ILB Writing Club

'show don't tell' is a facile piece of advice doled out in undergraduate courses by teachers who can't be asked to explain the whys and wherefores of switching between narrative and narrative summary, and used (in my experience) by inexperienced writers who don't have a grasp of the scope of their story.

teachers who can't be asked?

seems a way of stopping people writing boring internal monologues or telling first-person stories via indirect speech. or hurtling past things which could be scenes.

if it was actually used simply as a mantra rather than the cliched title for a form of teaching which explains the whys and wherefores you mention then it might be useful to criticise it in that way,

imo the diff between fiction and eg talking to your friends or thinking is show v tell.

I've read and generally adored Kevin Barry's short work, how much of that is down to a resonance such that I know/get the detail he is either leaving in or leaving out is kind of a related point I think

Eh, the example I made up was based on something I read a bit ago, and while the characters were kind of poorly-drawn my real issue was with the cliched delivery of 'showing'. I guess maybe the lesson is just "don't write in cliches", but I've always had a problem with 'show, don't tell' and it felt like a pertinent example of why you shouldn't always obey.

And yeah, of course, I wasn't saying that 'show, don't tell' is thought of as a hard rule, in fact I basically said that in my post, I was just emphasising that it also shouldn't be.

xxxxp

I dunno if I agree completely, LocalGarda. I do think 'show don't tell' *is* used as a mantra. Often when I lead writers' workshops, summary ('telling') scenes are the first things to come under fire during critiques –– even if they're an expedient and appropriate means for moving the narrative forward. I think there's a popular style in fiction (and memoir, especially) to select key scenes and present them one right after another, as if they were in a screenplay, and with only minimal connective tissue / summary between them. It's a fine style, but it's deeply mannered, and there are a lot more ways to write narrative that use summary 'telling' to great effect.

but I also ate a buttload of cold medicine today, so I might not be entirely clear-headed on the issue

i think it's more than not writing in cliches, feels like it's about not skipping past narrative by telling people what's happening or how a person is feeling instead of allowing the space and time for a scene. i dunno, i think telling is so deeply engrained that it is massively useful and true to talk about show don't tell, in ways i am ever-realising. most of the writing cliches are more true than i originally realised but only noticed by practice, imo. i feel p strongly evangelist for some of them, and i wouldn't say the ma i'm doing is some deeply conservative homogenising force, far from it.

I've read and generally adored Kevin Barry's short work, how much of that is down to a resonance such that I know/get the detail he is either leaving in or leaving out is kind of a related point I think

v real characters imo.

xxpost to soda - it prob is used as a mantra but there is a lot of truth behind it imo. i do kind of agree tho that telling is not a thing to eradicate. like as i said i think telling is inevitable. there prob should be more emphasis on how to tell well. every story needs telling. i guess i just think show don't tell initially is emphasised because telling dominates so much when someone first starts writing. telling felt v alluring to me for a long time and shedding some of that impulse has helped my stories a lot. i sense that's true in most of the other relatively inexperienced writers i'm studying with.

sorry slightly garbled post. i meant to say most of the writing cliches are more true than i originally realised, but i've only noticed this by practice.

a common thing for me with writing is to read a thing about it that has the ring of truth, but fail to understand it or practice it for many moons after, then suddenly it dawns by practice and donkey work. i think there's a show don't tell problem in writing teaching.

in most kinds of teaching IMO: basically you have to get the kid to practice their scales (or whatever) anyway, whether or not they understand why, and some of the mantras are just bullshit to help get the scales-practice happening when the why hasn't taken (and probably can't except in hindsight)

In my students I see a strong tendency (whether innate or as the result of previous instruction) to favor either “telling” or “showing” as the default mode of storytelling. It’s about 50/50 as a preference, and I think that a deeper conversation about pacing and the purpose of story is the best way to progress forward.

What I teach, in actual practice, is that showing and telling (IME) aren’t separable nor do they exist in opposition any more than, say, major and minor scales do from each other.

But if you’re a “teller,” scene work is great. And if you’re a “shower,” summary practice is essential.

I’ll cop - personally - to over-showing, and realizing relatively late into my writing career that sometimes a simple “he was late to work because of the turkeys in the road” is often preferable to a long scene in which with a turkey the protagonist has been cultivating a tentative friendship with gets struck by an angry motorist who, due to the low angle of the winter sun cutting through crystal-specked air, is temporarily blinded while heading to pick up his i unappreciative ex-wife at the airport.

Fact: two years ago I spent an entire morning writing about my protagonist passing a Certain Fencepost in whose quality of lichen and state of decrepitude I invested ~2000 words. Cut it to a clause in the subsequent revision.

The showing becomes more resonant as telling builds up (can be just here and there)and becomes the context settling in, rising and falling, the sense of significance "He walked into a bar." "So? Oh shit.") As a jazz musician might begin to leave out notes from the basic melody etc, once he's taught it to the listener as he continues past and/or deeper into it. At least that's what I try to do in my xpost memory pieces (still in progress, or something).

(Correct use of punctuation still in something too.)

What I teach, in actual practice, is that showing and telling (IME) aren’t separable nor do they exist in opposition any more than, say, major and minor scales do from each other.

you obv have a lot more experience of it, it could be a case of "to the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail" but i feel like in my class more of us have problems telling too much. i guess i do think that telling is more of a problem than showing tho, like a story that only showed could be fine, i think that's a lot harder for a story that was all telling. i'm focussing mainly on short stories, i guess in novels there is even more need for telling as a matter of course, i feel like some great short stories only show. i also feel that, for beginners at least, and from my own stuff, when i've only been telling i'm more likely to have little or no dialogue, a passive character who never interacts with other characters, and no scenes. a lot of the anti-telling thing is to try to stop unearned emotion i guess.

there's something v impressive about a story where suddenly you are told about massive events and the passage of time, it feels audacious and bravura. you've been witnessing minutia and then suddenly you are told "in spring, they married. james' work, while repetitive, continued to furnish him with the confidence that he was a man of good standing, and it was this quality of his that maryanne couldn't imagine him without." you feel like, wow, ok i'm in good hands here. this writer knows where we're going.

oh for sure all of that is needed. it's just when a story is only that and there's never any slow examination.

i feel like this piece covers most of what we're discussing better than i can explain it, been a hugely useful article for me in the last few months:

https://stingingfly.org/2017/10/24/edit-lousy-writing/

little or no dialogue, a passive character who never interacts with other characters

This is definitely the area that I'm working on currently! Though for me it's definitely not a result of over-telling, it's more a result of being a dusty-dusty-her-sad-in-her-room existential angst person. I feel like I'm pretty good at scenes and imagery and not so good at creating a human who doesn't feel alienated from everyone else. I'm getting a whole lot better at secondary character/relationship writing but I still shy away from dialogue, tbh.

My main struggle with the thing I'm working on is that it has a central character (who isn't quite me, thank you!) who's going to be in more or less every scene, and the thing will be how I make the other characters into people with full lives and complex motivations rather than cipheresque satellites, while not sacrificing economy. I guess just constantly ask myself 'is this character here for any good reason other than to interact with Our Hero?'. I'm also slightly unsure if the 'plot' is rich enough at this stage. I guess that after writing 500 tiny-type pages of outlandish plot and psychedelic indulgence the right amount of plot might seem thin, so I'll just go with it.

‘She stared at the old house. Her head filled with memories…’ Later, going back to edit this, they reread their own words: ‘She stared at the old house.’ Ah, yes! The words trigger the impulse that led to the words. They can see the specific house they have in mind; they see the dark green ivy covering a high window entirely, so the house looks one-eyed and piratical, they see the saplings and small bushes sprouting in the long-blocked, leaf-filled gutters, they see the ancient elm in the garden, leaning against the side of the house as though drunk.

This is a good article, but I feel very very strongly that sometimes "...the dark green ivy covered a high window entirely, so the house looked one-eyed and piratical..." needs to be edited down to "she stared at the old house".

otm

really there are no hard and fast rules besides 'does this work' - does it draw you on without ringing false - is this a train you want to ride etc

LJ, my advice wrt secondary characters: sometimes a traditional workshop exercise will get them to feel more fleshed out, other times just write the damn story with them as ciphers and find out where it goes, and only after the first couple of drafts do you edit the hell out of them, because you now know them better.

i feel like i wrote about solo characters for about two years. also loads of stories of illness and stuff, i suppose cos of having chronic illness.

like i'm not for a second saying you can't write something great from whatever approach you take, my experience is hardly universal, but i do know personally i am having a lot more fun with my stories in the last few months since i started daring myself into more dialogue and relationships between characters. i hated dialogue but i actually enjoy it now. for some reason it is v cringe-inducing in a first draft but i think that's illusory. a thing i wrote recently i had to bully myself to write the dialogue, 15 minutes at a time and getting angry and frustrated and stopping. when i showed it to my class people thought the dialogue was fine, a lot of the anxiety is illusory i guess.

i've had a few epiphanies lately where a story with characters that began with some sort of point of view or question in my mind about something in the world has gone on to change my mind, or make me realise there's more depth to the initial pov i began exploring. i find that really exciting - like "it turns out what i think is actually this, based on what i found out via those characters"

xpost to emily. all rules in anything are made to be broken, but in finding out "does this work" or "why doesn't it work" i don't think the rules are a bad place to start...

(trad workshop exercises can feel incredibly stupid but I find that I'm more ok with using them if I hit a sticking point, then I can treat it as a kind of fun break and not beat myself up for not moving forward... and possibly something will come out of it)

(xp to self)

btw not trying to claim to know much here or that anything i say has any weight for anyone else.

also xpost...

xpost to emily. all rules in anything are made to be broken, but in finding out "does this work" or "why doesn't it work" i don't think the rules are a bad place to start...

this was to lj btw, i meant the previous bit was xpost to emily.

nothing wrong with trad workshop exercises, writing to template etc. constriction is the force from which coiled creativity can leap. ty for suggesting it! if a chapter is stuck then writing something very exercise-y will probably be for the best

and obviously yeah a working knowledge of 'the rules', or at least 'how it's been done before', is u&k

Imago - I think it depends on how self-involved your central character is. If they are (and a lot of central characters tend to be) then the characters only matter in how they interact with that one character. You can use dialogue and little character details to hint at richer interior lives, things that the reader will pick up on but your character may not notice or care about.

Just started the Kevin Barry stuff, very good

which one did you get? his two collections are p interesting, the second one won loads of awards etc, the first was well-received but imo is not as good, though still some great stuff there.

Showing is pretty much just talking around (rather than about) a thing, yeah? It's the notes you don't play.

"Dan went to the store."

vs

"Dan's phone rang. 'Yeah?' he said. 'To the Piggly Wiggly. You need anything?'"

There will be little kingdoms

Hi emil.y, I would miss the ivy (doesn't have to have "green" in front) covering the high window entirely, ditto the ancient elm in the garden, leaning against the side of the house as if drunk. If I had to choose onel I'd choose the elm, but they convey different things. Of course you might not need any of this, depending on what happens after she stares, but having read this far, I would miss those phrases.

i can't really say what i'd lose given it's just an example and i don't know what else is in it, but as someone who edits and shortens all day for a living i have to say i take a totally different approach with writing. rhythm and imagery are more important than almost anything else to me. if the rhythm/imagery/character dictates a long description of the house then that's what's needed. when i've edited my stuff for length or anything like that it just murders it.

sometimes what happens next is what sounds or looks nice, i guess.

Of course you might not need any of this, depending on what happens after she stares

This is the entirety of my point. Depending on how you write, depending on what you're writing about, sometimes you want the ivy and the elm and sometimes that's just self-indulgence b/c you think you're writing something so evocative, but honestly you don't need it and it shouldn't be there. But look at all of my posts, I'm not saying you never need it, I'm saying SOMETIMES. DEPENDING. Find your voice, find your subject, work out if you need it or not.

i don't think he's saying you should always write in that way, it's not advice in isolation but the second part of an example which begins with someone trying to evoke memories in a character, and he suggests offhand a way to do that that isn't "her head was full of memories", but by showing the house with some subtext, which obv is pretty average considering he just banged it together for an article.

Sometimes purple prose is texture and sometimes it's blather.

for sure.

but in that excerpt the two propositions on offer are not "she looked at the house" v "she looked at the house and the ivy etc" in that quoted text.

the two proposed bits are "she looked at the house, her head was filled with memories" v an example of describing the house in an "evocative" way which yes is crap, but serves it's purpose to illustrate the point. show the house, rather than telling the reader there are vague thoughts happening inside of someone's head

and avoid green grocer's apostrophes

Yes, I know. I'm not disagreeing with you, though I am on the side of soda in that the rules have been more annoyingly wielded in my experience than they seem to have been in yours. Btw, a few of your posts feel like they're saying that there's something there that I'm not understanding, when you're not actually telling me anything I haven't already understood. It feels quite patronising but I'm not sure that's the intent? Sorry if I'm just being massively oversensitive.

xxxp to LG

i guess i just disagreed a bit that the point of that excerpt is about writing more, or writing floridly, if that was your point. sorry if it appeared patronising.

euwww not "her head was filled with memories", just show a *bit* of evocative imagery (maybe, but def no head)sez this reader

i think of description the same way as a close-up in a movie. hitchcock will show you an "insert" i.e. a close-up of a hand turning a key if that's an important part of the story for a particular character. but if it's just a character coming home like they do every day and there's nothing important about the key or the lock you'd never switch to close-up.

this is all good stuff, really helpful. especially the warning to avoid "little or no dialogue, a passive character who never interacts with other characters, and no scenes." I'll keep that in mind

what about routines? do people find themselves trying to write everyday, at least a little? just when inspiration strikes? do you have a set time in the diary? etc etc I know most of the answers to these things is just 'whatever works', but I'm interested in others' experiences.

Currently I write when inspiration strikes, but I also have a monthly meet-up with friends who write and we do prompt exercises, sometimes just 20 minute ones, other times things to write over the month. It is best to try to do something every day, though. Habit is a good way of forming/replacing self-discipline.

Also, LG, I think I was being overly sensitive before, I'm in the middle of moving and super-stressed. Sorry again.

No worries! Sometimes in my enthusiasm I can prob go on a bit :)

what about routines? do people find themselves trying to write everyday, at least a little? just when inspiration strikes? do you have a set time in the diary? etc etc I know most of the answers to these things is just 'whatever works', but I'm interested in others' experiences.

I write most days but I don't beat myself up if life gets in the way. A thing I've noticed recently but never seen properly explained is that (and obv ymmv) it's nearly impossible to experience a real flow with a first draft. Whereas I can edit/rewrite a first draft and hours pass by. I don't feel like I learn much about writing in first drafts, and the things I feel when I'm doing them are untrustworthy.

The other huge thing for me lately is buying a printer and printing second or third drafts then reading over them with a pen. I don't think editing at a computer, the place you use for writing/rewriting, a tool on which it's incredibly easy to delete things, is good at all, ime.

I did this for ages and I couldn't edit properly, I'd get bogged down editing the first three pars instead of reading the whole thing. Whereas printing a thing out adds to the feeling that it's like I'm reading someone else's work. I find now I'm making huge additions down the margin of paragraphs and scenes that I can tell are improving the piece when I add them. It also compartmentalises the tasks nicely - it's good for laziness. Like the part where I just add in the edits I made on the paper to the computer feels a really easy and generous task to let myself do while still feeling good that I wrote that day.

I think a few people spoke upthread about keeping notes on your phone or trying to write down ideas or scenes when they come to you.

The only book I have succeeded in writing was given impetus by NaNoWriMo. It was not a novel, but a sort of humorous non-fiction sort of whatnot, inspired by Three Men in a Boat. I did not finish it within a month, but did get a fairly finished 75,000 word draft done in about eleven weeks, which is pretty speedy. My only counsel would be, it's OK to use NaNoWriMo as a springboard to getting some writing done, in whatever way feels most valuable to you.

It is getting into the spirit of the thing - just launch yourself and write, don't second guess yourself, and don't polish - that helps most.

75k in eleven weeks is certainly a remarkable feat! And that sounds like a great premise - is it around anywhere that I might have a look at it?

Thanks for the advice too. I do think that biggest challenge will be not constantly second-guessing myself, but I'm hoping that some of that will drift away once I get more into it. If all this accomplishes is my not being so afraid to commit something to page then it'll probably be well worth it.

anywhere that I might have a look at it?

You should be writing today instead of reading my stuff, but I put a somewhat clumsy epub of my book on Dropbox and there's a link to it that should work, posted on this thread.

I'm intimidated by some of the more garish displays of motivational cheerleading that surrounds it, but also don't want to not acknowledge that I am doing it

This is me down to a tee tbf. Have you found a path through this minefield? I'm thinking of signing up but doing it in a coveted way? I really do want to, if only for a sorely needed kickstart.

Anything to report so far?

i'm writing a lot, for money even

no fiction tho

Sorry for disappearing from this thread! I'm always doing that. I'm still going with this! Almost at 30k, which is by far the most sustained thing I've done. I'm thinking I will finish something, though readability is another issue entirely. Some set up a Discord for London-based writers and it's been really helpful with keeping motivation going so far in a low-key and mutually supportive kind of way.

LBI - did you sign up in the end?

Aimless - I will have a look at your book properly at month's end!

I will have a look at your book properly at month's end!

Don't feel committed. Fit it in somewhere, if and when you want to.

TT, that is amazing! 30k is a huge achievement, regardless of readability (well y'know, but y'know!). I think this initiative is meant to get those fingers firing and typing when the brain is racing and inspired. That is a huge deal. You should be proud.

And I am rather curious, truth be told, how the low key supportive thing works w/ people you don't know? It'd be a new one for me, but glad it's working out for you!

I did not sign up in the end, and am actively avoiding chat channels or groups intended on motivating people, because it's not for me right now... If anything I like to block out everyone, every chance I get at writing. I'm at 7k. Life got in the way, and I can't clear my head or focus properly because of... stuff. I have a publisher for the first time in my life, who laid down an advance, and I'm meeting him this Thurs to talk about the ~progress~ of my book and I am fretting about not being able to hand over something substantial. Ugh. Perhaps my gf said it best tonight: "Oh no! You'll be the first writer in history to not deliver what was agreed upon on time!" She's right, just tell him my reasons why it hasn't happened yet, and they *are* legitimate reasons, but... It just feels like ehhh another let down.

The struggle is real :)

I really didn't think it'd be for me either. Try as I might, my self-confidence is still crushingly low, so anything where I'm comparing myself to other people seemed like a nightmare, but I don't know...everyone is just so focussed on their own goal and achievements, that nothing else matters. It's been really regulating and laid-back. We do timed writing sprints together throughout the day of 15 minutes, and there's no prompts unless you want one - everyone just working on their own thing. If someone is feeling doubtful, everyone is quietly very encouraging. It seems odd that there are no huge egos or dramatic incidents, but it's just worked out that way.

I'm sorry you've had a hard time recently. Those are wise words from your gf though! So true. It's amazing that you have a publisher, and 7k is a substantial start for an actual book. I'm pretty sure if I had the anticipation of someone reading my work I would write a lot more carefully. Good luck with your meeting - I'm sure you'll be feeling better afterwards on Thursday!

...finishing an essay for a volume in the philosophy of language. It was supposed to be done eleven months ago. I have accomplished an enormous number of important things as a way of not working on it. A couple of months ago, bothered by guilt, I wrote a letter to the editor saying how sorry I was to be so late and expressing my good intentions to get to work. Writing the letter was, of course, a way of not working on the article. It turned out that I really wasn't much further behind schedule than anyone else.

From this article I read today: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

It took me a week to get around to this, but thank you tt! For your honest reply and for sharing that essay/article, I enjoyed reading that. "I have accomplished an enormous number of important things as a way of not working on it." The quote you pulled, and this one especially, rings awfully true (or rather: I should tell myself that more often). Crushing insecurity is, of course, the biggest factor at play here, and it's a multi-headed beast. It can make me put off writing, it can make me hate what I wrote, it can make me put things off, it can even make excuses for myself when not writing when I really should. (taking a step back and reading this makes me go #smdh, but it feels inescapable to feel these things while working on my book? Most other times it just feels like I'm whining, but that's on me)

It seems like you found a very supportive, encouraging network you can fall back on when needed. It sounds like something I'd sign up for to be frank! But then a million negatives kick in - well, not only negatives, also some dumb convictions like feeling alone and inept and struggling is part of the job? There's a masochist element to it, for sure.
How did you get on? Did you manage to write something nearly every day? Was writing a book your goal and did you more or less follow up on that, or was it worth your while if only for the writing exercise?

(the publisher, of course, was very understanding and supportive. there are some practical issues affected by my stalling, like him applying for grants/funds and having to delay that, changing schedules with the designer of the book etc. [I say these things coolly but they make me go 'holy fuck this is realllll' lol] it will be... ok. -ish ;) )

When writing both saves you and hurts you.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/commentisfree/2023/jan/30/my-mentor-john-hughes-taught-me-how-to-write-then-he-plagiarised-my-work?