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Showing vs. Telling |
What is the difference between "showing" and "telling"? When you "tell" the reader something, you examine the facts yourself and come to a conclusion about them, and relay only your conclusion or assessment of the situation to the reader. When you "show" the reader, you don't need to tell the reader of your assessment, you just give him or her the details/facts of the situation, and let them come to the conclusion on their own.
TELLING: The room was dirty.
SHOWING:
Ten-year-old Bobby's bedroom was littered with G. I. Joe army men on the floor, muddy shoe tracks on the white carpet, dirty clothes balled up in one corner, a half-eaten hot dog on his desk, old Chic-Fil-A sandwich wrappers on the window sill, and a chocolate milkshake spilled on top of his unmade bed.
Here's another example:
TELLING: The sunset was pretty.
SHOWING: As the sun slipped behind the horizon, its red, orange, and purple rays fanned out across the dark blue sky and reflected in the placid lake like a mirror.
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"Specific" and "General" are two opposites on a continuum scale:
GENERAL<-------------------------------------------------------------->SPECIFIC
(less desirable) (more desirable)
Being specific has many characteristics: it refers to particulars rather than broad and sweeping claims or ideas, it refers to members of a group rather than the group itself, it puts the object of reference into a context.
When writing, you want to try to be specific as much as possible; this makes your writing interesting, clear, and vibrant. It is also more convincing and "shows" the reader rather than "tells" the reader.
Here's an example -- Finish the following sentence with a specific, rather than a general, description:
"For lunch, I had ____________."
Here are some possible endings; on a continuum from general to specific (which works best?):
Most General: Food
General: Pizza
Specific: Dominoe's large pizza
Most Specific: Dominoe's sixteen-inch steaming hot double pepperoni, mushroom and anchovy pizza with thick gooey melted mozzarella cheese dripping in threads from each slice
Here's another example:
"My favorite car is ___________."
Possible endings, from general to specific (which is best?):
Most General: my mustang
General: the mustang I drove in high school
Specific: the 1964 royal blue convertible mustang I drove in high school
"Concrete" and "abstract" are opposite sides of a continuum, also.
Abstract<--------------------------------------------------->Concrete
(not tangible) (tangible)
Concrete refers to something tangible; that is, something you can touch or perceive with any of your five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, feeling/touch. Abstract refers to ideas, or those things that can't be perceived with the senses.
You want to try to be concrete as much as you can when you are writing. Like specificity, concreteness is "showing" rather than "telling," and it makes your writing clearer and more interesting.
Here are some examples; the word in italics is an abstract word.
Abstract: The little girl was mad.
Concrete: Eight year old Betty Lou stomped her feet and hurled her Barbie six feet across the room.
(Note that you can SEE, or perceive with your senses, the concrete example.)
Abstract: He was rude.
Concrete: Monsieur LaPerriere refused to give the pregnant woman his seat at the standing-room-only concert.
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Eliminate your vague and indefinite words and phrases and use exact and specific ones. Elaborate on those vague words by adding details. In the following exercise, the underlined phrase in each sentence is too vague and general. Substitute exact and specific words and more details so the reader can "see" what you want to say.
Vague Example: My closet contains many shoes.
Specific Correction: My closet contains one pair of Nike Air running shoes in a size seven, 3 pairs of ankle boots, one pair of calf length black boots with three inch heels, two pairs of flip-flops, and twenty pairs of Liz Claiborne high heels.
Make the underlined phrases specific and concrete:
I like to play many sports.
We went to many stores when we went to the mall.
Gina has some interesting hobbies that she enjoys.
That restaurant had some good food.
Yesterday, I was surprised to find several pests living in my house.
To make your writing specific and concrete, to show instead of tell, you can do several things:
Refer to particular members of a group, not the group itself: e.g.: my 1964 royal blue Mustang, instead of "car"
Use names: e.g.: "Betty Lou," instead of "she;" "Honda Accord," not "car"
Specify amounts exactly: e.g.: "6'2" instead of "tall;" "98 degrees" instead of "hot"
Use specific and exact modifiers (adjectives, adverbs): e.g.: frail, boisterous, arrogant, frightening, glittering...
Use word that appeal to the senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch/feeling
Use lively verbs, not linking verbs, general verbs, or forms of "to be"
Make the following sentences specific and concrete:
For lunch, I had some bad food.
The girl was sad.
She wore some jewelry.
The car was cool.
I had a lot to do for homework.
The woman was beautiful.
The man was ugly.
The game was exciting.
There was an accident.
The boy was sick.
The party was fancy.
At school, I did stuff.
I worked hard.
The locker room was dirty.
She was afraid.
Make the following paragraph specific:
The person went to the store.
He bought the object.
He left the store.
His/her friend, waiting in the vehicle, picked him up.
This example is from Tim O'Brien's story, "The Things They Carried." O'Brien adheres to the first rule of writing -- "write what you know" -- because this story is about soldiers in Vietnam, "grunts" that is, and he was, in fact, one of those soldiers.
If O'Brien were a bad writer, he would "tell" us about the experience rather than "show" us. Perhaps he would have said something like this: "It was really hard for the soldiers in Vietnam. They had to carry a lot of things, heavy things, and they were not only physical but also emotional and spiritual things. They wondered about the reason for this, why were they there and what were they doing? But this is true of all of us."
However, we would read that and not only would we NOT be moved by that paragraph, we would be bored by it (so what?).
This is what Tim O'Brien really wrote. This is just one paragraph in the story, towards the end. Notice the specific and concrete details. Notice that he SHOWS us, not tells us. Notice the development -- the details are comprehensive enough to make his point:
They carried USO stationery and pencils and pens. They carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flares, signal flares, spools of wire, razor blades, chewing tobacco, liberated joss sticks and statuettes of the smiling Buddha, candles, grease pencils, The Stars and Stripes, fingernail clippers, Psy Ops leaflets, bush hats, bolos, and much more. Twice a week, when the resupply choppers came in, they carried hot chow in green mermite cans and large canvas bags filled with iced beer and soda pop. They carried plastic water containers, each with a two-gallon capacity. Mitchell Sanders carried a set of starched tiger fatigues for special occasions. Henry Dobbins carried Black Flag insecticide. Dave Jensen carried empty sandbags that could be filled at night for added protection. Lee Strunk carried tanning lotion. Some things they carried in common. Taking turns, they carried the big PRC-77 scrambler radio, which weighted 30 pounds with its battery. They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others would no longer bear. Often, they carried each other the wounded or weak. They carried infections. They carried chess sets, basketballs, Vietnamese-English dictionaries, insignia of rank, Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts, plastic cards imprinted with the Code of Conduct. They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentery. They carried lice and ringworm and leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds. They carried the land itself -- Vietnam, the place, the soil -- powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity. They moved like mules. By daylight they took sniper fire, at night they were mortared, but it was not battle, it was just the endless march, village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost. They marched for the sake of the march. They plodded along slowly, dumbly, leaning forward against the heat, unthinking, all blood and bone, simple grunts, soldiering with their legs, toiling up the hills and down into paddies and across the rivers and up again and down, just humping, one step and then the next and then another, but no volition, no will, because it was automatic, it was anatomy, and the war was entirely a matter of posture and carriage, the hump was everything, a kind of inertia, a kind of emptiness, a dullness of desire and intellect and conscience and hope and human sensibility. Their principles were in their feet. Their calculations were biological. They had no sense of strategy or mission. They searched the villages without knowing what to look for, not caring, kicking over jars of rice, frisking children and old men, blowing tunnels, sometimes setting fires and sometimes not, then forming up and moving on to the next village, then other villages, where it would always be the same. They carried their own lives. The pressures were enormous. In the heat of early afternoon, they would remove their helmets and flak jackets, walking bare, which was dangerous but which helped ease the strain. They would often discard things along the route of the march. Purely for comfort, they would throw away rations, blow their Claymores and grenades, no matter, because by nightfall the resupply choppers would arrive with more of the same, then a day or two later still more, fresh watermelons and crates of ammunition and sunglasses and woolen sweaters -- the resources were stunning -- sparklers for the Fourth of July, colored eggs for Easter -- it was the great American war chest -- the fruits of science, the smokestacks, the canneries, the arsenals at Hartford, the Minnesota forests, the machine shops, the vast fields of corn and wheat -- they carried like freight trains; they carried it on their backs and shoulders -- and for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single unabiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.