Goddamnit UA-cam is you could NOT delete my pinned comments? Uhh... let's hope that joke mocking Russia ages like fine wine. Get access to episode 1 of my new companion series BEYOND WRITING with Curiosity Stream AND Nebula together + all my videos ad free curiositystream.com/hellofutureme ~ Tim
@@zhulisclips I think there's space for mocking Russia, a fading, wannabe world power, and supporting Ukrainian liberation, especially if you put your money where your mouth is, which I have tried to do both publicly and privately. I did speak with a Ukrainian friend to ask their thoughts before including it ☺️ ~ Tim
"I have been reading all of these books, and YOU have been lied to." -me in 8th grade aggressively explaining to my friends that the Percy Jackson movie was not very good
@@llsilvertail561 how the hell does anyone think that was a good movie? When I watched it, I was honestly disappointed. Me and my brother both loved Percy Jackson, and had also been reading that roman and egyptian stuff, so when we found out there was a movie, we were hyped… until we watched it
I think this can easily get into info dumping. There is a lot of world building and already established relationships in stories that need to be shown, or at least told in small bits and pieces across the whole story. There is a lot of info readers need that would immediately get bored or disinterested in the story if it was just told to them.
@@ashleygleason4942 well you don't need to know the whole world in every scene. Introduce elements in pieces, but not like in a way that sounds like the book is lecturing in a class, but in a way that is woven in environment, dialogue or the character's thoughts.
Showing emotions is one of the hardest things to write without explaining, but it's also fun. I think a bit of everything should be rules should be followed unless it hurts the story or the fun.
Honestly, I feel like "Show, don't tell" is far more relevant in film and tv than it is in writing. On the screen, your job is to show the watcher everything without sending characters off in hour-long monologues about the state of things. On the page, you are limited to words for a reason! Just be careful and do your best to send information in naturally.
I started writing recently and trying to balance “telling and not showing” and describing scenes to paint pictures in the mind’s eye is hard. I think I’m getting better at it.
It is flat out wrong for visual media too "Incorporate information naturally into the story" is what should be communicated, but people take it too far, just look at the Arcane video of "Heimerdinger's broken characterization" which hinges on "show don't tell" and is an awful analysis because of it
Anyone with any knowledge of movies/shows and books knows that show don't tell does not really apply to books, it applies to shows and movies for a reason... you can actually see it.
I think the number one case where Show Don’t Tell is the most important is with characterization. Don’t just say “she was very cunning”, actually have the character do something cunning
Show don't tell is good advice as a general rule for emotions as well. Don't just write "she felt sad" when there are so many interesting ways to convey sadness
I feel like it also transfers to emotions. If the character is sad you can say they're sad, but if you just say it and then don't have the sadness impact anything then it's a waste of time and won't make much sense.
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I recently heard someone rephrase “show don’t tell” as “describe don’t explain” and I feel like that just makes so much more sense on basically every level.
Yeah, agreed. Someone also told me that if you want a student (or audience) to NEVER forget something, make them feel like they discovered it for themselves. That 'conclusion' is a thousand times more powerful than any exposition of information.
@@vice2versa i partially agréé with you , i think in novel you have to choose when it neccessary.But m'y english is Bad so i Can't really explain what i think.
I've always found "show, don't tell" to be about large issues, ie. "don't tell the audience that the character is a coward, show them behaving cowardly", not about small details.
I've had people tell me that rule applies to even something so small as the weather like don't say it's cold say the bitter cold wind nipped her skin and she had to get a shawl show that you're showing it's cold because that's better writing smh
@@lahlybird895 But the problem is you still need to show it. Making the choice to have the day be cold will have no impact if you just say its cold once. But it gains a lot more depth of it affects the plot and the characters actions or emotions. Just saying it's cold you'll forget, but if the character also has to dress warm, or notices the difference in temperature when they walk back inside or they're in a bad mood because it's cold or because it's snowing the shop is closed. Show don't tell doesn't mean you can't say it's cold, but that just saying it doesn't have much impact and will be forgotten quickly.
@@ChangeMakersArturKrol how interesting just goes to show how screwed this logic is doesn't it like apparently that's a that's showing because it's not flat out saying it's cold but it's also just telling things
Chilling to hear my voice in the same breath as yours. This channel has been a repository of storytelling for me for years. Thanks again for including me, Tim!
"Show, don't tell" - actually is the big lesson that early Hollywood had to learn. Movies started pretty much as recording of theater productions - and the thing about theaters is, that people in the back rows might not even be able to see the entirety of the stage. Thus it is very important for stage actors, to actually voice everything. And a good theater piece does this to a degree, where a blind person would be perfectly able to follow. The characters would spell out how they feel, what they are doing, what's going on on the stage. "Show don't tell" is about how in movies, many things can be conveyed through camera angles, facial expressions, cuts, zooms and other techniques - so that there is no need for the character to say out loud what is happening on stage. And for movies that insight and corresponding change was huge. It's basically what elevated movie making into it's own, separate art-form with it's own expressive language.
@@Kuudere-Kun yeah I hate it too people throw a kissy fit whenever a character articulate something to another character because well that's not a kind of thing you need to say and I'm just going since when do humans just only talk about plot relevant stuff even in real life
@@Kuudere-Kun "Show don't tell" does not mean to not have dialogue (or monologe). For an exaggerated example, the character calmly saying "I am so angry" would be telling. The character shouting "Graaaah, those idiots!" while kicking a trash can, would be showing. You see (and hear from the tone) that there is anger. The word "angry" doesn't have to be spelled out.
Some musician on tiktok said "The rules are what you need when things go wrong." Show Don't Tell is a great rule when exposition is a crutch. Cut adverbs is a great rule when your adjectives are a crutch. But its not one size fits all, its a fix. A hammer is great until you need a screwdriver, then a hammer is disasterous.
To create your own, copy, then break out. I don't think rules should be dogma, that's what makes all things boring after too much. That's exactly what all boring teachers do, no matter how well they can teach.
I think this goes for a lot of writing advice. Same for "Every scene should move forward the plot." It's not true, there are a great many scenes in amazing books that are necessary for character, tone, theme, or pacing that don't do all that much to move the overall plot forward. (And that could not be intergrated into the main plot without compromising those aspects) However, most people, when they've written a first draft, probably have unnecessary scenes they should cut, instead of scenes they should add. Likewise, a majority of inexperienced writers probably tell too much and show too little. However that doesn't mean that telling is always bad, or that all scenes that wouldn't show up in a plot recap of your book must be cut. It means that there is a balance to strike. And that balance isn't easy to find, because it's different for every individual work. Writing is hard and there's no easy trick to getting it right, sadly.
My writing technique as a pantser is write *all-together too much* in the first draft, to the point it was upwards of twice the length of a "long" sci-fi/fantasy novel. That way I can trim the fat from a big healthy slab of meat instead of artificially inject additives into it. Before adopting this method, I definitely struggled with not realizing a scene can be a work-of-art and still entirely useless trash to be set on fire. However, having adopted the method, I found myself struggling to see when a scene was good for the story even if it did not progress the plot. I would remove half of the book because it did not directly advance the plot, then look at the steaming pile that was left and wonder, "What happened? My beta readers all loved the story the first time, and now it is even more lean and concise. Why are they telling me the story is missing something all of the sudden" Like with anything else, it is all about striking that balance and knowing which parts are which. The tip I give other writers now is, "Every scene you are considering for the chopping block, ask yourself *two* questions: Does this scene advance the plot? Does it advance the character's arc in such a way to make their advancement of the plot take a different path at some point?" While it is still an incomplete "rule," sometimes just asking that second question can make you catch some crucial scenes you would have cut for not advancing the plot, only for the plot to feel lacking as a result. Anyway, thanks for sharing the tip. I can see me adding tone and pace to the list, because you are right. Sometimes, as wrong as it sounds, the plot is not the point of the scene. Sometimes it is about the little things that make the story beats come to life.
@@peaceandloveusa6656 I think a refinement on the phrasing of that rule might be "Before you cut a scene, ask yourself if cutting it will make something later not make sense." The best action movies are defined by how well they pace the breaks in the action and use that time between, be it for plot advancement or character moments. There's a pattern there worth examining for storytelling in general. Often when you see the directors cut of a film, restored scenes people like fall in one of two categories "They should have kept this." and "Well this didn't need to be here, but I like it." If I recall correctly, Aliens theatrical cut removes the entire dropship descent sequence, but every home edition of it restores it. Because it's an important character moment for our duotagonist for the rest of the film. It's where he specifically starts out before being forced to change his view on things by events. It informs on later character moments by being a fuller foundation than would otherwise be there. Scenes from stories can benefit from the same kind of examination.
Ooof. Honestly I never heard of the "Every scene should move the plot forward" but I did come up with my own version of it, to keep myself from wandering in my writing. "Every scene should have a point." Sometimes that point was to move the plot. Sometimes it was just to let us know a piece of information. Sometimes it was to show the friendship between characters. The more reasons I could put in, the better. If I didn't do this, I just tended to wander a ton in my writing and get stuck.
Russel T Davis (Doctor Who Showrunner) is a big fan of soap operas, so it makes sense how he would understand what and when to say. He also has this rule for character writing, that being people won't ever explicitly talk about the subject of something, but the feelings around it.
@@FonceFalooda2 Oh thank god the chibnall days are behind us. I'm actually hyped for the next doctor now. And I'm hoping Davies will find some way to fix the timeless child.
@@theratking3075 We might never know who actually found a Genie's lamp and made this wish. ;) But seriously, I just want good, smart stories again, and that's what Russell T does. Any repairing of the Mythology will be a bonus. :)
@@FonceFalooda2 100% agreed. I'm very hyped for season 14 and I'm excited to have Davies back. Can't wait to see what direction he takes it in. He was probably my favorite showrunner and was behind some of the best stories of modern Who.
After becomming such a DW addict due to the Eccleston/Tennant eras I'd say, it's really good to have RTD back. (Shame I never finished 10th Doctor, cuz I have now dived too deep into the weirdness that is the Classic Doctor Who Series.)
The thing with the example from your writing is also that it's quiet. When I've sat in grief I have sobbed, sure, but I haven't wailed or thrown things, the world has felt strangled and quiet. I'm crying, I can't scream, I'm holding one of her toys, it's precious, so precious and so full of her love, I couldn't possibly throw it. Just curl up around it and my pain and sob, trying to feel her in it and hoping that whatever is beyond the veil she can feel me. ... and I started crying.
Here's the issue I think: people take "show, don't tell" into every little facet of writing, when it's a larger-view piece of advice. Little details should be told, but they should piece together a larger picture. Worldbuilding, especially, I think, is best done in this way, where details are told/shown, which implies the larger worldbuilding. TL:DR; pretty much what a bunch of other people said. Know when to tell and when to show. Also, knowing how and when to imply something as opposed to just giving it to the reader is an art, and one worth learning!
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Another trick is you can induce emotions in the reader so they are fully on board with what the main character is going to do. Tom Clancy's book Patriot Games has a scene where he describe the injuries of Jack Ryan's 4yr old daughter after a crash that was the direct result of a terrorist hit on him, his pregnant wife, and his daughter. After reading a diagnosis of exactly how many bones a 4yr old breaks when not wearing a seatbelt you are fully ready to personally murder these fictional terrorists. Sometimes a pure clinical description is worth a thousand poems. (Of course you also get Jack's inner monologue as he processes just how close to losing his world he came) But obviously showing and telling are much easier than trying to show someone pure objective facts to get a specific emotional response, and a good writer balances all of them. It's probably best to think of them as tools like a hammer, screwdriver, and wrench each one has a time and place to be most effective.
I think one of the greatest scenes I know of where we were directly told how a character felt was in the BBC show Merlin. Merlin's childhood friend Will is shown as a black sheep who is very opinionated and difficult. He gets shot by an arrow later and as he is dying he speaks to Merlin, and is making witty comments on the conflicts they went through the episodes prior. Then, he burst into to tears and says, "Merlin-Merlin, I'm scared!" and dies short after that. I just remember being so sad at this scene and really felt how human this guy was, how realistic it was that he was in shock and people usually laugh when something like that is happening, his jokes and nervous laughter just sold it. And then he was honest and said that he was terrified, the writing was just 🤌
It is worth remembering that the initial statement of "show, don't tell" is supposed to be the grammar-school level of advice that takes kids from being fully removed narrators into being able to dive into the weeds of a scene. Anyone who is telling you this advice when a person isn't at the most basic level of writing is either: completely mistaken about how to give advice about writing; or being condescending. Some learning writers at the intermediate stage need to show more, some need to tell more. Others have a good grasp of doing both but may need to step back to figure out what ratios work for the thing they are currently writing. But I think the big takeaway is that pithy statements aren't going to be able to cover the nuanced that almost certainly exists within any piece of advice
So uhhh... really hope that Russia joke ages well. Get access to episode 1 of my new companion series BEYOND WRITING with Curiosity Stream AND Nebula together + all my videos ad free curiositystream.com/hellofutureme Stay nerdy! ~ Tim
It has bad implications, because the Russian advance isn't stopping, but that method of emotion-showing absolutely will, when the book gets perma-dropped.
Depends on your audience. It's a visual and sensory medium for me as a reader and a writer. I'm a hyperphantasic who writes for other hyperphantasiacs. My aphantasiac friends do NOT like my writing, which is fine.
The coarsest step in my writing is to let the scenes play out, all the visuals, the atmosphere, the heat or the chill, the wind or the dampness. Then I write down what I see, the challenge is knowing what to pick out and what to ignore.
@@marcomoreno6748does that mean you hyper visualise? If so, i do that, and sometimes make up words which provoke the image in my head lol. But, i do struggle with trying to create a story narrative and vibe properly, as i see a movie in my head, all i know to do is translate that exact image through words even though you can't do that...as they're different mediums. I dont know how to learn the way to write best what I am seeing though :/ Does that make sense or am i talking nonsense lol..
The fragment of the woman sobbing in the room of her dead child actually got me tearing up (obviously without knowing anything else of the story). Good job on that one!
Whenever someone say show don't tell, I remember the Furious five, and how so little dialog they had, and yet is very visible their relationships with one another. And the best example would be their fight against Tai Lung
My dumbass was like, furious five, like fast and furious? Then saw Tai lung. Idek if the 5th fast and furious movie is even called furious 5, I never watched them that much
Agreed- you look at any well-liked author (like Tolkien) and you’ll see quite a bit of telling. The key is to not bore the reader, whatever you’re doing, and figure out if the telling goes on too long or too obviously by getting feedback from readers and stepping away from the WIP for a while after the draft is over so you can look at it with fresher eyes.
When you talked about the Melodramatic portion, I had to think of the Fireplace scene in Star Wars Attack of the Clones, where Padme and Anakin describe their feelings and forbidden love in the most melodramatic ways possible and it becomes rather obnoxious and funny instead of serious and dramatic.
The sheer lack of chemistry up to, and including that scene made the confession jarring to me. I was like, "Wait, what did I miss?" Then re-watched the movie later only to find out this was not established *at all* up until being explicitly told. At least, Padme's feelings for Anakin was never shown or told up to that point. In that moment, showing the scenes that happened off screen to make that make sense would have been much more effective than telling us "yeah, this has always been a thing." It made the rest of the movie make no sense to me.
for anyone confused about the difference between showing and telling in book writing, here’s a really simple example. Tell: She was sad Show: Her eyes watered So ‘show don’t tell’ isn’t just for screenwriting or filmmaking, like some are saying. It’s all over books.
I'd point to _Arcane_ as a perfect example of perfect nonverbal storytelling, knowing when to use exposition ALONG with nonverbal storytelling aka body language, and just exposition by itself. As a perfect example of how to use Chekhov's Gun. As a perfect example, of how to treat your audience with respect. Yes there are times where you need to have that tell don't show moments, tell the audience what's going on, but doing it in a way that doesn't insult the audience is important. _Arcane_ does these things (exposition aka tell don't show and show don't tell) masterfully; during the ICONIC Ekko vs Jinx fight through no dialogue we are able to gather as the audience that even though we don't see these two together much, they were close as kids, had a fun game they played, were able to make the best of a bad situation but over time became enemies and even Ekko can't stop himself from seeing Powder in Jinx. Through sheer expression work alone, audiences are split on if Jinx was trying to take them BOTH out or just trying to take HERSELF out; if she was just okay with finally dying AS Powder, or wanted to take him with her. THAT is good storytelling, that is good writing, that is good show don't tell. Compare it with _Obi-Wan Kenobi_ and it fails spectacularly at just overall storytelling, but especially at show don't tell or tell, don't show because there's a moment where Obi-Wan (SPOILERS) just blurts out Reva's backstory as a survivor of Order 66, as if we didn't see that coming a mile away. They try to have their cake and eat it too, by having them TELL us what happened with Reva AND show it when they could have and should have just shown it through the flashbacks. That's just beating the audience over the head with it. Which is completely ironic because in just the same episode, you can compare it with the Obi-Wan vs Anakin sparring session; that duel is telling a nonverbal story throughout the episode of where Anakin's mind always is: victory over anything, and Obi-Wan is always more methodical in his approach, pragmatic. Morally ambiguous at times in The Clone Wars. It confuses me why they think they need to beat the audience with information sometimes, but then feel okay with having this nonverbal storytelling interlaced through the episode. This problem of not knowing when to let characters and the audience breathe is a big problem with the show. Compare with _Arcane_ there is this whole scene where Silco is talking to Vander's statue. That's all it is. JUST him talking. But through visuals, through his body language, through the framing of the scene, the scene is telling us SO many things at once, and you don't mind it's just him talking. It's not some long winded speech, it's not him showcasing his power over others. It's just...him. Showing for the first time, his humanity. His shoulders slump, his eyes shift, he sighs a lot, his body is saying just as much as he is and that's what good tell don't show is. There's always a time and place for exposition over visual storytelling, a time for both, and a time for visual storytelling over exposition. And _Arcane_ masters this concept.
There IS more to the Arcane scene than just that. There is a lot more than the show don't tell to the scene. I'm assuming you know, but for those who don't it alludes to Ekko's character in game, with him being able to reverse time and becoming 'The Boy Who Shattered Time'. Everything about it was perfect.
You had me at Arcane and lost me at Obi-Wan... Unfortunately a lot of Star Wars fans still don't understand Kenobi despite how easy they make it. They literally tell and show Reva's backstory and people still don't get it.
@@thewatcher7940 And YOU'RE missing MY point. The POINT is if you actually READ my comment, that where _Arcane_ shines in show AND tell like with Silco just monologuing while sitting at Vander's statue, _Obi-Wan_ FAILS because it's TELLING us something AND showing what Obi-Wan is TELLING US ALREADY. Like we don't need to SEE the thing WE'RE BEING TOLD. Which is why it's so ironic that they then have nonverbal dialogue via the sparring session; that session is telling a nonverbal story throughout the entire episode but to have then the backstory told and SHOWN is overkill. Kenobi is full of moments like that there's no balance.
@@thewatcher7940 It's not about not understanding, it's about the show not actually being very good. Because they show Reva's backstory in the opening. We know from minute 1 what her past is. It's just that nothing she does, and none of her motivation, makes any sense with that in mind. If her plan is "rise through the ranks, gain Vader's trust, and then kill him," why does that plan involve her kidnapping a random 10-year-old? If she's one of the highest-ranking members of an organization designed to hunt and capture force-sensitives, how does she miss that she's abducted the daughter of Anakin Freaking Skywalker? Why don't we ever see her wrestling with the morality of what she's doing, considering that her entire job involves doing the very same thing that made her swear vengeance? Compare to Arcane, where before the timeskip, we see Silco showing genuine empathy for this girl who lost her family, and post-timeskip, she's a mafia princess and he indulges her every whim. Silco had no idea how a functional family looked because he never had one, but he did his best; it just happens that what he thought of as Good Parenting was actually the enabling of the worst, darkest impulses of a girl who needed stability. None of that is important to the story, but because the story's "showing" matches its "telling", readers can infer more with less.
6:40 it will never get old Great video so far :) 'Show, don't tell' is definitely trickier than what it seems, even with the 'describe, don't explain' version.
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The necessity to use both showing and telling to different effects and purposes is something I've been thinking about for years, and one of my favorite examples is in chapter 1 of C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces. This retelling of Psyche and Cupid is narrated in 1st person by Psyche's older, homely half-sister, whose appearance is barely described for us. All I remember is she doesn't have her sisters' golden hair. Most writers would, as most do, go into details about what the narrator looks like in order to tell us how average or unattractive she is. Lewis, however, does this: [Context: the narrator, Orual's father is remarrying to a very young bride, and Orual and several other girls will be singing a welcome song for the new queen] "[The priest] did not understand a word of the hymn, nor the music either, but he asked, 'Are the young women to be veiled or unveiled?' 'Need you ask?' said the king with one of his great laughs, jerking his thumb in my direction. 'Do you think I want my queen frightenes out of her senses? Veils of course. And good thick veils too.' One of the other girls tittered, and I think that was the first time I clearly understood that I am ugly." Lewis then goes on to brieflt describe how Orual, now old, became afraid as a child of her stepmother only to see that the new queen, barely older than she, is even more terrified. There is plenty of descriptive language in this section, strong verbs, "showing," but what has stood out to me again and again is that blunt phrase "I clearly understood that I am ugly." It's so bare. You can feel the bitterness and the hurt from it.
Haven't watched the video yet but my correction to the "show, don't tell rule" is "know when to show and when to tell" since not everything needs to be shown.
Yeah, basically 'back off a bit there, buddy.' The very length of it warns you it's gonna get into some complex nuances so you may want to rewatch it when you're awake for it.
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Tim, you are incredible. I've been on an upskilling bender for at least a year now, perhaps more. I've absorbed as much as I possibly can from so many sources, including many of the fine folks you mention or feature in this video (top notch, by the way!). There's so many sources out there, from professional readers and editors setting expectations to published authors doing listicles and masterclasses, but I feel as though you go where they all fear to tread. No one, not even Brando Sando himself, dives even close to as deep as you do on such a myriad of topics. It's clear you've been aggressively upskilling for years yourself - the quality of the wee snippets of prose you share with us are a testament to that. You understand the assignment and you spend more time than most throwing raw brainpower at analysis. The best part is that you choose to share the outcome with us all. Your analyses are famously hard-hitting and informative and above all useful, but I reckon you've hit an all-time high note with this one. There's a shitload of videos in my 'writing research' playlist, but when it comes time to editing, I can say that hand on heart, yours are the ones I will be frantically re-watching. Thank you for so generously sharing your hard work with us all.
As a neurodivergent person, I personally feel like a lot of times - when you said "people don't say [specific emotion or thing]" - it wasn't real, because I act like that. I ALWAYS say exactly what I'm feeling, just like that. I always say when I'm happy or sad with a descriptor of said feeling. So, all my characters are like this, too. It can feel clunky, but I think that you can get away textually, if you're enough of a good writer.
I associate "show don't tell" a lot more to world building than to character expression. Using it as a tool to be aware of how much you are giving exposition on the world vs allowing parts of the world to be naturally explored through the character's interactions with it. And of course as in all things, context (the when, how, and why) always matters!
I hit like after watching for 2 minutes because before clicking on it I hazarded a guess at what it’d be about. My issue with show don’t tell us the fact that exposition is important for your reader to enjoy the story on its terms. If there’s too much worldbuilding to communicate naturally, or you don’t want to hide your moral theme behind pretentious symbology or metaphors or whatever. Now I know you want to focus on one specific topic as a case study. It’s not the one I expected you to discuss, but I’m so happy you’re talking about it. I’m confident in my “like” button hit because I infinitely respect you and your opinions and this is yet another example of why I believe that and as a bonus, you have such a cute and soothing accent and voice! 😉
“Until they run back to their mothers and they say: «Mum, I’m scared», to which their mother says: «Don’t tell me - SHOW ME.»” I like this video already.
So many great authors tell, tell, tell. Austen, Melville, Eliot... You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. Show don't tell is fashion, not physics.
Great video, I really enjoyed the guest readers. I was a bit hesitant, I was always told "Show, don't tell" is basically the golden rule, but you've shown me that it's more guidelines than a rule.
The cross over voice casting is fun, especially when your audience recognizes them! Don't be bashful about asking for a second take or giving preparatory notes in advance. Voice acting skill is underestimated and underappreciated, and a good VA will welcome recommendations from their director on the emotional approach, the preferred way to handle unusual punctuation, or the correct pronunciation of foreign words and names.
Man, this is the TIP THAT I'VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR ALL THE TIME. Character emotions have always been a struggle for me; I feel like it hinders the pacing most of the time. It's either too much or too little that it undermines the moment of emotion. Sometimes I do it through dialogue but get hit with doubt that maybe the reader won't catch on or maybe it's not lining up much with the emotion I'm trying to convey. But this has been super helpful. I'm glad you've finally made a video about it.
As always, I have to comment whenever there's a House of Leaves reference. I very much agree, Danielewski does an amazing job of using the format of the book itself to highlight emotions without having to say what they are per se. Good video as always.
This is actually really helpful for a crossover fic I've been brainstorming lately (specifically, a scene where a character realises that her new best friend has some unhealthy coping mechanisms, tries to talk to her about it, and during the conversation starts to realise that she does the exact same things as her friend), so I'm glad you made this video when you did
FUN-FACT: HFM has Sibling-Channels in Terrible Writing Advice, Krimson Rogue, Hbomberguy and Telltale Foundry. Maybe also Madvocate and Jay Exci if we stretch the Defintion to 'People who got famous doing absolutely-stunning Constructive-Criticism-Essays'...
Another issue of just (or over-) relying on "show don't tell" regarding emotions is that not everyone everywhere will interpret a given sign as a given emotion (or a given intensity). So, if you plan of having your text be able to speak to readers across cultures more easily, think about when to just show, and when you need to be a bit more explicit.
Writing emotions and describing them is a challenge. As I watched this, I realized I'm guilty of being overly dramatic.-I tend to have my teen characters roll their eyes a lot. I need to go back and re-write several of the scenes in my current WIP. Thank you.
I am taking a creative writing class and it is really cool to learn actual exercises to expand and practice these concepts you are talking about. To practice narration through a stream of consciousness and expand our descriptions by coming up with similies and metaphors for 5 emotions and the 5 scenes weekly. I just wanted to thank you for helping me explore these ideas and letting me know that they are there.
I'm a decent way through one of my creative writing projects and I wanted to see you guys' reaction to my work: After I finished my prayers, I walked to the Martyrs’ Memorial; since I last visited, there were more names, which I assumed were by the German refugees. The memorial had three obelisks, each of them made of marble, similar but not the same. The oldest one was starved of the vibrancy the others had but it was still more beautiful, the faint grey veins in the stone curved like the penultimate struggles of a wave in its futile battle against the shore. My eyes glided over all the names, the reminder of the lives lost and will continue to be lost to authority’s almost endless conquest for more, and I stopped on the oldest names written in Bangla, running my hand over them, I found two names, deeply engraved, the anger, the grief, tangible in their impact on the near-perfect obelisk it surrounds; my mother and my father, killed by the Fascists, in a country they didn’t belong in. I saw myself twenty years ago, carving with an old and weathered knife, surviving almost four decades before finding itself carving the names of its long-time wielders, all the emotions, raw and palpable, at the hands of a tool. My Sutu-Mamma, still mourning his older sister, his compass, stood next to me, feeling what I felt with the exact amount of power I had: nothing. I should’ve told him something, anything really, but I didn’t, I stood there, dealing with all my unprocessed emotions through the sharp edge of a knife and I dealt with its consequences as with all I’ve done. I prayed for them, and I prayed that the third obelisk remains clear of names, of martyrs, its flawless, save for the mineral impurities that make the marble’s most significant feature, surface standing as a reminder that peace and freedom are not vague allusions but a promise and something to be achieved.
I just want to say, thank you so much just for offering advice and wisdom that just might keep a lot of us from curling up into a fetal position on the floor as we cry out beneath the weight of trying to write any number of sentences that actually ought to be very easy to write and we're just being our own worst enemies by making it that much harder on ourselves stressing out about it so hard.
I love your avatar videos but it always baffles me how your writing and world building stuff doesn't get as much attention. Its just so damn quality and informative! Keep up the great work, Tim!
That excerpt from your book was amazing! I had no context for what the story or characters are, but it hit hard regardless. I can't wait to read it. I am really happy to hear your opinion on this subject and I'm kinda pleased that I've already figured some of it out during my five years writing. There's one scene in my book where the main character is locked up in this cultic boarding school and he's feeling isolated. To communicate this, I had him do a bunch of things that he used to do with his buddies, like picking locks and stealing things in the dead of night. They were the only people in his life who truly valued him, and when he's in an atmosphere where he feels underappreciated and cut off, he does these things to relive that same connection. This results in his new friend catching him red-handed and getting mad at him, which leads to an argument. Their apology leads to a bonding moment, and their friendship leads to one breaking the other out of the school, which kickstarts the plot. Their friendship is a major part of the story, and so I decided to start the story with that instead of the actual plot. The truth is, emotions are extremely important to stories. There's a kind of emotional logic to work with, and all good stories are tightly woven with this emotional logic. If all you have is plot, that isn't a story, or even half of one. If you have a well-written character who the audience can connect with, a story will inevitably follow. Thanks for all that you do, Tim! Your videos are the best.
"Tell don't show" also works great to set up Chekhov's guns and build expectations. If you get told about the legendary flying fortress in the first act, seeing it appear on the horizon in the third act enhances the impact of that scene tenfold. Yes, that has nothing to do with emotions, but "Show don't tell" isn't always mentioned in regards to emotions either.
Intelligent Entertainment like HFM is what i wanna recommend to Strangers, but asking strangers if they want Something has its risk of branding you as an ad-rbobot or such. I never found a Solution to this, but i just keep asking: Anyone wants some Watch-Suggesta?
FUN-FACT: HFM has Sibling-Channels in Terrible Writing Advice, Krimson Rogue, Hbomberguy and Telltale Foundry. Maybe also Madvocate and Jay Exci if we stretch the Defintion to 'People who got famous doing absolutely-stunning Constructive-Criticism-Essays'...
So I'm not a writer, but I am a literature student, and the way you've explained this I think is really going to help me appreciate good writing. I remember reading (and sobbing) over Bridge to Terrabithia at a young age and although I don't remember a lot of the details, I do remember the way he expressed his grief, so emotional writing really does stick with you
When he said "it's really important to hug your cat", I looked around for a solid minute before remembering my old buddy had to be put down a week ago 😢
Reading The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings for the first time (going in blind, having never actually seen the films myself), and one of the biggest things I'm noticing is how the vast majority of the most epic and possibly important "action scenes" happen off-page. Gandalf fighting orcs in the distance with great magic? Fighting the Balrog? Heck, the battle where the orcs kidnap Merry and Pippin, where major character [spoilers] dies? These are all told to us in very shortened recounts by those who were involved long after they happened, even though they happen during the timeline of the books. And on the one hand, I do wonder why we aren't seeing these accounts, but on the other hand, showing us would pull the split narrative in so many more directions as it is. But also, _I enjoyed the retellings from the characters' own mouths._ They are embellished with character and flare that _feels_ like a person who thought deeply about how to retell their experience. And from what I understand, much of Tolkien's intent was to create a fun, fictional mythology, and these little touches really capture that feeling. Side tangent: I'm only on Book IV (second half of Two Towers), but I might as well say it now. Lord of the Rings is just a long Disney movie/musical epic in book form. Never have I ever read a book where characters will literally just break out in song (poetry?) mid-conversation, and everyone around them just goes along with it or joins in so naturally. Am I missing out on a whole genre of books like this? Was this normal in Tolkien's day? It's quite amusing.
It wasn’t prevalent even for Tolkien’s era. He simply loved writing songs for his world. I personally think they distract from the events happening, but that’s just me. LotR is still so well-written that the random songs don’t bother me.
Its some a quirk of him liking poetry and song that much. Also disney is not the only one having characters engage in poetry and numbers. I think its too dark and not happy ending and clear cut to be disney. I would like it more as opera or operette or musical than disney. And crazy ex girlfriend definitly not disney,.
Tolkien was well known for being a fan of epic, Germanic, and Nordic poetry and folklore and the characters going into non-sequiters and tangents to bring up past folk tales and history is a staple. Hell, Beowulf, one of the primary influences in Tolkien's work, had a prologue that didn't involve Beowulf. It's those little touches that truly makes the fictional Arda (the world Middle-earth takes places) feel completely real and animate. And it's how we as people keep culture alive: by telling and retelling stories. It's no wonder we never get tired of Cinderella stories when the story itself is believed to be 5000 years old and we can mark variations of it all over the globe.
That opening joke was gold, made me actually laugh out loud! And then to follow it up with such a banger of a video. It feels to me like one of your best yet. A lot of stuff clicked for me even if had a bit of a hard time putting it in my own words. Literally felt like the galaxy brain meme unlocking a new level of understanding about what makes a story work.
Look, on a visual media I can understand that sometimes a visual works tons of times better than a lot of dialogue (An example: How the Kane marriage in "Citizen Kane" gets further and further on the tables, showing us that they aren't feeling the same) But most of the times, we won't get it at first or after too many views. I'm still having problems with "Lost Highway", and that's me: A David Lynch fan.
The focus is on literature, but these pointers can help with writing scripts and visual media. It will be words that will describe how to direct or animate characters as well
When you gave the example with the character being depressed, but doesn't do anything it reminds me of some of my older drafts, where I relied heavily on showing the desperation of my protagonist. But then let him passively indulge in it. The result was a melodramatic drama queen, that not even I could like after re-reading. If you're so desperate at least cry or do something else.
Oh gosh, a pov character in the first story where I actually got quite far in my writing was also a reeeeallly melodramatic drama queen. I suppose it was a product of it's time; 15-16 years old me was not in an emotionnally stable state at all lol.
Show don’t tell is more useful as beginner advice. It really should be “Show AND tell” but most writers start off telling everything so if you say show don’t tell they end up with a good mix of telling and showing. An iceberg without a top will just float up until it is only surface level
2:52 the audio editing on that segue makes it sound like you finished your own sentence as if you were two people chatting. It’s so funny and I appreciate your signature cocktail of wisdom, knowledge, and entertainment value.
the moment i saw the thumbnail, i knew this video would be making some excellent points. that particular scene in Doctor Who, and specifically the line he says in that scene, "i don't want to go," absolutely BROKE me when i first watched it. he's desperate, he's mourning the loss of the person he is in this moment, and all he can say, all he has time to say before he is immediately ripped from this form and re-shaped into someone new, is "i don't want to go." the look on his face conveys that he's upset, the golden glow conveys that he's about to regenerate, but his WORDS, his straightforward statement of what he wants, is what hammers home what's going on in his mind, and it was made even more upsetting by the fact that it's what i was thinking, too. tennant was my favorite doctor, and it was heart-wrenching to know that the character was experiencing the loss of himself in the same way i was; he knew he wouldn't be the same person anymore, not quite the same character, that he'd never be number ten again. my teacher could write "show, don't tell" on my creative writing assignments all she wanted, but sometimes telling is just more powerful. i also had no idea what she meant at that age, but that was a different problem lol.
Another thing I always thought was interesting is the fact that in some media you need to tell dont show. This shows up a lot in kids shows where writers tend to tell a lot, sometimes more than needed.
Have you noticed that most kids' shows and movies have multiple layers? There is a 'tell' layer for the kids where show is only used for really obvious stuff. And then there is another layer more accessible to the adults watching with them that is more subtext and showing. Kids sometimes go back when they are older and suddenly realize there is that whole other layer they missed when they were younger.
I feel like the aspect of showing/telling emotions I've mastered is using setting and introspection to express emotions. I am working on a second draft/structural edit of a work-in-progress I created last NaNo, and there was a chapter I was worried that was too much in the character's head, but rereading it after watching this video made me realize that it perfectly hits the emotions I wanted it to.
Your bit about melodrama was fantastic, I want to just remember every point you made, and the way you deconstruct a passage in detail is something I really appreciate, most writers/youtubers skip over it with one example or think it too simplistic. Also didn't expect you going into this sort of detail and elaborate examples with a video about Show, Don't Tell, funnily enough
One trick I like to do when establishing a recurring emotional response is have the character's first on-screen display of that emotion (such as fear of rejection) be more pronounced, juggling why they feel this way, how it feels, etc in a mess of believable chronology. The messier the feeling, the messier the expression/explanation. But, in that jumble of chronology, there is a key *physical* symptom. Something tangible, only referenced in moments like that. - Say, a knot in their stomach. - When addressing this feeling in the future, I can often simply say, "I feel that *familiar* knot in my stomach as dread what comes next." This keeps the story moving while letting the reader know that word-salad the character experiences in these situations is still relevant. If there is a change in how it feels, how they react, how they perceive it, then that is what I focus on. Otherwise, it is simply left at the word association more often than not, because that is enough to help the audience know what is happening. Basically, I learned we do not need the audience to feel every single emotion the character feels every single time the character feels it. We need them to feel the emotional beats of the story, and these are not always in line with the character(s) we are following. For another example, say we want the audience to *feel* hopeful our character is going to overcome their social anxiety. Sure, we first need to fully be able to understand the anxiety, but after that, we need to feel hope that it can change, if that change is supposed to happen. If we make the audience feel the character's anxiety every time, we do not feel hope, but despair. However, if we are simply told "the anxiety is back" but the build-up of emotional beats has us thinking, "Come on, you got this. Fight through it!" We can stay on the ride and have that glorious moment of triumph when they actually do overcome it. We did not lose emotional momentum because the story beats changed gears just because the character's did. We already knew they were going to be anxious, that was the point. Tell us it's back and keep going.
FUN-FACT: HFM has Sibling-Channels in Terrible Writing Advice, Krimson Rogue, Hbomberguy and Telltale Foundry. Maybe also Madvocate and Jay Exci if we stretch the Defintion to 'People who got famous doing absolutely-stunning Constructive-Criticism-Essays'...
just want to highlight something about that first exerpt from All Quiet On The Western Front; he corrects himself to say 'stab' instead of 'shot', yes, which does make it more personal the way you described, but _also_ because the man he killed? He did that by stabbing him repeatedly, if I remember Red's summary correctly so he is making it more personal yeah, but by likening himself to the dying man as well. he killed the man with violence, and now the man kills him with his letter
When I heard Merphy reading about how Myumi dealt with the memory of her dead child, I stopped the video right at the end of that scene and searched for what genius wrote that paragraph. It was such a strong scene, with multi layered metaphors which all were tied to Myumi's grief, to the memory she so desperately tried to wipe out of her mind. So much power and emotion in a scene of someone spilling wine and cleaning the floor. I just found out that it takes one paragraph to bring tears to my eyes, and to realize that Tim is a fantastic writer.
All of the excerpts you chose in this video were wonderful, but yours stood out to me the most. You paint emotion really excellently. I couldn't be more excited for your sci-fi novel, whenever it comes out!
Sorry, but my inner editor demands I tell you about that typo in your story at 28:11 A wretch is a person in a terrible state; a retch is an attempt to vomit. (OK, maybe that seems petty, but once I noticed it, it just wouldn't get out of my head.)
Was there a typo in the quote from Bridge to Terabithia? Toward the end, the voiceover and the text says 'less' where I think it is supposed to be 'Jess'. It was distracting enough to save me from being emotionally affected by the reading at least. :)
I feel like this video wasn't sponsored by Nebula/Curiosity Stream but rather a cabal of cats who want to be cuddled. I'm not sure what to do now, as I have no pet to lift up and cuddle. Thank you for the interesting video on show vs. tell, though. You've certainly shown me how to tell a more effective story.
Another fantastic video! One single point of contention I would raise is that I long ago observed that in real life, at least among English youth in the U.S, people really DO directly make statements like "I feel happy," "I'm so sad! Hug me!" "I was SO mad when that happened!" all the time. Some people on a daily basis, as a fundamental part of how they communicate. This to me is a poor and superficial way of getting across the specific nature and context of one's emotions, but I feel that if you are going for lifelike realism in dialogue, you must necessarily include this everyday phenomenon. Of course, you can couple this with contradictory body language, contextual cues that give deeper insight, etc. Btw, I'm over 100,000 words into my book, and I'm pretty sure there are ZERO "very"s or "extremely"s, save for I think one time when a character says 'extremely' in conversation! Take that Stephen King! lol. In seriousness, not just applying some of these rules of thumb, but the level of strictness or looseness with which you apply them, and what particular situations (if any) you deem exceptions are major part of overarching authorial voice and/or the sort of style code for a particular work. The very/extremely intensifier thing just so happens to be one of those things I personally am particularly anal and absolutistic about.
I've always understood the concept of 'show don't tell' to apply to the character arc. If the character has to say, "The real treasure is the friends we made a long the way" It means the story/ character arc did not do a good enough job of answering the question, "What would happen if (character) had to choose between money and friendship?" If the character has to say it, that usually means they didn't show their arc of change through the choices they make. Nobody likes to be preached to, and verbalizing the moral arc feels preachy and hollow, as the impact of the characters choice is not the primary means of exploring this moral choice.
This is why I hate being told that I shouldn’t use adverbs because it automatically makes writing sub-par. “She said clearly” gets the point across much faster and more directly than “She said, pausing after each word to make sure he was getting the message”. Sure, the latter sentence can be nice, but a faster-paced story could do without it - especially when I want the reader to pay closer attention to the content of what the character is saying, rather than the way they’re saying it.
That passage you cited in "The Paper Menagerie" was absolutely heartbreaking. I've never read that book, never even heard of it before today. It's now next on my Kindle TBR list. That's powerful writing.
this video was so high quality and really stuck with me for a lot of reasons. i think you got across what u were trying to say and then some. always amazing tim!
Something I read once was "Show emotion, tell feelings." And honestly, that has really helped me in my writing. Like if a character is feeling tired, it would probably be quite unnecessary to write a whole paragraph describing how heavy their eyes feel and how they can barely stand. Instead it might make more sense to just say something like "Exhaustion was apparent in her every step." But when a character is feeling an emotion (especially a strong or significant one), it's more impactful to describe the emotion, e.g. "She swallowed hard, holding back the wave of tears threatening to overtake her" (my examples probably aren't the best, but hopefully they make sense lol) rather than saying "She felt sad and overwhelmed" which feels a little underwhelming. But obviously, these don't apply all the time. There are definitely times when you don't necessarily need to describe an emotion (if it's not very significant to the scene) and there might be times when it's good to describe a feeling in some detail (like when a character has been injured and it's a key part of the scene).
First, you really got me with that second cat gag. Second, as someone else with unresolved issues about Bridge to Terabithia, I managed to go from laughing hard to crying in exactly as long as it took for you to make that transition yourself. So...twenty seconds, I guess? Kudos??? I guess??
![On Writing: The Darkest Hour Trope [ Avatar | LOTR | Doctor Who ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/c2S7zjfs0aU/mqdefault.jpg)
![On Writing: The Darkest Hour Trope [ Avatar | LOTR | Doctor Who ]](/img/tr.png)
![On Writing: Dialogue Basics! [ Sanderson | Game of Thrones | His Dark Materials ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ecEuw8usnDM/mqdefault.jpg)
Goddamnit UA-cam is you could NOT delete my pinned comments? Uhh... let's hope that joke mocking Russia ages like fine wine.
Get access to episode 1 of my new companion series BEYOND WRITING with Curiosity Stream AND Nebula together + all my videos ad free curiositystream.com/hellofutureme
~ Tim
hey Tim, the russia ukrain joke felt kinda offensive and out of place? just asking what you really ment there. not sure. anyways, have a nice day :)
@@zhulisclips I think there's space for mocking Russia, a fading, wannabe world power, and supporting Ukrainian liberation, especially if you put your money where your mouth is, which I have tried to do both publicly and privately. I did speak with a Ukrainian friend to ask their thoughts before including it ☺️
~ Tim
@@HelloFutureMe oh okay! thanks for clearing the confusion up for me :)
anyways, have a nice day!
@@zhulisclips Lol, owl house
@@oreo-postraphe more like trauma house
"I have been reading all of these books, and YOU have been lied to."
-me in 8th grade aggressively explaining to my friends that the Percy Jackson movie was not very good
You don’t need to read the books to recognize the movies could’ve been better lol
I don't think you understand how painful it was >_
@@llsilvertail561 how the hell does anyone think that was a good movie? When I watched it, I was honestly disappointed. Me and my brother both loved Percy Jackson, and had also been reading that roman and egyptian stuff, so when we found out there was a movie, we were hyped… until we watched it
@@osteelgen8225 Exactly lol. Thinking back, I think she thought Dylan O'Brian (I think? Whoever played Percy) was hot, and that was about it.
@@llsilvertail561 Logan Lerman
My rule of thumb has always been, "If the reader needs to FEEL, show. If they just need to KNOW, tell."
I think this can easily get into info dumping. There is a lot of world building and already established relationships in stories that need to be shown, or at least told in small bits and pieces across the whole story. There is a lot of info readers need that would immediately get bored or disinterested in the story if it was just told to them.
@@ashleygleason4942 well you don't need to know the whole world in every scene. Introduce elements in pieces, but not like in a way that sounds like the book is lecturing in a class, but in a way that is woven in environment, dialogue or the character's thoughts.
Showing emotions is one of the hardest things to write without explaining, but it's also fun. I think a bit of everything should be rules should be followed unless it hurts the story or the fun.
Ooh, that's pretty helpful actually : D I'll keep that in mind
@Ashley This is why we’re focusing on describing character emotions & not on describing worldbuilding elements. ;P
Honestly, I feel like "Show, don't tell" is far more relevant in film and tv than it is in writing. On the screen, your job is to show the watcher everything without sending characters off in hour-long monologues about the state of things. On the page, you are limited to words for a reason! Just be careful and do your best to send information in naturally.
Yeah, it's always felt like much more of a rule for visual media rather than written media.
I started writing recently and trying to balance “telling and not showing” and describing scenes to paint pictures in the mind’s eye is hard. I think I’m getting better at it.
It is flat out wrong for visual media too
"Incorporate information naturally into the story" is what should be communicated, but people take it too far, just look at the Arcane video of "Heimerdinger's broken characterization" which hinges on "show don't tell" and is an awful analysis because of it
Anyone with any knowledge of movies/shows and books knows that show don't tell does not really apply to books, it applies to shows and movies for a reason... you can actually see it.
100% agree it's perfect advice for a visual medium and it's been unrightly lumped into non-visual mediums
I think the number one case where Show Don’t Tell is the most important is with characterization. Don’t just say “she was very cunning”, actually have the character do something cunning
Or give them associstions with cunningless pr how she did a thing cunnig?!
Show don't tell is good advice as a general rule for emotions as well. Don't just write "she felt sad" when there are so many interesting ways to convey sadness
I feel like it also transfers to emotions. If the character is sad you can say they're sad, but if you just say it and then don't have the sadness impact anything then it's a waste of time and won't make much sense.
@@alexjames7144 FUN-FACT: HFM has Sibling-Channels in Terrible Writing Advice, Krimson Rogue,
Hbomberguy and Telltale Foundry. Maybe also Madvocate and Jay Exci if we
stretch the Defintion to 'People who got famous doing absolutely-stunning Constructive-Criticism-Essays'...
Yeah, like: don't say she was ample-chested and thin-waisted but show her acting like that 😁 Oh we weren't at men badly writing women? My bad...
I recently heard someone rephrase “show don’t tell” as “describe don’t explain” and I feel like that just makes so much more sense on basically every level.
That’s a much better version
Yeah, agreed.
Someone also told me that if you want a student (or audience) to NEVER forget something, make them feel like they discovered it for themselves.
That 'conclusion' is a thousand times more powerful than any exposition of information.
Basicaly it the same phrase maybe hé need to rephase for you to really understand it.
@@xandre6036thats because it makes sense for writing. Show dont tell should mainly be used for visual mediums.
@@vice2versa i partially agréé with you , i think in novel you have to choose when it neccessary.But m'y english is Bad so i Can't really explain what i think.
I've always found "show, don't tell" to be about large issues, ie. "don't tell the audience that the character is a coward, show them behaving cowardly", not about small details.
Prpblem is the comunity never delivers advise very well they give genral advise with no nuonce most online advise is this sort bs
I've had people tell me that rule applies to even something so small as the weather like don't say it's cold say the bitter cold wind nipped her skin and she had to get a shawl show that you're showing it's cold because that's better writing smh
@@lahlybird895 But the problem is you still need to show it. Making the choice to have the day be cold will have no impact if you just say its cold once. But it gains a lot more depth of it affects the plot and the characters actions or emotions. Just saying it's cold you'll forget, but if the character also has to dress warm, or notices the difference in temperature when they walk back inside or they're in a bad mood because it's cold or because it's snowing the shop is closed.
Show don't tell doesn't mean you can't say it's cold, but that just saying it doesn't have much impact and will be forgotten quickly.
@@lahlybird895 "the bitter cold wind nipped her skin" is for me a clear example of "tell", not "show". Interesting.
@@ChangeMakersArturKrol how interesting just goes to show how screwed this logic is doesn't it like apparently that's a that's showing because it's not flat out saying it's cold but it's also just telling things
"mom, i'm afraid."
"don't tell me...
...SHOW ME"
i died omfg
SO WELL MADE LMAO
Chilling to hear my voice in the same breath as yours. This channel has been a repository of storytelling for me for years. Thanks again for including me, Tim!
I also love your content very much
You have a beautiful voice. Captivating.
You did a fantastic job conveying the emotions of the prose ❤
"Show, don't tell" - actually is the big lesson that early Hollywood had to learn. Movies started pretty much as recording of theater productions - and the thing about theaters is, that people in the back rows might not even be able to see the entirety of the stage.
Thus it is very important for stage actors, to actually voice everything. And a good theater piece does this to a degree, where a blind person would be perfectly able to follow. The characters would spell out how they feel, what they are doing, what's going on on the stage.
"Show don't tell" is about how in movies, many things can be conveyed through camera angles, facial expressions, cuts, zooms and other techniques - so that there is no need for the character to say out loud what is happening on stage. And for movies that insight and corresponding change was huge. It's basically what elevated movie making into it's own, separate art-form with it's own expressive language.
Sort of painful for blind people though
The character saying things is what I most enjoy in movies though and exactly why I HATE show don't tell.
@@Kuudere-Kun yeah I hate it too people throw a kissy fit whenever a character articulate something to another character because well that's not a kind of thing you need to say and I'm just going since when do humans just only talk about plot relevant stuff even in real life
@@Kuudere-Kun "Show don't tell" does not mean to not have dialogue (or monologe).
For an exaggerated example, the character calmly saying "I am so angry" would be telling.
The character shouting "Graaaah, those idiots!" while kicking a trash can, would be showing. You see (and hear from the tone) that there is anger. The word "angry" doesn't have to be spelled out.
@@Kuudere-Kunyou clearly dont understand what show dont tell means lol. Has nothing to do with a film having no dialogue.
I think all writing "rules" are simplifications. Or as a good friend once said: learn the rules to know how to effectively break them.
Some musician on tiktok said "The rules are what you need when things go wrong." Show Don't Tell is a great rule when exposition is a crutch. Cut adverbs is a great rule when your adjectives are a crutch. But its not one size fits all, its a fix. A hammer is great until you need a screwdriver, then a hammer is disasterous.
To create your own, copy, then break out.
I don't think rules should be dogma, that's what makes all things boring after too much. That's exactly what all boring teachers do, no matter how well they can teach.
"The code is more of what you call 'guidelines' than actual rules."
applies to all art really
@@littleghost6102 true
I think this goes for a lot of writing advice. Same for "Every scene should move forward the plot." It's not true, there are a great many scenes in amazing books that are necessary for character, tone, theme, or pacing that don't do all that much to move the overall plot forward. (And that could not be intergrated into the main plot without compromising those aspects) However, most people, when they've written a first draft, probably have unnecessary scenes they should cut, instead of scenes they should add. Likewise, a majority of inexperienced writers probably tell too much and show too little. However that doesn't mean that telling is always bad, or that all scenes that wouldn't show up in a plot recap of your book must be cut. It means that there is a balance to strike. And that balance isn't easy to find, because it's different for every individual work. Writing is hard and there's no easy trick to getting it right, sadly.
My writing technique as a pantser is write *all-together too much* in the first draft, to the point it was upwards of twice the length of a "long" sci-fi/fantasy novel. That way I can trim the fat from a big healthy slab of meat instead of artificially inject additives into it. Before adopting this method, I definitely struggled with not realizing a scene can be a work-of-art and still entirely useless trash to be set on fire.
However, having adopted the method, I found myself struggling to see when a scene was good for the story even if it did not progress the plot. I would remove half of the book because it did not directly advance the plot, then look at the steaming pile that was left and wonder, "What happened? My beta readers all loved the story the first time, and now it is even more lean and concise. Why are they telling me the story is missing something all of the sudden" Like with anything else, it is all about striking that balance and knowing which parts are which.
The tip I give other writers now is, "Every scene you are considering for the chopping block, ask yourself *two* questions: Does this scene advance the plot? Does it advance the character's arc in such a way to make their advancement of the plot take a different path at some point?" While it is still an incomplete "rule," sometimes just asking that second question can make you catch some crucial scenes you would have cut for not advancing the plot, only for the plot to feel lacking as a result.
Anyway, thanks for sharing the tip. I can see me adding tone and pace to the list, because you are right. Sometimes, as wrong as it sounds, the plot is not the point of the scene. Sometimes it is about the little things that make the story beats come to life.
@@peaceandloveusa6656 I think a refinement on the phrasing of that rule might be "Before you cut a scene, ask yourself if cutting it will make something later not make sense."
The best action movies are defined by how well they pace the breaks in the action and use that time between, be it for plot advancement or character moments. There's a pattern there worth examining for storytelling in general. Often when you see the directors cut of a film, restored scenes people like fall in one of two categories "They should have kept this." and "Well this didn't need to be here, but I like it." If I recall correctly, Aliens theatrical cut removes the entire dropship descent sequence, but every home edition of it restores it. Because it's an important character moment for our duotagonist for the rest of the film. It's where he specifically starts out before being forced to change his view on things by events. It informs on later character moments by being a fuller foundation than would otherwise be there.
Scenes from stories can benefit from the same kind of examination.
Yes. There are times when a character, scene, or story NEEDS breathing space, otherwise the story can feel rushed.
Every scene doesn't need to move the plot forward just most of them. You can throw in a joke or Show the characters having chemistry.
Ooof. Honestly I never heard of the "Every scene should move the plot forward" but I did come up with my own version of it, to keep myself from wandering in my writing. "Every scene should have a point." Sometimes that point was to move the plot. Sometimes it was just to let us know a piece of information. Sometimes it was to show the friendship between characters. The more reasons I could put in, the better. If I didn't do this, I just tended to wander a ton in my writing and get stuck.
Russel T Davis (Doctor Who Showrunner) is a big fan of soap operas, so it makes sense how he would understand what and when to say. He also has this rule for character writing, that being people won't ever explicitly talk about the subject of something, but the feelings around it.
The Once and Future Showrunner. :)
@@FonceFalooda2
Oh thank god the chibnall days are behind us. I'm actually hyped for the next doctor now. And I'm hoping Davies will find some way to fix the timeless child.
@@theratking3075 We might never know who actually found a Genie's lamp and made this wish. ;)
But seriously, I just want good, smart stories again, and that's what Russell T does. Any repairing of the Mythology will be a bonus. :)
@@FonceFalooda2
100% agreed. I'm very hyped for season 14 and I'm excited to have Davies back. Can't wait to see what direction he takes it in. He was probably my favorite showrunner and was behind some of the best stories of modern Who.
After becomming such a DW addict due to the Eccleston/Tennant eras I'd say, it's really good to have RTD back.
(Shame I never finished 10th Doctor, cuz I have now dived too deep into the weirdness that is the Classic Doctor Who Series.)
The thing with the example from your writing is also that it's quiet. When I've sat in grief I have sobbed, sure, but I haven't wailed or thrown things, the world has felt strangled and quiet. I'm crying, I can't scream, I'm holding one of her toys, it's precious, so precious and so full of her love, I couldn't possibly throw it. Just curl up around it and my pain and sob, trying to feel her in it and hoping that whatever is beyond the veil she can feel me.
... and I started crying.
Here's the issue I think: people take "show, don't tell" into every little facet of writing, when it's a larger-view piece of advice. Little details should be told, but they should piece together a larger picture. Worldbuilding, especially, I think, is best done in this way, where details are told/shown, which implies the larger worldbuilding.
TL:DR; pretty much what a bunch of other people said. Know when to tell and when to show. Also, knowing how and when to imply something as opposed to just giving it to the reader is an art, and one worth learning!
FUN-FACT: HFM has Sibling-Channels in Terrible Writing Advice, Krimson Rogue,
Hbomberguy and Telltale Foundry. Maybe also Madvocate and Jay Exci if we
stretch the Defintion to 'People who got famous doing stunnnnning Constructive-Criticism-Essays'...
@@slevinchannel7589 Not sure why you put that under my comment, but thanks?
@@nairsheasterling9457 he's spamming this, I've seen it on at least 2 others
Another trick is you can induce emotions in the reader so they are fully on board with what the main character is going to do.
Tom Clancy's book Patriot Games has a scene where he describe the injuries of Jack Ryan's 4yr old daughter after a crash that was the direct result of a terrorist hit on him, his pregnant wife, and his daughter. After reading a diagnosis of exactly how many bones a 4yr old breaks when not wearing a seatbelt you are fully ready to personally murder these fictional terrorists.
Sometimes a pure clinical description is worth a thousand poems. (Of course you also get Jack's inner monologue as he processes just how close to losing his world he came)
But obviously showing and telling are much easier than trying to show someone pure objective facts to get a specific emotional response, and a good writer balances all of them. It's probably best to think of them as tools like a hammer, screwdriver, and wrench each one has a time and place to be most effective.
I think one of the greatest scenes I know of where we were directly told how a character felt was in the BBC show Merlin. Merlin's childhood friend Will is shown as a black sheep who is very opinionated and difficult. He gets shot by an arrow later and as he is dying he speaks to Merlin, and is making witty comments on the conflicts they went through the episodes prior. Then, he burst into to tears and says, "Merlin-Merlin, I'm scared!" and dies short after that. I just remember being so sad at this scene and really felt how human this guy was, how realistic it was that he was in shock and people usually laugh when something like that is happening, his jokes and nervous laughter just sold it. And then he was honest and said that he was terrified, the writing was just 🤌
"He picked up the cat. All the world embraced the bliss that such a mere action entailed."
Another video full with tons of insights. Thank you sir o/
Didn' get any of that writing stuff, but I liked the part about the cat! That was some solid advice.
It is worth remembering that the initial statement of "show, don't tell" is supposed to be the grammar-school level of advice that takes kids from being fully removed narrators into being able to dive into the weeds of a scene. Anyone who is telling you this advice when a person isn't at the most basic level of writing is either: completely mistaken about how to give advice about writing; or being condescending.
Some learning writers at the intermediate stage need to show more, some need to tell more. Others have a good grasp of doing both but may need to step back to figure out what ratios work for the thing they are currently writing.
But I think the big takeaway is that pithy statements aren't going to be able to cover the nuanced that almost certainly exists within any piece of advice
So uhhh... really hope that Russia joke ages well.
Get access to episode 1 of my new companion series BEYOND WRITING with Curiosity Stream AND Nebula together + all my videos ad free curiositystream.com/hellofutureme Stay nerdy!
~ Tim
Only time will tell I guess
Could you do a review of "supreme magus" please
It has bad implications, because the Russian advance isn't stopping, but that method of emotion-showing absolutely will, when the book gets perma-dropped.
It was a great drive-by burn.
Made me smile so I say that it was worth it.
Writing isn't a visual medium, sometimes telling is the best way to convey a moment's emotion
This is very true; I sometimes forget that writing a novel isn't exactly like writing a television show.
Depends on your audience. It's a visual and sensory medium for me as a reader and a writer. I'm a hyperphantasic who writes for other hyperphantasiacs. My aphantasiac friends do NOT like my writing, which is fine.
The coarsest step in my writing is to let the scenes play out, all the visuals, the atmosphere, the heat or the chill, the wind or the dampness. Then I write down what I see, the challenge is knowing what to pick out and what to ignore.
@@marcomoreno6748does that mean you hyper visualise? If so, i do that, and sometimes make up words which provoke the image in my head lol. But, i do struggle with trying to create a story narrative and vibe properly, as i see a movie in my head, all i know to do is translate that exact image through words even though you can't do that...as they're different mediums. I dont know how to learn the way to write best what I am seeing though :/
Does that make sense or am i talking nonsense lol..
The fragment of the woman sobbing in the room of her dead child actually got me tearing up (obviously without knowing anything else of the story). Good job on that one!
just like any rule, it's there as a foundation. Once you fully understand it, you know how to and when to break it.
Yeah there's a lot of people in this comment section who seem to think it's just bad advice as a general rule and it's just not
Whenever someone say show don't tell, I remember the Furious five, and how so little dialog they had, and yet is very visible their relationships with one another. And the best example would be their fight against Tai Lung
My dumbass was like, furious five, like fast and furious? Then saw Tai lung. Idek if the 5th fast and furious movie is even called furious 5, I never watched them that much
@@caitlinirelan5641 I thought the same thing until that point. Lol. I am glad it was not just me.
@@caitlinirelan5641 "There's no accident :)"
- Master Oogway after ramming his car over 10 pedestrians
@@peaceandloveusa6656lmao I thought that too.
Agreed- you look at any well-liked author (like Tolkien) and you’ll see quite a bit of telling. The key is to not bore the reader, whatever you’re doing, and figure out if the telling goes on too long or too obviously by getting feedback from readers and stepping away from the WIP for a while after the draft is over so you can look at it with fresher eyes.
💯
Your cat cuddling gives me life. Your writing advice gets me off UA-cam and back to my writing. Thanks for that.
When you talked about the Melodramatic portion, I had to think of the Fireplace scene in Star Wars Attack of the Clones, where Padme and Anakin describe their feelings and forbidden love in the most melodramatic ways possible and it becomes rather obnoxious and funny instead of serious and dramatic.
The sheer lack of chemistry up to, and including that scene made the confession jarring to me. I was like, "Wait, what did I miss?" Then re-watched the movie later only to find out this was not established *at all* up until being explicitly told. At least, Padme's feelings for Anakin was never shown or told up to that point. In that moment, showing the scenes that happened off screen to make that make sense would have been much more effective than telling us "yeah, this has always been a thing." It made the rest of the movie make no sense to me.
I love that scene, it is why I want to be a filmmaker.
for anyone confused about the difference between showing and telling in book writing, here’s a really simple example.
Tell: She was sad
Show: Her eyes watered
So ‘show don’t tell’ isn’t just for screenwriting or filmmaking, like some are saying. It’s all over books.
Not a good example, as "her eyes watered" doesn't communicate the character's emotion at all.
@@robokill387 right. your eyes can water because of oinions- thats literally a joke on SpongeBob.
Your eyes can water when your angry too
@@robokill387the context surrounding the watery eyes will explain it.
Literally nailed it in the first 16 seconds. ahahah.
i love your content uniquenameosaurus glad to see you here LOL
I just had to reply... Hahaha!
Cheers mate!
Don't tell me that SHOW me!
Also, I like your rewrites, they're pretty good.
Wait, you don't have a checkmark?
Literally is the most overused and unnecessary word that exists...
I'd point to _Arcane_ as a perfect example of perfect nonverbal storytelling, knowing when to use exposition ALONG with nonverbal storytelling aka body language, and just exposition by itself. As a perfect example of how to use Chekhov's Gun. As a perfect example, of how to treat your audience with respect. Yes there are times where you need to have that tell don't show moments, tell the audience what's going on, but doing it in a way that doesn't insult the audience is important.
_Arcane_ does these things (exposition aka tell don't show and show don't tell) masterfully; during the ICONIC Ekko vs Jinx fight through no dialogue we are able to gather as the audience that even though we don't see these two together much, they were close as kids, had a fun game they played, were able to make the best of a bad situation but over time became enemies and even Ekko can't stop himself from seeing Powder in Jinx. Through sheer expression work alone, audiences are split on if Jinx was trying to take them BOTH out or just trying to take HERSELF out; if she was just okay with finally dying AS Powder, or wanted to take him with her. THAT is good storytelling, that is good writing, that is good show don't tell.
Compare it with _Obi-Wan Kenobi_ and it fails spectacularly at just overall storytelling, but especially at show don't tell or tell, don't show because there's a moment where Obi-Wan (SPOILERS) just blurts out Reva's backstory as a survivor of Order 66, as if we didn't see that coming a mile away. They try to have their cake and eat it too, by having them TELL us what happened with Reva AND show it when they could have and should have just shown it through the flashbacks. That's just beating the audience over the head with it. Which is completely ironic because in just the same episode, you can compare it with the Obi-Wan vs Anakin sparring session; that duel is telling a nonverbal story throughout the episode of where Anakin's mind always is: victory over anything, and Obi-Wan is always more methodical in his approach, pragmatic. Morally ambiguous at times in The Clone Wars. It confuses me why they think they need to beat the audience with information sometimes, but then feel okay with having this nonverbal storytelling interlaced through the episode. This problem of not knowing when to let characters and the audience breathe is a big problem with the show.
Compare with _Arcane_ there is this whole scene where Silco is talking to Vander's statue. That's all it is. JUST him talking. But through visuals, through his body language, through the framing of the scene, the scene is telling us SO many things at once, and you don't mind it's just him talking. It's not some long winded speech, it's not him showcasing his power over others. It's just...him. Showing for the first time, his humanity. His shoulders slump, his eyes shift, he sighs a lot, his body is saying just as much as he is and that's what good tell don't show is. There's always a time and place for exposition over visual storytelling, a time for both, and a time for visual storytelling over exposition. And _Arcane_ masters this concept.
There IS more to the Arcane scene than just that. There is a lot more than the show don't tell to the scene. I'm assuming you know, but for those who don't it alludes to Ekko's character in game, with him being able to reverse time and becoming 'The Boy Who Shattered Time'. Everything about it was perfect.
Kenobi had so much potential…
You had me at Arcane and lost me at Obi-Wan... Unfortunately a lot of Star Wars fans still don't understand Kenobi despite how easy they make it. They literally tell and show Reva's backstory and people still don't get it.
@@thewatcher7940 And YOU'RE missing MY point. The POINT is if you actually READ my comment, that where _Arcane_ shines in show AND tell like with Silco just monologuing while sitting at Vander's statue, _Obi-Wan_ FAILS because it's TELLING us something AND showing what Obi-Wan is TELLING US ALREADY. Like we don't need to SEE the thing WE'RE BEING TOLD. Which is why it's so ironic that they then have nonverbal dialogue via the sparring session; that session is telling a nonverbal story throughout the entire episode but to have then the backstory told and SHOWN is overkill. Kenobi is full of moments like that there's no balance.
@@thewatcher7940 It's not about not understanding, it's about the show not actually being very good.
Because they show Reva's backstory in the opening. We know from minute 1 what her past is. It's just that nothing she does, and none of her motivation, makes any sense with that in mind. If her plan is "rise through the ranks, gain Vader's trust, and then kill him," why does that plan involve her kidnapping a random 10-year-old? If she's one of the highest-ranking members of an organization designed to hunt and capture force-sensitives, how does she miss that she's abducted the daughter of Anakin Freaking Skywalker? Why don't we ever see her wrestling with the morality of what she's doing, considering that her entire job involves doing the very same thing that made her swear vengeance?
Compare to Arcane, where before the timeskip, we see Silco showing genuine empathy for this girl who lost her family, and post-timeskip, she's a mafia princess and he indulges her every whim. Silco had no idea how a functional family looked because he never had one, but he did his best; it just happens that what he thought of as Good Parenting was actually the enabling of the worst, darkest impulses of a girl who needed stability. None of that is important to the story, but because the story's "showing" matches its "telling", readers can infer more with less.
6:40 it will never get old
Great video so far :) 'Show, don't tell' is definitely trickier than what it seems, even with the 'describe, don't explain' version.
6:00
The correction to a stab is also made because he stabbed the French soldier to death, so it also represents his guilt
FUN-FACT: HFM has Sibling-Channels in Terrible Writing Advice, Krimson Rogue,
Hbomberguy and Telltale Foundry. Maybe also Madvocate and Jay Exci if we
stretch the Defintion to 'People who got famous doing absolutely-stunning Constructive-Criticism-Essays'...
The necessity to use both showing and telling to different effects and purposes is something I've been thinking about for years, and one of my favorite examples is in chapter 1 of C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces. This retelling of Psyche and Cupid is narrated in 1st person by Psyche's older, homely half-sister, whose appearance is barely described for us. All I remember is she doesn't have her sisters' golden hair. Most writers would, as most do, go into details about what the narrator looks like in order to tell us how average or unattractive she is. Lewis, however, does this:
[Context: the narrator, Orual's father is remarrying to a very young bride, and Orual and several other girls will be singing a welcome song for the new queen]
"[The priest] did not understand a word of the hymn, nor the music either, but he asked, 'Are the young women to be veiled or unveiled?'
'Need you ask?' said the king with one of his great laughs, jerking his thumb in my direction. 'Do you think I want my queen frightenes out of her senses? Veils of course. And good thick veils too.' One of the other girls tittered, and I think that was the first time I clearly understood that I am ugly."
Lewis then goes on to brieflt describe how Orual, now old, became afraid as a child of her stepmother only to see that the new queen, barely older than she, is even more terrified. There is plenty of descriptive language in this section, strong verbs, "showing," but what has stood out to me again and again is that blunt phrase "I clearly understood that I am ugly." It's so bare. You can feel the bitterness and the hurt from it.
Haven't watched the video yet but my correction to the "show, don't tell rule" is "know when to show and when to tell" since not everything needs to be shown.
Yeah, basically 'back off a bit there, buddy.' The very length of it warns you it's gonna get into some complex nuances so you may want to rewatch it when you're awake for it.
@@vapx0075 FUN-FACT: HFM has Sibling-Channels in Terrible Writing Advice, Krimson Rogue,
Hbomberguy and Telltale Foundry. Maybe also Madvocate and Jay Exci if we
stretch the Defintion to 'People who got famous doing absolutely-stunning Constructive-Criticism-Essays'...
Yeah. Just know when to do what's necessary. Period!
Tim, you are incredible.
I've been on an upskilling bender for at least a year now, perhaps more. I've absorbed as much as I possibly can from so many sources, including many of the fine folks you mention or feature in this video (top notch, by the way!). There's so many sources out there, from professional readers and editors setting expectations to published authors doing listicles and masterclasses, but I feel as though you go where they all fear to tread. No one, not even Brando Sando himself, dives even close to as deep as you do on such a myriad of topics.
It's clear you've been aggressively upskilling for years yourself - the quality of the wee snippets of prose you share with us are a testament to that. You understand the assignment and you spend more time than most throwing raw brainpower at analysis.
The best part is that you choose to share the outcome with us all. Your analyses are famously hard-hitting and informative and above all useful, but I reckon you've hit an all-time high note with this one.
There's a shitload of videos in my 'writing research' playlist, but when it comes time to editing, I can say that hand on heart, yours are the ones I will be frantically re-watching.
Thank you for so generously sharing your hard work with us all.
its strangely wonderful how just the sound of Red's voice is enough to make me smile
As a neurodivergent person, I personally feel like a lot of times - when you said "people don't say [specific emotion or thing]" - it wasn't real, because I act like that. I ALWAYS say exactly what I'm feeling, just like that. I always say when I'm happy or sad with a descriptor of said feeling. So, all my characters are like this, too. It can feel clunky, but I think that you can get away textually, if you're enough of a good writer.
yessssss, nuance! it's wild how serious we take these little blanket pieces of vague advice. great vid!
I associate "show don't tell" a lot more to world building than to character expression. Using it as a tool to be aware of how much you are giving exposition on the world vs allowing parts of the world to be naturally explored through the character's interactions with it. And of course as in all things, context (the when, how, and why) always matters!
I hit like after watching for 2 minutes because before clicking on it I hazarded a guess at what it’d be about. My issue with show don’t tell us the fact that exposition is important for your reader to enjoy the story on its terms. If there’s too much worldbuilding to communicate naturally, or you don’t want to hide your moral theme behind pretentious symbology or metaphors or whatever. Now I know you want to focus on one specific topic as a case study. It’s not the one I expected you to discuss, but I’m so happy you’re talking about it. I’m confident in my “like” button hit because I infinitely respect you and your opinions and this is yet another example of why I believe that and as a bonus, you have such a cute and soothing accent and voice! 😉
“Until they run back to their mothers and they say: «Mum, I’m scared», to which their mother says: «Don’t tell me - SHOW ME.»”
I like this video already.
All of this is great. I particularly love the cat cuddling advice. I'm following that part now.
I feel like the phrase, "Show Don't Tell," is incomplete. The phrase should be, "Show Don't Tell, but if You Can't Show do Tell."
Perfect!
"Show, don't just tell".
"Show if you can, Tell if you must."
Edit: or on further reflection "Ask yourself 'Will showing or telling work better here?'
"Know when to show. Know when to tell."
So many great authors tell, tell, tell. Austen, Melville, Eliot... You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. Show don't tell is fashion, not physics.
Great video, I really enjoyed the guest readers.
I was a bit hesitant, I was always told "Show, don't tell" is basically the golden rule, but you've shown me that it's more guidelines than a rule.
The cross over voice casting is fun, especially when your audience recognizes them! Don't be bashful about asking for a second take or giving preparatory notes in advance. Voice acting skill is underestimated and underappreciated, and a good VA will welcome recommendations from their director on the emotional approach, the preferred way to handle unusual punctuation, or the correct pronunciation of foreign words and names.
i don’t even write stories but i really dig this channel. it’s cool to peak behind the scenes of art
Man, this is the TIP THAT I'VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR ALL THE TIME. Character emotions have always been a struggle for me; I feel like it hinders the pacing most of the time. It's either too much or too little that it undermines the moment of emotion. Sometimes I do it through dialogue but get hit with doubt that maybe the reader won't catch on or maybe it's not lining up much with the emotion I'm trying to convey. But this has been super helpful. I'm glad you've finally made a video about it.
As always, I have to comment whenever there's a House of Leaves reference. I very much agree, Danielewski does an amazing job of using the format of the book itself to highlight emotions without having to say what they are per se. Good video as always.
This is actually really helpful for a crossover fic I've been brainstorming lately (specifically, a scene where a character realises that her new best friend has some unhealthy coping mechanisms, tries to talk to her about it, and during the conversation starts to realise that she does the exact same things as her friend), so I'm glad you made this video when you did
FUN-FACT: HFM has Sibling-Channels in Terrible Writing Advice, Krimson Rogue, Hbomberguy and Telltale Foundry. Maybe also Madvocate and Jay Exci if we stretch the Defintion to 'People who got famous doing absolutely-stunning Constructive-Criticism-Essays'...
Another issue of just (or over-) relying on "show don't tell" regarding emotions is that not everyone everywhere will interpret a given sign as a given emotion (or a given intensity). So, if you plan of having your text be able to speak to readers across cultures more easily, think about when to just show, and when you need to be a bit more explicit.
Writing emotions and describing them is a challenge. As I watched this, I realized I'm guilty of being overly dramatic.-I tend to have my teen characters roll their eyes a lot. I need to go back and re-write several of the scenes in my current WIP. Thank you.
I am taking a creative writing class and it is really cool to learn actual exercises to expand and practice these concepts you are talking about.
To practice narration through a stream of consciousness and expand our descriptions by coming up with similies and metaphors for 5 emotions and the 5 scenes weekly.
I just wanted to thank you for helping me explore these ideas and letting me know that they are there.
I'm a decent way through one of my creative writing projects and I wanted to see you guys' reaction to my work:
After I finished my prayers, I walked to the Martyrs’ Memorial; since I last visited, there were more names, which I assumed were by the German refugees. The memorial had three obelisks, each of them made of marble, similar but not the same. The oldest one was starved of the vibrancy the others had but it was still more beautiful, the faint grey veins in the stone curved like the penultimate struggles of a wave in its futile battle against the shore. My eyes glided over all the names, the reminder of the lives lost and will continue to be lost to authority’s almost endless conquest for more, and I stopped on the oldest names written in Bangla, running my hand over them, I found two names, deeply engraved, the anger, the grief, tangible in their impact on the near-perfect obelisk it surrounds; my mother and my father, killed by the Fascists, in a country they didn’t belong in. I saw myself twenty years ago, carving with an old and weathered knife, surviving almost four decades before finding itself carving the names of its long-time wielders, all the emotions, raw and palpable, at the hands of a tool. My Sutu-Mamma, still mourning his older sister, his compass, stood next to me, feeling what I felt with the exact amount of power I had: nothing. I should’ve told him something, anything really, but I didn’t, I stood there, dealing with all my unprocessed emotions through the sharp edge of a knife and I dealt with its consequences as with all I’ve done. I prayed for them, and I prayed that the third obelisk remains clear of names, of martyrs, its flawless, save for the mineral impurities that make the marble’s most significant feature, surface standing as a reminder that peace and freedom are not vague allusions but a promise and something to be achieved.
I just want to say, thank you so much just for offering advice and wisdom that just might keep a lot of us from curling up into a fetal position on the floor as we cry out beneath the weight of trying to write any number of sentences that actually ought to be very easy to write and we're just being our own worst enemies by making it that much harder on ourselves stressing out about it so hard.
"Your lyrics lack subtlety! You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!" - The Robot Devil, Futurama
I love your avatar videos but it always baffles me how your writing and world building stuff doesn't get as much attention. Its just so damn quality and informative! Keep up the great work, Tim!
Show just enough to tell your readers everything you want to tell them, no more, but perhaps sometimes, a little less.
That excerpt from your book was amazing! I had no context for what the story or characters are, but it hit hard regardless. I can't wait to read it.
I am really happy to hear your opinion on this subject and I'm kinda pleased that I've already figured some of it out during my five years writing. There's one scene in my book where the main character is locked up in this cultic boarding school and he's feeling isolated. To communicate this, I had him do a bunch of things that he used to do with his buddies, like picking locks and stealing things in the dead of night. They were the only people in his life who truly valued him, and when he's in an atmosphere where he feels underappreciated and cut off, he does these things to relive that same connection. This results in his new friend catching him red-handed and getting mad at him, which leads to an argument. Their apology leads to a bonding moment, and their friendship leads to one breaking the other out of the school, which kickstarts the plot. Their friendship is a major part of the story, and so I decided to start the story with that instead of the actual plot.
The truth is, emotions are extremely important to stories. There's a kind of emotional logic to work with, and all good stories are tightly woven with this emotional logic. If all you have is plot, that isn't a story, or even half of one. If you have a well-written character who the audience can connect with, a story will inevitably follow. Thanks for all that you do, Tim! Your videos are the best.
"Tell don't show" also works great to set up Chekhov's guns and build expectations. If you get told about the legendary flying fortress in the first act, seeing it appear on the horizon in the third act enhances the impact of that scene tenfold.
Yes, that has nothing to do with emotions, but "Show don't tell" isn't always mentioned in regards to emotions either.
Intelligent Entertainment like HFM is what i wanna recommend
to Strangers, but asking strangers if they want Something has
its risk of branding you as an ad-rbobot or such.
I never found a Solution to this, but i just keep asking:
Anyone wants some Watch-Suggesta?
FUN-FACT: HFM has Sibling-Channels in Terrible Writing Advice, Krimson Rogue,
Hbomberguy and Telltale Foundry. Maybe also Madvocate and Jay Exci if we
stretch the Defintion to 'People who got famous doing absolutely-stunning Constructive-Criticism-Essays'...
So I'm not a writer, but I am a literature student, and the way you've explained this I think is really going to help me appreciate good writing. I remember reading (and sobbing) over Bridge to Terrabithia at a young age and although I don't remember a lot of the details, I do remember the way he expressed his grief, so emotional writing really does stick with you
When he said "it's really important to hug your cat", I looked around for a solid minute before remembering my old buddy had to be put down a week ago 😢
Never heard of Paper Menagerie, but that short scene and your mention of what happens next just made me cry
That passage of yours was honestly wonderful to listen to. I can already feel your book being great.
I love “tell don’t show” when it’s relevant and so direct but you can still “show” is
Reading The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings for the first time (going in blind, having never actually seen the films myself), and one of the biggest things I'm noticing is how the vast majority of the most epic and possibly important "action scenes" happen off-page. Gandalf fighting orcs in the distance with great magic? Fighting the Balrog? Heck, the battle where the orcs kidnap Merry and Pippin, where major character [spoilers] dies? These are all told to us in very shortened recounts by those who were involved long after they happened, even though they happen during the timeline of the books.
And on the one hand, I do wonder why we aren't seeing these accounts, but on the other hand, showing us would pull the split narrative in so many more directions as it is. But also, _I enjoyed the retellings from the characters' own mouths._ They are embellished with character and flare that _feels_ like a person who thought deeply about how to retell their experience. And from what I understand, much of Tolkien's intent was to create a fun, fictional mythology, and these little touches really capture that feeling.
Side tangent: I'm only on Book IV (second half of Two Towers), but I might as well say it now. Lord of the Rings is just a long Disney movie/musical epic in book form. Never have I ever read a book where characters will literally just break out in song (poetry?) mid-conversation, and everyone around them just goes along with it or joins in so naturally. Am I missing out on a whole genre of books like this? Was this normal in Tolkien's day? It's quite amusing.
It wasn’t prevalent even for Tolkien’s era. He simply loved writing songs for his world. I personally think they distract from the events happening, but that’s just me. LotR is still so well-written that the random songs don’t bother me.
Its some a quirk of him liking poetry and song that much.
Also disney is not the only one having characters engage in poetry and numbers. I think its too dark and not happy ending and clear cut to be disney.
I would like it more as opera or operette or musical than disney.
And crazy ex girlfriend definitly not disney,.
Tolkien was well known for being a fan of epic, Germanic, and Nordic poetry and folklore and the characters going into non-sequiters and tangents to bring up past folk tales and history is a staple. Hell, Beowulf, one of the primary influences in Tolkien's work, had a prologue that didn't involve Beowulf. It's those little touches that truly makes the fictional Arda (the world Middle-earth takes places) feel completely real and animate. And it's how we as people keep culture alive: by telling and retelling stories. It's no wonder we never get tired of Cinderella stories when the story itself is believed to be 5000 years old and we can mark variations of it all over the globe.
That opening joke was gold, made me actually laugh out loud!
And then to follow it up with such a banger of a video. It feels to me like one of your best yet. A lot of stuff clicked for me even if had a bit of a hard time putting it in my own words. Literally felt like the galaxy brain meme unlocking a new level of understanding about what makes a story work.
Look, on a visual media I can understand that sometimes a visual works tons of times better than a lot of dialogue (An example: How the Kane marriage in "Citizen Kane" gets further and further on the tables, showing us that they aren't feeling the same)
But most of the times, we won't get it at first or after too many views. I'm still having problems with "Lost Highway", and that's me: A David Lynch fan.
God bless this essay forever, HFM. You've saved a lot of dreams and drained so many of their anxieties.
The focus is on literature, but these pointers can help with writing scripts and visual media. It will be words that will describe how to direct or animate characters as well
When you gave the example with the character being depressed, but doesn't do anything it reminds me of some of my older drafts, where I relied heavily on showing the desperation of my protagonist. But then let him passively indulge in it. The result was a melodramatic drama queen, that not even I could like after re-reading. If you're so desperate at least cry or do something else.
Oh gosh, a pov character in the first story where I actually got quite far in my writing was also a reeeeallly melodramatic drama queen. I suppose it was a product of it's time; 15-16 years old me was not in an emotionnally stable state at all lol.
Show don’t tell is more useful as beginner advice. It really should be “Show AND tell” but most writers start off telling everything so if you say show don’t tell they end up with a good mix of telling and showing. An iceberg without a top will just float up until it is only surface level
You see, you really do have a voice for recording audiobooks. It's nice to listen to you.
2:52 the audio editing on that segue makes it sound like you finished your own sentence as if you were two people chatting. It’s so funny and I appreciate your signature cocktail of wisdom, knowledge, and entertainment value.
the moment i saw the thumbnail, i knew this video would be making some excellent points. that particular scene in Doctor Who, and specifically the line he says in that scene, "i don't want to go," absolutely BROKE me when i first watched it. he's desperate, he's mourning the loss of the person he is in this moment, and all he can say, all he has time to say before he is immediately ripped from this form and re-shaped into someone new, is "i don't want to go." the look on his face conveys that he's upset, the golden glow conveys that he's about to regenerate, but his WORDS, his straightforward statement of what he wants, is what hammers home what's going on in his mind, and it was made even more upsetting by the fact that it's what i was thinking, too. tennant was my favorite doctor, and it was heart-wrenching to know that the character was experiencing the loss of himself in the same way i was; he knew he wouldn't be the same person anymore, not quite the same character, that he'd never be number ten again. my teacher could write "show, don't tell" on my creative writing assignments all she wanted, but sometimes telling is just more powerful. i also had no idea what she meant at that age, but that was a different problem lol.
Another thing I always thought was interesting is the fact that in some media you need to tell dont show. This shows up a lot in kids shows where writers tend to tell a lot, sometimes more than needed.
Have you noticed that most kids' shows and movies have multiple layers? There is a 'tell' layer for the kids where show is only used for really obvious stuff. And then there is another layer more accessible to the adults watching with them that is more subtext and showing. Kids sometimes go back when they are older and suddenly realize there is that whole other layer they missed when they were younger.
I feel like the aspect of showing/telling emotions I've mastered is using setting and introspection to express emotions. I am working on a second draft/structural edit of a work-in-progress I created last NaNo, and there was a chapter I was worried that was too much in the character's head, but rereading it after watching this video made me realize that it perfectly hits the emotions I wanted it to.
Ok. 8 months later... that Bridge ty o Terabithia quote was cruel. I read it in 4th grade and all these years later, it still tears me up.
Your bit about melodrama was fantastic, I want to just remember every point you made, and the way you deconstruct a passage in detail is something I really appreciate, most writers/youtubers skip over it with one example or think it too simplistic. Also didn't expect you going into this sort of detail and elaborate examples with a video about Show, Don't Tell, funnily enough
He’s Back I hope he does the Owl House it’ll be great to see his breakdown on the characters and the show
same >>
One trick I like to do when establishing a recurring emotional response is have the character's first on-screen display of that emotion (such as fear of rejection) be more pronounced, juggling why they feel this way, how it feels, etc in a mess of believable chronology. The messier the feeling, the messier the expression/explanation. But, in that jumble of chronology, there is a key *physical* symptom. Something tangible, only referenced in moments like that. - Say, a knot in their stomach. - When addressing this feeling in the future, I can often simply say, "I feel that *familiar* knot in my stomach as dread what comes next." This keeps the story moving while letting the reader know that word-salad the character experiences in these situations is still relevant. If there is a change in how it feels, how they react, how they perceive it, then that is what I focus on. Otherwise, it is simply left at the word association more often than not, because that is enough to help the audience know what is happening. Basically, I learned we do not need the audience to feel every single emotion the character feels every single time the character feels it. We need them to feel the emotional beats of the story, and these are not always in line with the character(s) we are following.
For another example, say we want the audience to *feel* hopeful our character is going to overcome their social anxiety. Sure, we first need to fully be able to understand the anxiety, but after that, we need to feel hope that it can change, if that change is supposed to happen. If we make the audience feel the character's anxiety every time, we do not feel hope, but despair. However, if we are simply told "the anxiety is back" but the build-up of emotional beats has us thinking, "Come on, you got this. Fight through it!" We can stay on the ride and have that glorious moment of triumph when they actually do overcome it. We did not lose emotional momentum because the story beats changed gears just because the character's did. We already knew they were going to be anxious, that was the point. Tell us it's back and keep going.
FUN-FACT: HFM has Sibling-Channels in Terrible Writing Advice, Krimson Rogue,
Hbomberguy and Telltale Foundry. Maybe also Madvocate and Jay Exci if we
stretch the Defintion to 'People who got famous doing absolutely-stunning Constructive-Criticism-Essays'...
I learned this six years ago after someone reviewed my story. Do think a middle ground is best.
This helps soo much. I've been struggling to stay confident in my style.
just want to highlight something about that first exerpt from All Quiet On The Western Front; he corrects himself to say 'stab' instead of 'shot', yes, which does make it more personal the way you described, but _also_ because the man he killed? He did that by stabbing him repeatedly, if I remember Red's summary correctly
so he is making it more personal yeah, but by likening himself to the dying man as well. he killed the man with violence, and now the man kills him with his letter
When I heard Merphy reading about how Myumi dealt with the memory of her dead child, I stopped the video right at the end of that scene and searched for what genius wrote that paragraph. It was such a strong scene, with multi layered metaphors which all were tied to Myumi's grief, to the memory she so desperately tried to wipe out of her mind. So much power and emotion in a scene of someone spilling wine and cleaning the floor.
I just found out that it takes one paragraph to bring tears to my eyes, and to realize that Tim is a fantastic writer.
My cat is 800km away from me but I think about her every day 🥺
All of the excerpts you chose in this video were wonderful, but yours stood out to me the most. You paint emotion really excellently. I couldn't be more excited for your sci-fi novel, whenever it comes out!
Sorry, but my inner editor demands I tell you about that typo in your story at 28:11 A wretch is a person in a terrible state; a retch is an attempt to vomit.
(OK, maybe that seems petty, but once I noticed it, it just wouldn't get out of my head.)
Was there a typo in the quote from Bridge to Terabithia? Toward the end, the voiceover and the text says 'less' where I think it is supposed to be 'Jess'. It was distracting enough to save me from being emotionally affected by the reading at least. :)
29:00 YOU wrote that? WOW. I was completely hooked! Great job, mate. It's by far my favourite example in the video.
I feel like this video wasn't sponsored by Nebula/Curiosity Stream but rather a cabal of cats who want to be cuddled. I'm not sure what to do now, as I have no pet to lift up and cuddle. Thank you for the interesting video on show vs. tell, though. You've certainly shown me how to tell a more effective story.
Another fantastic video! One single point of contention I would raise is that I long ago observed that in real life, at least among English youth in the U.S, people really DO directly make statements like "I feel happy," "I'm so sad! Hug me!" "I was SO mad when that happened!" all the time. Some people on a daily basis, as a fundamental part of how they communicate. This to me is a poor and superficial way of getting across the specific nature and context of one's emotions, but I feel that if you are going for lifelike realism in dialogue, you must necessarily include this everyday phenomenon. Of course, you can couple this with contradictory body language, contextual cues that give deeper insight, etc.
Btw, I'm over 100,000 words into my book, and I'm pretty sure there are ZERO "very"s or "extremely"s, save for I think one time when a character says 'extremely' in conversation! Take that Stephen King! lol. In seriousness, not just applying some of these rules of thumb, but the level of strictness or looseness with which you apply them, and what particular situations (if any) you deem exceptions are major part of overarching authorial voice and/or the sort of style code for a particular work. The very/extremely intensifier thing just so happens to be one of those things I personally am particularly anal and absolutistic about.
If I ever write a book, I want Red to do the audiobook.
I've always understood the concept of 'show don't tell' to apply to the character arc. If the character has to say, "The real treasure is the friends we made a long the way" It means the story/ character arc did not do a good enough job of answering the question, "What would happen if (character) had to choose between money and friendship?" If the character has to say it, that usually means they didn't show their arc of change through the choices they make. Nobody likes to be preached to, and verbalizing the moral arc feels preachy and hollow, as the impact of the characters choice is not the primary means of exploring this moral choice.
This is why I hate being told that I shouldn’t use adverbs because it automatically makes writing sub-par. “She said clearly” gets the point across much faster and more directly than “She said, pausing after each word to make sure he was getting the message”. Sure, the latter sentence can be nice, but a faster-paced story could do without it - especially when I want the reader to pay closer attention to the content of what the character is saying, rather than the way they’re saying it.
Timmy, I binge your on writing videos when I can't sleep. So not creepily.
Excellent video! Really threw me for a loop when I heard (Dr.) Simon Clark's voice. Was not expecting that crossing of streams. Big fan of you both.
An old English Professor called it "describe, don't explain," which I always thought was the best way to approach it.
That passage you cited in "The Paper Menagerie" was absolutely heartbreaking. I've never read that book, never even heard of it before today. It's now next on my Kindle TBR list.
That's powerful writing.
this video was so high quality and really stuck with me for a lot of reasons. i think you got across what u were trying to say and then some. always amazing tim!
Something I read once was "Show emotion, tell feelings." And honestly, that has really helped me in my writing. Like if a character is feeling tired, it would probably be quite unnecessary to write a whole paragraph describing how heavy their eyes feel and how they can barely stand. Instead it might make more sense to just say something like "Exhaustion was apparent in her every step."
But when a character is feeling an emotion (especially a strong or significant one), it's more impactful to describe the emotion, e.g. "She swallowed hard, holding back the wave of tears threatening to overtake her" (my examples probably aren't the best, but hopefully they make sense lol) rather than saying "She felt sad and overwhelmed" which feels a little underwhelming.
But obviously, these don't apply all the time. There are definitely times when you don't necessarily need to describe an emotion (if it's not very significant to the scene) and there might be times when it's good to describe a feeling in some detail (like when a character has been injured and it's a key part of the scene).
First, you really got me with that second cat gag. Second, as someone else with unresolved issues about Bridge to Terabithia, I managed to go from laughing hard to crying in exactly as long as it took for you to make that transition yourself. So...twenty seconds, I guess? Kudos??? I guess??