Being drilled to "show not tell", it's good advice to know that telling is sometimes best, so thanks for your clarification. In my m/s I had a part which I took about 3 full pages to show some background history, but now it's thinned down to under a page, blending the mixing of show-and-tell, like your Point 5.
Thank God, I finally found a video teaching that sometimes telling is needed. I hate it when only one method is presented as the better approach. It is better to be eclectic because there is always a need to do something that is forbidden most of the time. I have read literary masterpieces that give examples of telling instead of showing. Telling is needed to describe the setting sometimes when there are a lot of things the writer needs to show the reader.
Hey Guys! I know telling can be necessary and difficult, especially when most advice is simply to not do it! Today I wanted to go over how you can use telling effectively as well as situations where it makes more sense to tell instead of show. P.S. I think I improved the auto-focus issue (at least a little bit). Thanks for all your support!
Hi, Ellen! This is Alex once again, and if you don't mind one last "bonus" question from me for today, I would like to get your take on the "showing" side of the equation. What would be an equally effective way to do [that], in your own professional point of view? Would you please let me j ow that as soon as you may. Thank you.
Thanks Ellen. Very helpful. I come from the screenwriting world, and working on my first novel. What I learned back in the 80s from a top director is that what happens next is more important than what is happing now. It keeps the reader/viewer engaged and those pages turning. For example, in "The Matrix" Neo gets a message on his computer screen that says "follow the white rabbit." As viewers we are as confused as Neo. It connects us to him. Then he sees the white rabbit tattoo on the girl. So now the audience is asking "will he follow it?" And when he does, "what's going to happen because he does?" It keeps the story going to keep the viewer wondering what's going to happen NEXT. Does that make sense?
Watching this reminded me of 1984's book within a book. While interesting information, its placement left something to be desired. Here I am, following Winston into the revolution, and then bam! - I hit a wall of historical text. I love Orwell's works, and am glad he put that kind of detail into world building, I just wish it hadn't been dumped on the reader.
Isabelle Pinkamena It was written that way because the information had also been dumped on Winston. It wouldn't have made nrrative sense for the info to be laced into the narration, seeing as the narrator didn't know about any of it. Besides, that chapter wasn't boring, the extracts were well written and thought provoking explorations into the existentialist arm of military philosophy.
"Show not tell" is a rule of screenwritting, because films are a visual medium, but in novels everything must be told. The point in novels is more about explaining versus expressing.
Great video. I'm on a third draft and cut two large scenes when I decided to work the info into the plot. I didn't need the additional 1,800 words and the flow isn't disrupted.
Great video. I try to make my telling interesting though content and voice. Another way to use telling is for transitions, especially if it happens over a decent chunk of time.
Hey Ellen, another inspirational video. Thank you. A writer applies the suggested techniques in this video to their writing. Now what? How will she know for certain these superb techniques work for her story? Well, a writers workshop. I'm not talking about paying $500.00 and sitting in a dank ballroom at some hotel. Seek out a group that advertises a weekly, free gathering place. Start at the library or a bookstore. Just do it. Take that step. Do it. I promise the experience will strengthen your skills as a writer and most assuredly gain emotional maturity. Do it.
Something I like to keep in mind when providing information is to not give away what information is important. Similar to how a director will inform the audience that something is about to appear on the left side of the screen by framing the actor on the right side of the screen. Overall, I think it's better to give information that can operate like red herrings. If a situation arises where someone has to swing from a rope and leap onto some platform, giving information early on that they would have the ability to, say, swing on a rope and leap onto some platform would be great -- especially if you don't have them swing on that rope and jump onto that platform and instead go another way. Information creates expectations, and it's the writers job (depending on your belief) to wreck expectations at every turn.
for the meal worm thing, it sounds like they should show the fields chewed up first. Reminds me of the brunt cows in Children of Men. We only figure out why because we are told later, and its a nice touch of worldbuilding. At least, this is how I intend on doing an exposition scene. Ill try this sometime and see how it works.
As always Ellen, great and informative. I have been loving the way you categorize them now. Either way, your editing must be superb because you cover a wide range of issues and make it interesting. Even veteran authors should take in the advice because we are always growing and having to re-learn, humans are just part of a fractured creation and we make mistakes no matter our expertise. You are my number one go to for information and with the occasional slip up we all make, it's nice to go back, easily, to the sections I need to rewatch. Thanks for all your effort, I know this takes a lot of work and just like writing, it's always the "editing" part that makes it a pain. kudos! I would love to work with you one day on a new novel that has not been through editing yet. It's much smaller than my first series which even with an agent is a nightmare to go through all the edits. And if you don't mind, I have added your vids to my playlist making them public. Cheers!
One of the best examples of writing stories behind facts is in detective fiction, as clues, evidence, etc, are often hints to motivations behind the actions of characters, and are part of the fun when unraveling the story.
Awesome! Thanks! This takes a lot off me. There must be a balance between showing and telling: Tell: face melting machine Show: how it melts the face? E.g face sags like jelly and falls off and a skull stares at u. Please don't be freaked out by the description, just experimenting your tips.😁
I think show vs tell is one of the hardest things to understand... I'm in the middle of editing my first novel and I'm still not always sure whether I'm showing or telling something. I guess most times it's a mix of both. I think the second example of yours is also a mix of both. If you wrote a scene, where you showed the machine in action, you'd be showing. But if someone is simply staring at the machine being inactive and explaining what it technically can do, it's telling. Even if in both you might use the exact same description.
I need to start reviewing these videos with my notepad--and take notes. Simply because I guess my novel is a "high concept" in the area that it is BadFic. Which... is a "genre" (scare quotes are kind of needed here... to scare you with scariness) that does not have much material in it. It also is a thing that is useful--as it is easier to talk about bad writing, if you have some really really well done examples of it.
David Weber is pretty good at incorporating telling not showing background information into his books. The problem with the way he does that though tends to be quite long.
I only recently discovered your channel and I've been binge watching your videos. But a lot of them seem to largely cover basic ideas. Which is great for new writers, who probably make up a larger percentage of TH-cam. But it's a little frustrating for people like me who lack formal writing education, but have done a lot of reading and understand those basics from experience. It makes it harder to keep watching, and means I might be missing out on great advice later in the video. So I just wanted to offer the suggestion that splitting your videos into a low-level beginning and a higher-level ending, and/or including time stamps in the description so I could jump around looking for relevant information. Could help keep people with shorter attention spans watching.
I totally understand what you're saying. It's challenging to categorize advice as advanced vs. beginner. I've been surprised when I've gotten comments on other videos (which I thought were pretty simple) that the content was way too advanced. This is a difficult balance because there's so much variability in what different writers know. I am planning/hoping to do a series of purely advanced writing videos after Novel Boot Camp (which is intended to have a broader audience) but right now my viewership is a little low for the time investment it would entail so I'm not sure when I'll be able to make that happen. Thanks for watching and for your support!
Ryan R I don't have a formal writing experience at all and I had no troble understanding the video. If I didn't fully understand what she's talking about, I just look up the necessary information. She already gives you a clue, so doing research should be easy.
UndeadCrabStick They find it easy to understand what she’s saying, not difficult. The complaint was they wanted something more advanced, not more simple.
I must respectfully disagree with Ryan. I'm an old guy and a life-long reader careening into retirement. I want to slow down and write something. When I found Ellen's channel, I thought I'd kicked up a gold nugget on a dusty, well-worn mountain trail. I have read and listened to so many writers and experts, I've lost count. It seems that with her boot camps, Ellen took my long list of questions and started ticking them off one by one. I watched the 2016 boot camp, and then I started the 2017 one. I love her direct style, her use of understandable language, and her relevant, concise examples. If I ever get something written, I am hiring her in a heartbeat. If I ever got rich writing, I will "make her an offer she can't refuse" to get her on my staff.
The heroes use a dragonstring sleeping potion to knock out some orcs, being careful not to overdose them. Fortunately they don't need to worry about face melter because of background racial tensions.
Especially when writing fantasy, sci-fi or historical fiction, where you're dealing with large amounts of information, it's impossible to show everything.
One book that, in my opinion, had WAY too much telling (and not necessarily good telling) was Ready Player One. At some points, I just wanted to scream at the book to stop telling me random facts about the 80s.
The Minimum amount: I shall present you with The Odyssey: War vet takes forever to get home and kills everyone in his house. Good info though, seriously.
This was great, thanks! Very insightful. Would it be fair to say this is about how not to infodump and instead how to dispense only the relevant information? You have the information broken up into steps. Do you use it literally in steps or are you simply organizing the information here?
Tell = Narrative, Show = Dialogue, there are times where characters are not available for dialogue and one has to tell the reader something. While this is not a "rule" I follow, I do like its vibe. I think of showing like the screenplay part of my story. Can I change part of a narrative into dialogue if what I ask myself. Hopefully these mindsets are on track for success?
Use telling if you can't show something. 1. Assess why you're including the information in the first place. Is it crucial to the story later on? Is it just a mood enhancer? Is it just a fun bit of creativity? 2. Figure out if you need the fact alone or the story behind the fact. 3. Determine the minimum the reader needs to know. 4. Determine what the reader needs to know right now. Don't introduce things later out of the blue. Show elements of the world earlier on then explain later. 5. Attach the information into action.
Hi Ellen! I love all of your videos! They're so incredibly helpful. Would you ever consider doing a video on ways to "show" a main character's emotional conflicts instead of the MC "telling" it through thoughts and narration. Or any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks, Lisse
What are some classic examples of telling in stories? Would the ending of Joyce's The Dead more or less be considered as a moment of telling over showing?
"20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne. I was never able to finish it. The main character, a biologist, is the narrator. He is on Captain Nemo's sub. They stop now and then and pick up living samples from the sea floor. The narrator then lists and describes every darn thing they find; chapter length lists. Snore City!
I put some family-backstories of the main side-character (the love-interest of the protagonist) in the story, by telling and not showing it. I simply didn't know how to include it by showing, other than writing several new scenes... the part is about 2 pages long and contains information about his family migrating from russia to germany with almost nothing and about him and his mom sticking together and so on... however I didn't really include the part into the story, it's more a flashback to when the son tells the story to the protagonist and she remembers it, when she meets his mom again. Is that lazy writing?
That pause thing you talk about is what happened to me in the book I'm reading right now. An Ann Rice book, Lasher. It has like... 50% of the book, in the middle, there's this ghost who tells the backstory of an evil creature. It's bloody boring, it's sooo long, it's about dead characters and you're left wanting for the characters that you care about "now". Put me right out of the flow of reading it.
What about supernatural abilities, should I just assume the reader accepts it's strangeness or should I go into destails slowly dropping info throughout the story? I am writing a young adult science fiction novel, I feel pressured to include romance, or at least a relationship, is it necessary?
Nice video as always. I wonder about things that happen in the book and then later your character has to tell other character about what happened. Even though the reader already knows what's happened, is it okay to repeat to show the reaction of the character being told the news? Or should I tell?
What if you have a character who really likes science and facts and explains the exciting things they learn? I don't know how much of that explanation to convey to the reader. The POV character is somewhat interested but doesn't understand the details. I don't want to bore the reader...
Focus on what you're intending to accomplish by explaining the information. If it's just to convey his personality traits (his own excitement about the material) then you probably only need to have him/her explain the science every once in a while for a couple sentences. If the material itself is relevant, focus on explaining it in the simplest possible way.
I just finished a book that might be similar to what you're describing. It's called "measuring the world" by Daniel Kehlmann and it's about the mathematicion Gauß and the geographer Humboldt. The way he did it (and I really loved that) was by including it into an interaction or a dialogue. For example, Gauß often fails to explain something to his less talented son and gets angry at him, which makes for a lot of humour. Humboldt gets very excited by his developments but his partner Bonpland is often frustrated and often fantasizes about killing Humboldt. Through the side-characters the reader can approach these geniuses in a more human and personal way. And in the end, it wasn't that important for me to know exactly how a sextant is used to measure distances, or what the jupiter-moons have to do with the calculation of the trajectories of planets through space... it was more about their unique quirks and their dry sarcasm that drew me to the story and made me want to finish it.
It's also not a good idea to show things that the reader already understands, like the character getting a message on a cell phone, then driving away in the car. You don't have to have two paragraphs showing that because it just slows the story down & the reader already knows how cell phone texts are gotten & how someone has to open the door to the car, put the key into the ignition, put the car into drive... you get the idea. It's better just to tell it.
How do I avoid going overboard with long stories? I have this problem, that I want my characters to tell something about their past but often it turns into a monolog where they go on and on and on about it and I don't know how to fix this. I mean, in real life some people will let you talk hours on end and just listen but I know thats not the majority. Most of the time those flash backs work well in movies but how can I do this in writing without boring my readers or leaving half of the flashback out?
I am sometimes unsure of the difference between showing and telling. I mean... I'm writing it all... ? O_o Is telling when you're giving information about things, but it's not what the characters are doing, saying, thinking etc? Like, explaining or giving backstory to something?
Yes, especially when describing the setting but it is sometimes needed and I am glad a professional editor is actually saying it is okay to tell sometimes when necessary because showing takes more time. Most editors will say that telling is always bad.
Ive been hearing 'show not tell' alot and it never has been sitting right with me (even here we are heavily cautioned against telling in general). I as a reader has always enjoyed long tellings (provided they are done well ofc) and it can't only be me: the old norse sagas are filled with telling, moby dick got whole chapters of semirelated tellings (and it is considered one of the greatest work of american fiction) and Lord of the Rings is also heavy with telling. Is this whole 'show not tell' some kind of 'new' fashion thing? I mean ofc I see merits of showing not telling in a lot of places but I think a general fear of long paragraphs (or chapters) of telling is... well ofc you should be aware of it but it can really enchance a book done right.
Being drilled to "show not tell", it's good advice to know that telling is sometimes best, so thanks for your clarification. In my m/s I had a part which I took about 3 full pages to show some background history, but now it's thinned down to under a page, blending the mixing of show-and-tell, like your Point 5.
Thank God, I finally found a video teaching that sometimes telling is needed. I hate it when only one method is presented as the better approach. It is better to be eclectic because there is always a need to do something that is forbidden most of the time. I have read literary masterpieces that give examples of telling instead of showing. Telling is needed to describe the setting sometimes when there are a lot of things the writer needs to show the reader.
Hey Guys! I know telling can be necessary and difficult, especially when most advice is simply to not do it! Today I wanted to go over how you can use telling effectively as well as situations where it makes more sense to tell instead of show.
P.S. I think I improved the auto-focus issue (at least a little bit).
Thanks for all your support!
Can you set the camera to manual focus?
Hi, Ellen! This is Alex once again, and if you don't mind one last "bonus" question from me for today, I would like to get your take on the "showing" side of the equation. What would be an equally effective way to do [that], in your own professional point of view? Would you please let me j ow that as soon as you may. Thank you.
Thanks Ellen. Very helpful. I come from the screenwriting world, and working on my first novel. What I learned back in the 80s from a top director is that what happens next is more important than what is happing now. It keeps the reader/viewer engaged and those pages turning. For example, in "The Matrix" Neo gets a message on his computer screen that says "follow the white rabbit." As viewers we are as confused as Neo. It connects us to him. Then he sees the white rabbit tattoo on the girl. So now the audience is asking "will he follow it?" And when he does, "what's going to happen because he does?" It keeps the story going to keep the viewer wondering what's going to happen NEXT. Does that make sense?
Well said! Thank you for sharing this!!!
Watching this reminded me of 1984's book within a book. While interesting information, its placement left something to be desired. Here I am, following Winston into the revolution, and then bam! - I hit a wall of historical text. I love Orwell's works, and am glad he put that kind of detail into world building, I just wish it hadn't been dumped on the reader.
Isabelle Pinkamena It was written that way because the information had also been dumped on Winston. It wouldn't have made nrrative sense for the info to be laced into the narration, seeing as the narrator didn't know about any of it. Besides, that chapter wasn't boring, the extracts were well written and thought provoking explorations into the existentialist arm of military philosophy.
"Show not tell" is a rule of screenwritting, because films are a visual medium, but in novels everything must be told. The point in novels is more about explaining versus expressing.
Thank you, I have always felt that there are times when telling is the only way to inform without over inundating the reader. Very nicely done !
Great video. I'm on a third draft and cut two large scenes when I decided to work the info into the plot. I didn't need the additional 1,800 words and the flow isn't disrupted.
Your eye color always matched your shirt!!! Loved your writing hacks!!👍🏻
Great video. I try to make my telling interesting though content and voice. Another way to use telling is for transitions, especially if it happens over a decent chunk of time.
Hey Ellen, another inspirational video. Thank you. A writer applies the suggested techniques in this video to their writing. Now what? How will she know for certain these superb techniques work for her story? Well, a writers workshop. I'm not talking about paying $500.00 and sitting in a dank ballroom at some hotel. Seek out a group that advertises a weekly, free gathering place. Start at the library or a bookstore. Just do it. Take that step. Do it. I promise the experience will strengthen your skills as a writer and most assuredly gain emotional maturity. Do it.
Something I like to keep in mind when providing information is to not give away what information is important. Similar to how a director will inform the audience that something is about to appear on the left side of the screen by framing the actor on the right side of the screen. Overall, I think it's better to give information that can operate like red herrings. If a situation arises where someone has to swing from a rope and leap onto some platform, giving information early on that they would have the ability to, say, swing on a rope and leap onto some platform would be great -- especially if you don't have them swing on that rope and jump onto that platform and instead go another way.
Information creates expectations, and it's the writers job (depending on your belief) to wreck expectations at every turn.
for the meal worm thing, it sounds like they should show the fields chewed up first. Reminds me of the brunt cows in Children of Men. We only figure out why because we are told later, and its a nice touch of worldbuilding. At least, this is how I intend on doing an exposition scene. Ill try this sometime and see how it works.
As always Ellen, great and informative. I have been loving the way you categorize them now. Either way, your editing must be superb because you cover a wide range of issues and make it interesting. Even veteran authors should take in the advice because we are always growing and having to re-learn, humans are just part of a fractured creation and we make mistakes no matter our expertise. You are my number one go to for information and with the occasional slip up we all make, it's nice to go back, easily, to the sections I need to rewatch. Thanks for all your effort, I know this takes a lot of work and just like writing, it's always the "editing" part that makes it a pain. kudos! I would love to work with you one day on a new novel that has not been through editing yet. It's much smaller than my first series which even with an agent is a nightmare to go through all the edits. And if you don't mind, I have added your vids to my playlist making them public. Cheers!
One of the best examples of writing stories behind facts is in detective fiction, as clues, evidence, etc, are often hints to motivations behind the actions of characters, and are part of the fun when unraveling the story.
I love the tip to integeate the ingredient into the narrative.
Awesome! Thanks!
This takes a lot off me. There must be a balance between showing and telling:
Tell: face melting machine
Show: how it melts the face? E.g face sags like jelly and falls off and a skull stares at u.
Please don't be freaked out by the description, just experimenting your tips.😁
I think show vs tell is one of the hardest things to understand... I'm in the middle of editing my first novel and I'm still not always sure whether I'm showing or telling something. I guess most times it's a mix of both. I think the second example of yours is also a mix of both. If you wrote a scene, where you showed the machine in action, you'd be showing. But if someone is simply staring at the machine being inactive and explaining what it technically can do, it's telling. Even if in both you might use the exact same description.
FWAJR Something to consider. Thanks for the feedback!
I need to start reviewing these videos with my notepad--and take notes.
Simply because I guess my novel is a "high concept" in the area that it is BadFic. Which... is a "genre" (scare quotes are kind of needed here... to scare you with scariness) that does not have much material in it. It also is a thing that is useful--as it is easier to talk about bad writing, if you have some really really well done examples of it.
David Weber is pretty good at incorporating telling not showing background information into his books. The problem with the way he does that though tends to be quite long.
I only recently discovered your channel and I've been binge watching your videos. But a lot of them seem to largely cover basic ideas. Which is great for new writers, who probably make up a larger percentage of TH-cam. But it's a little frustrating for people like me who lack formal writing education, but have done a lot of reading and understand those basics from experience. It makes it harder to keep watching, and means I might be missing out on great advice later in the video.
So I just wanted to offer the suggestion that splitting your videos into a low-level beginning and a higher-level ending, and/or including time stamps in the description so I could jump around looking for relevant information. Could help keep people with shorter attention spans watching.
I totally understand what you're saying. It's challenging to categorize advice as advanced vs. beginner. I've been surprised when I've gotten comments on other videos (which I thought were pretty simple) that the content was way too advanced. This is a difficult balance because there's so much variability in what different writers know. I am planning/hoping to do a series of purely advanced writing videos after Novel Boot Camp (which is intended to have a broader audience) but right now my viewership is a little low for the time investment it would entail so I'm not sure when I'll be able to make that happen. Thanks for watching and for your support!
Ryan R you should also listen to a podcast called 'Writing Excuses.' It helped me with some more complex stuff. This is great as well of course.
Ryan R I don't have a formal writing experience at all and I had no troble understanding the video. If I didn't fully understand what she's talking about, I just look up the necessary information. She already gives you a clue, so doing research should be easy.
UndeadCrabStick They find it easy to understand what she’s saying, not difficult. The complaint was they wanted something more advanced, not more simple.
I must respectfully disagree with Ryan. I'm an old guy and a life-long reader careening into retirement. I want to slow down and write something. When I found Ellen's channel, I thought I'd kicked up a gold nugget on a dusty, well-worn mountain trail. I have read and listened to so many writers and experts, I've lost count. It seems that with her boot camps, Ellen took my long list of questions and started ticking them off one by one. I watched the 2016 boot camp, and then I started the 2017 one. I love her direct style, her use of understandable language, and her relevant, concise examples. If I ever get something written, I am hiring her in a heartbeat. If I ever got rich writing, I will "make her an offer she can't refuse" to get her on my staff.
It's so refreshing to hear tell don't show
I love the last tip so much
Thank you very much. ^^ I love your "bookish" T-shirts! :D
You do it speech “ twenty years since the famine and the fields still haven’t recovered, “ he said kicking the dust off his boots
First person who can thread all of Ellen's examples into a novella wins a fresh dollar bill from me.
Hahaha that's a great idea!!
The heroes use a dragonstring sleeping potion to knock out some orcs, being careful not to overdose them. Fortunately they don't need to worry about face melter because of background racial tensions.
Jonathan Franzen's novel, Freedom, is largely telling.
I love how she talks with her hands :-)
Your videos are so helpful! I can’t wait to start writing!
This is good advice Ellen! Thanks for making such awesome videos :)
Thank you for watching!
Thank you so much for the tips. They’re giving me so much to think about, great videos!
This is a great video, I always had problems with this
Thanks!
Glad it helped!
Especially when writing fantasy, sci-fi or historical fiction, where you're dealing with large amounts of information, it's impossible to show everything.
One book that, in my opinion, had WAY too much telling (and not necessarily good telling) was Ready Player One. At some points, I just wanted to scream at the book to stop telling me random facts about the 80s.
MichiruEll ready player one is a terrible book made better by the movie
The Minimum amount: I shall present you with The Odyssey: War vet takes forever to get home and kills everyone in his house.
Good info though, seriously.
This was great, thanks! Very insightful. Would it be fair to say this is about how not to infodump and instead how to dispense only the relevant information?
You have the information broken up into steps. Do you use it literally in steps or are you simply organizing the information here?
Tell = Narrative, Show = Dialogue, there are times where characters are not available for dialogue and one has to tell the reader something. While this is not a "rule" I follow, I do like its vibe. I think of showing like the screenplay part of my story. Can I change part of a narrative into dialogue if what I ask myself. Hopefully these mindsets are on track for success?
Use telling if you can't show something.
1. Assess why you're including the information in the first place. Is it crucial to the story later on? Is it just a mood enhancer? Is it just a fun bit of creativity?
2. Figure out if you need the fact alone or the story behind the fact.
3. Determine the minimum the reader needs to know.
4. Determine what the reader needs to know right now. Don't introduce things later out of the blue. Show elements of the world earlier on then explain later.
5. Attach the information into action.
Hi Ellen! I love all of your videos! They're so incredibly helpful. Would you ever consider doing a video on ways to "show" a main character's emotional conflicts instead of the MC "telling" it through thoughts and narration. Or any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks, Lisse
"Tax exemptions for ninja warriors"
Hahahahaha, too funny
What are some classic examples of telling in stories? Would the ending of Joyce's The Dead more or less be considered as a moment of telling over showing?
Thank you , helps me out
Also , am I first ?
Yael Hernandez maybeee
"20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne. I was never able to finish it. The main character, a biologist, is the narrator. He is on Captain Nemo's sub. They stop now and then and pick up living samples from the sea floor. The narrator then lists and describes every darn thing they find; chapter length lists. Snore City!
I love your book themed t-shirts :D
Thank you!
I put some family-backstories of the main side-character (the love-interest of the protagonist) in the story, by telling and not showing it. I simply didn't know how to include it by showing, other than writing several new scenes... the part is about 2 pages long and contains information about his family migrating from russia to germany with almost nothing and about him and his mom sticking together and so on... however I didn't really include the part into the story, it's more a flashback to when the son tells the story to the protagonist and she remembers it, when she meets his mom again. Is that lazy writing?
"Pan in, cut to black.
Two weeks later..."
(Heehee #RickAndMorty)
Bruh, I just binge watched all your videos like this was Netflix
That pause thing you talk about is what happened to me in the book I'm reading right now. An Ann Rice book, Lasher. It has like... 50% of the book, in the middle, there's this ghost who tells the backstory of an evil creature. It's bloody boring, it's sooo long, it's about dead characters and you're left wanting for the characters that you care about "now". Put me right out of the flow of reading it.
Great video.
What about supernatural abilities, should I just assume the reader accepts it's strangeness or should I go into destails slowly dropping info throughout the story?
I am writing a young adult science fiction novel, I feel pressured to include romance, or at least a relationship, is it necessary?
Nice video as always.
I wonder about things that happen in the book and then later your character has to tell other character about what happened. Even though the reader already knows what's happened, is it okay to repeat to show the reaction of the character being told the news? Or should I tell?
"loving YOU IS easy, Hellen."
The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know!
LOLs:
"Smited"
Mutant Mealworms
Face-Melting laser beams
Love your vids, Ellen!
Adventure, classic, mystery, romance.... Sci fi? nonfiction? postmodern? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT THE LAST BOOK WAS!!!!!
Jeff Watergate Postmodern isnt a genre
I would say the minimum is 2 bears.
What if you have a character who really likes science and facts and explains the exciting things they learn? I don't know how much of that explanation to convey to the reader. The POV character is somewhat interested but doesn't understand the details. I don't want to bore the reader...
Focus on what you're intending to accomplish by explaining the information. If it's just to convey his personality traits (his own excitement about the material) then you probably only need to have him/her explain the science every once in a while for a couple sentences. If the material itself is relevant, focus on explaining it in the simplest possible way.
I just finished a book that might be similar to what you're describing. It's called "measuring the world" by Daniel Kehlmann and it's about the mathematicion Gauß and the geographer Humboldt. The way he did it (and I really loved that) was by including it into an interaction or a dialogue. For example, Gauß often fails to explain something to his less talented son and gets angry at him, which makes for a lot of humour. Humboldt gets very excited by his developments but his partner Bonpland is often frustrated and often fantasizes about killing Humboldt. Through the side-characters the reader can approach these geniuses in a more human and personal way. And in the end, it wasn't that important for me to know exactly how a sextant is used to measure distances, or what the jupiter-moons have to do with the calculation of the trajectories of planets through space... it was more about their unique quirks and their dry sarcasm that drew me to the story and made me want to finish it.
Thank you! You guys both were very helpful :)
Love this, you're great :).
YES, it helped♡
"Show it by Dialogue and then the Protagonist, plus the later to be Antagonist, show what is to come of the oncoming Theme?"
It's also not a good idea to show things that the reader already understands, like the character getting a message on a cell phone, then driving away in the car. You don't have to have two paragraphs showing that because it just slows the story down & the reader already knows how cell phone texts are gotten & how someone has to open the door to the car, put the key into the ignition, put the car into drive... you get the idea. It's better just to tell it.
Tax exemptions for ninja warriors sounds like something from a Pratchett novel
How do I avoid going overboard with long stories? I have this problem, that I want my characters to tell something about their past but often it turns into a monolog where they go on and on and on about it and I don't know how to fix this. I mean, in real life some people will let you talk hours on end and just listen but I know thats not the majority. Most of the time those flash backs work well in movies but how can I do this in writing without boring my readers or leaving half of the flashback out?
Ellen does this apply to screenplays? Is there a more strict approach with screenplays?
"Follow me' said the Devil 'and all this can be yours.'
"Really!' Gasped Timothy. "You mean all the Ice Cream I want?"
I am sometimes unsure of the difference between showing and telling. I mean... I'm writing it all... ? O_o Is telling when you're giving information about things, but it's not what the characters are doing, saying, thinking etc? Like, explaining or giving backstory to something?
Yes, especially when describing the setting but it is sometimes needed and I am glad a professional editor is actually saying it is okay to tell sometimes when necessary because showing takes more time. Most editors will say that telling is always bad.
Ive been hearing 'show not tell' alot and it never has been sitting right with me (even here we are heavily cautioned against telling in general). I as a reader has always enjoyed long tellings (provided they are done well ofc) and it can't only be me: the old norse sagas are filled with telling, moby dick got whole chapters of semirelated tellings (and it is considered one of the greatest work of american fiction) and Lord of the Rings is also heavy with telling. Is this whole 'show not tell' some kind of 'new' fashion thing?
I mean ofc I see merits of showing not telling in a lot of places but I think a general fear of long paragraphs (or chapters) of telling is... well ofc you should be aware of it but it can really enchance a book done right.
THERE IS NO STEP 2. !
How important is athiritus in a parrot's left foot?
I like face-melting lasers. :>
So basically, be as subtle as possible and convey the info in inventive and smooth ways to interest and inform the reader?
Unless you're a corporation, then "Somehow Palpatine returned" is acceptable
I've never seen a wit of difference between telling and showing. It is a distinction without a difference if your writing is interesting enough.
How many years did it take to grow ur hair?
👍🏻
Smitten not Smited
"Why would I want to 'Show' so much? That's 'None Fiction'
AutoFocus Off!! Tis distracting. Otherwise, very helpful!! Thxu
Now all I care about is this face melting laser and if orcs really won't use it. Did it cause the great mutant meal worm famine?
I want tax exemption because of ninjas to be a thing
13th
Your experience and teachings captivates and inspire me. Can the character or protagonist in a novel come in the second chapter.
Do you beta read?