with mimesis/direct speech).
So, to get back to Julad's sentence: To me, disembodied dialogue is one of the warning signs that I'm telling-not-showing. In Aristotelian terms, at any rate, dialogue is a pure form of mimesis. And I guess we could (sort of) equate mimesis with showing. So dialogue is not 'telling'!
But then maybe we cannot really equate Aristotle's terms with Lubbock's because Aristotle was sharp as a nail and Lubbock is a woolly ass whose stupid show-and-tell distinction has addled the brains of would-be writers for the past 80 years. I am every day trying to free myself of the fetters of Percy bloody Lubbock!
End of rant. For now! To be continued once I get my notes on Lubbock's book out and really dissect his discussion. *whets knife*