Writing How tolerant are you of whether the scene elements should be showing or telling?

In fiction writing, we are familiar with the principle of "show it, don't tell it", which involves the reader in the story (immersion). However, in practice, almost no fiction can apply this principle completely (without telling).

Well, the problem arises regarding how much the author should narrate the immersive scene by showing and when the author should summarize the scene by telling.

In a scene, there are many elements involved simultaneously, including: (1) time, (2) environment/ world, (3) objects — living and non-living things, (4) characters, (5) atmosphere, (6) events/ plot, (7) emotions, (8) movement/kinetics, (9) Spatial clues/relative positions between characters in a scene, etc.

For example, regarding time, to present an organic narrative through showing, the author needs to describe signs of changing time, such as the light turning orange, the sun hiding in the west, the air feeling colder, the sound of crickets appearing, etc.

In short, this descriptive narrative can be summarized briefly by telling, "I didn't realize the day had passed, evening had arrived..."

This is just one element of the scene, not to mention other elements.

My questions are:

1. How tolerant are you of whether the scene elements should be showing or telling?
2. What elements of a scene should be narrated through "telling"?
3. What elements of a scene should be narrated through "showing"?
4. Why did you choose the approach to narrating the elements of a scene?

Note:
Please state your opinion in the following format to facilitate discussion. For example:

I can accept time shifts being narrated through "telling" (with reasons if possible). But I only accept that plot, character, and emotion should be narrated through "showing" (with reasons if possible).

Depends on the author's skill. Sometimes, telling bogs down the story while showing lets things keep moving, other times it works the other way around.
A skilled author can learn when it is best to show or to tell and use that to control pacing and other scene elements.
A novice author will do too much of one, not enough of the other, and often drag their plot down to the ground, wrestle it in the mud, and lose.

Like a lot of rules of thumb it breaks down on contact with reality despite being broadly true. Like charlesebrown said, skill issue.

Telling tends to be quicker and clearer if done properly.
Showing tends to be more evocative and draw the reader in more if done properly.

So, assuming you are a competent word smith, you’re going to want to show any time that it’s ok for the reader to need to think about it for a second to understand what you mean and tell when you just want to get the lead out or you absolutely need to talk to the reader directly to make sure they know exactly what you mean. That shouldn’t be too often but it isn’t never.

I largely do not abide by the "show don't tell" mantra. There are things that I limit the telling of. Character locations during fight scenes, emotions, events. But a thing I've discovered from reading fantasy is that expecting the reader to notice worldbuilding that is only indirectly described is a losing proposition.

Consider the two scenes dealing with flying cars.

Jerry got in the taxi and was let off at the fifth floor balcony, and knocked on the door. A young lady of about seventeen answered the door. "My parents are sleeping," she said, "what do you want at this hour?"

Click to expand...

Jerry rented an Uber. Thanks in part to Trump's grand dream that everyone should have flying cars, it finally came to pass, about seven years after he was out of office. The car was a stylish red convertible, the very last type of car conducive to flying, thanks to a high tendency to fall out midflight. This was made even more scary by the fact that the driver, a thin Arab man, was very aggressive in his approach to ascent and descent, to say nothing of sharp hairpin turns. The driver let him off at the fifth floor, and Jerry felt his already thinning hair, sure that he lost more from the stress of that drive. Seeing all was well, he knocked on the door and noted that instead of who he expected, a red-haired teenage girl named Chloe answered the door. She explained that her parents were sleeping, and asked what he wanted at this hour.

Click to expand...

In the first one, it's such a small detail, that you can skim past it without realizing that the world has flying cars. This is disastrous, because it means would-be adaptations of the book into film also miss that it's futurism. They just write a typical fiction screenplay. The second one also basically casts characters for you.

I have two problems:

Show, don't tell is more for movies than for books.

And today's readers cry about reading 3-4-line paragraphs without a break, feeling like they're reading War and Peace.

I also have a third issue:

Many times they don't even know what show and tell is.

If people want to know their tolerance levels regarding this, they can read my initial chapters and find out.

Balance and the simple question of "does this place have meaning."

Is this place a random inn or the future headquarters of the adventure party? If its a location of just one scene then how important is the scene? The more important a place is in the plot of your story the more detail should be showed. You want to be able to have the reader imagine the place. To immerse themselves into the scene. This is how you make them get lost in the story.

Now some authors get too much into it. I remember watching a George Martin interview where he was going off about how he really appreciated a certain book scene, a horse riding through a meadow, that his readers didn't care for. For that type of scene I wonder what the context is. Is the rider going through a place that will become a battlefield? A tournament? If not then what is it that that author wants to build a set for the reader?

If you don't know if you have enough detail throughout the story ask yourself if the story reads like an event log. Or is it more like a tv/movie script then it is novel. I notice another commenter said that show don't tell is more of a movie thing. Completely disagree with that. The reason I say that is in the writing process of a movie script there might be one line saying where the people are and then its up to the actual film production to make everything else. Not too sure how many of you have read movie scripts, but for some cases entire events are just summed up as "main character gets into bar fight."

Eldoria said:

In fiction writing, we are familiar with the principle of "show it, don't tell it"

Click to expand...

Eldoria said:

How tolerant are you of whether the scene elements should be showing or telling?

Click to expand...

Eldoria said:

What elements of a scene should be narrated through "telling"?
What elements of a scene should be narrated through "showing"?

Click to expand...

Eldoria said:

Why did you choose the approach to narrating the elements of a scene?

Click to expand...

In summary with a handful of cookies for me to hand out to people who put up with my paragraphs
Show and tell is what is done at preschools, just look at that totally child friendly game kindergarten. /s
Or don't, theres a lot of gore in that one. Especially considering Show and Tell is deadly in that video game.

My monologue here isn't to devalue the topic either, it's always interesting to hear how people are understanding concepts and how we are developing that understanding. Just that people are developing the habit of learning a new shorthand, and deciding thats the only lesson they needed in that area of the skillset.

Even if I'm telling more than showing in this instance, I should have set up fireworks or something to show a display along side.

For once in my life, I will try to be a bit concise:
"Show, don't Tell" is an important thing to note, especially to beginners. They tend to "Tell" every little aspect of the story, but especially those things that pertain to the personalities of their characters and how they develop. Unlike many people seem to think, a "character" in a story is not quantative thing; to have person rolling around in a scene, isn't the same as having a proper "character" in it.
Conversely, having people rolling around a scene, doesn't mean you've build a world properly, just because they don't fall through the floor, so there must be a ground for them to walk on somehow.
Every aspect you have given us to mark would have to be described in a balance of "Show" and "Tell". There's things you have to tell, in order to get your point across, yet a lot of times, I wish to SEE things for myself, before you start telling me about it; I want to see a character be funny, anxious, mature, or impatient, BEFORE some hobo barges in to tell me how they are so funny, anxious, mature or impatient. I want to be able to be immersed in a scene, not constantly told what time it it, yet I need someone to verify that information through some sort of speech at some point, so I can pin down what time it is exactly at least once, when a while seems to have passed already.
Obviously, this is by far a bigger topic, but if you must, just remember one thing: Especially when it comes to a personality, a relationship of any kind or an important setting within your story, as well as within scenes that are rolling out in front of the reader, you will want to "Show", rather than "Tell".
But in order to give specific information, that will leave no room for debate, you will have to use "Tell".
The answer to your poll would therefore be: Use it in every aspect, but also balance it out in every aspect.
I also second the framework of P.O.I.S.E, which was already explained by @JHarp above.

TheKillingAlice said:

I also second the framework of P.O.I.S.E, which was already explained by @JHarp above.

Click to expand...

I'm happy that POISE actually lined up as a word, the original thing I had in mind was OOIAR but that didn't make a fun word to remember:
Orient, Observe, Interpret, Act, Reassess.

But it was too internal for the topic about reader immersion, it was focused more about how scenes are experienced, not delivered to the audience. So I'm happy I put some time into answering because it helped me cement the idea better and use an actual word which defines as 'balance/equilibrium' for a topic about show/tell.

Now that I've managed to build up a more external framework, I'll work on implementing a few things better in my writing actually, that's why I like some of these topics at times; even if I seem to be not that helpful for the intent of the initial topic.

OOIAR is not as memorable and doesn't communicate well which caused me to try shuffling around definitions and meanings while trying to construct the more usable POISE framework I ended up with.

Maybe some day I might try to refine OOIAR into a separate design framework to see what that can do, might be a fun challenge.

JHarp said:

OOIAR

Click to expand...

Yeah, that sounds like someone had a massive stroke.

"Show, don't tell" applies a lot more to other media than writing, simply because they can show. You can have an entire action scene play out in a movie without a single line of narration or dialogue telling you anything. If you tried putting an action scene in a written work without writing any narration or dialogue, you don't have an action scene.

Beyond that, I've seen in classical literary works that they tend to both show and tell, and that many works' criticisms about "show, don't tell" are actually just criticizing the absence of the former, not the presence of the latter. I recommend re-reading a few of your favorite classical works again sometime and keeping track of how many times things are being told. In fact, go outside of books which have the textual limitations and go read stories from games or comics or other media that have widely acclaimed stories, and keep track of how often they outright tell you instead of showing you. The crux of the matter is that people want to have enough things being shown as to excite their imaginations, but they still want to be told enough to actually have a baseline understanding of the goings-on. It's a ratio that depends entirely on the story and its intentions, but you should keep in mind to not exclude too much of either one. Leave out enough showings and your readers feel like they're being spoonfed, leave out enough tellings and your readers feel like they're guessing at what's actually going on. Put too much of both and you're left with an oversaturated work that's difficulty to actually want to read, and vice versa for a starvation of both.

Eldoria said:

For example, regarding time, to present an organic narrative through showing, the author needs to describe signs of changing time, such as the light turning orange, the sun hiding in the west, the air feeling colder, the sound of crickets appearing, etc.

In short, this descriptive narrative can be summarized briefly by telling, "I didn't realize the day had passed, evening had arrived..."

Click to expand...

This is a great example of why showing-only would be a problem, assuming you only used a couple of those examples. You could describe the air feeling colder and the sounds of crickets, and the reader doesn't see it as evening but rather nighttime. Same with thinking "the sun was hiding in the west" means it's completely hidden, also showing nighttime. Or they think the colder air is a sign that the seasons are changing, and the sounds of crickets imply to them that it means it's the end of summer. Or if they're from somewhere that crickets aren't common, they might think it implies an infestation. Or that orange lights and cold air have nothing to do with the outside, thinking these scenes are entirely indoors, and that it means a light is going out while the AC kicks on. That's only if you used a couple of those showings instead of all four, but it's very easy as a writer to only use a couple implications since you already know what it means and won't see what the reader might take away from it. If you were stuffing every scene with as many showcases as you could, it would suffer from the oversaturation problem again, along with risking making readers tired of all the flowery implications and want you to "just get to the point for once", AKA telling.

Believe you me, it's very possible to be too subtle with your works. It's what's led to me deciding my current story is going to be told with as little subtlety as I can have. It's better for a reader to see something coming ahead of time rather than not seeing it even after it happened.

Eldoria said:

1. How tolerant are you of whether the scene elements should be showing or telling?
2. What elements of a scene should be narrated through "telling"?
3. What elements of a scene should be narrated through "showing"?
4. Why did you choose the approach to narrating the elements of a scene?

Click to expand...

1.) I'd say I'm very tolerant. I've helped a lot of amateur writers out with their own stories, and I've seen a lot of... variety in terms of quality.

2.) Any foundations for a scene should be clearly stated and gotten out of the way, first and foremost. For example, if a character in a scene is really anxious about how much time they have on the phone, vaguely alluding to some big disaster that happened, and fearing for their safety for the foreseeable future, it will probably help if you started the scene saying they're in prison on their first phone call, not ending the scene with it. The twist isn't worth the confusion that the rest of the scene devolves into without basic context.

Along with that, any brief actions are also usually better served succinctly. "Flowery" has its place, and that place isn't "everywhere". There's a lot of reasons why people make fun of phrasings like "Amber hues flitted in ponderous orbit of the powerful aural force of the virile intoner" instead of "She looked over at the man who spoke". If all your words are honeyed, they'll just taste samey.

3.) Contrasts. Most things are subjective with how much they should be shown, but any elements that clearly contrast the way you'd expect something to play out, it should be shown. If a supposedly grieving widow can't stop laughing and grinning, you really need to show if she's revealing a sinister side, if she's bottling up her grief, if she's lost her mind, if she's just ignorant that she's just become a widow, etc. Contrasting elements are the bread and butter of intrigue, so if any element of a story should be milked for the sheer spectacle of its display, it should be those scenes.

4.) In the words of my grandmother when talking of family recipes: "Salt to taste". I don't know how to say why a scene should be some way before it's written, but it's an instinctive feeling when you have enough experience and you know what you're going for. Certainly after any scene is written, I can point to you why it worked out. I've actually had that with my S.O. a few times regarding my current story. My memory is awful, but I could always make sense of why things went the way they did.

It depends on the genre/style you are writing your narrative within.

A narrative structured as a series of journal entries should be almost exclusively told, because the character who is writing the journal entries would be recounting the events after they occurred and thus most of the details would be lost. Moments where this structure is broken would be extremely vivid memories, and the contrast between the usual telling vs the singular moment of showing would serve as texture within the narrative that highlights just how important the moment was to the character.

In contrast, a first person narrative that is deeply immersed in the character's perspective should show almost everything (that the character is aware of), because the structure of the narrative is intended to reflect the psychology of the character. In this type of story, anything that would need to be told, is either told through dialogue, or through epistolary (a character picks up a newspaper and reads an article on something, for example). The act of telling is done in a way that shows something about characters. Everything else that the character is not aware of and the reader does not need to know is left in negative space.

I'd consider those the two extremes on the scales of show vs tell; everything else will fall somewhere in between.