With profuse and grateful thanks to ALEX756, KILLERMUFFIN, PERDITA, JFINN, WILDSWEETONE, WICKED-N-EROTIC, OCTAVIAN, THE EARL, QUASIMODEM, OPENTHIGHS_SARAH, CHAMPAGNE1982 and QUITE COOL.
If you've ever asked for advice or a critique from a writer, on Lit. or anywhere else, then you will have more than likely been offered the phrase "Show don't tell". But Just what do they mean by this? Ask Alex756 and she'll quibble about there being no difference between when a writer tells the reader something and when showing something. It's all telling.
Ok so what do we mean when we say "Show don't tell". What I mean by it is, a list of bare facts is dull. If I'm reading a story on Lit. and I come to a paragraph of measurements, Height, weight, bra size and dick length/girth then I'll skip over it and maybe skip the rest of the story too.
On the other hand if I'm given an illustration of these attributes then I'm being treated like a 'reader' rather than a 'looker'. So maybe the phrase should be "Illustrate don't tell".
Let's take the sentence:
"She was five feet six inches with blonde hair and he was six feet two with broad shoulders and big hands."
That's what I would call telling, I'd also call it very dull. To illustrate these bare facts a single sentence might go:
"Standing silently, her dyed hair swaying and tickling the backs of his pianist fingers, his arm draped carelessly across her shoulders, she snuggled into his side and glancing upwards noted the fact that she could see right up his nose."
Here I've managed to convey facts in the first sentence by suggesting them in the second. You can also see that some sort of intimacy is apparent between the two and that the girl is rather frivolous.
KILLERMUFFIN offers the following re-working of the facts and easily manages to create a scene of distinct interest, introducing a further character and some considerable pain whilst retaining each pertinent fact.
"Sarah screeched when he pushed her legs apart and knelt between them. Sweat had turned her blonde hair into strings of dishwater that clung to her face. Men that big had no freaking business shoving a girl's legs apart. Even though the stirrups kept her spread open, his shoulders still touched her thighs. She was comfortably medium-sized, but he made her feel like a dwarf.
He smiled at her and then stuck his lubed fingers into her pussy. She gritted her teeth while he prodded around with an expression usually reserved for groping blindly under the sofa for lost keys.
"You know what they say about a man's hands," Donna said, then leered at him.
She was too startled to scream when the contraction crunched his knuckles."
When you read stories on Lit. you will find many written in the style of:
"He was five feet eleven and had muscles like a film star with dark brown eyes and darker brown longish hair. Then he saw her and she was like an angel with a body to match. Her hair was golden and she was exactly the same height as he was. He could tell that she was hot for him because her nipples were poking out beneath her green top."
Again we are given a dull list of facts. How can we change this to make it, not more literary but, more interesting? One thing that can be done is avoiding lists. If you feel the need to "tell" some things that are factual then spread them throughout the work. Dribble them sparingly and let the reader's imagination soak them up piece-meal. Find another phrase for a bare fact. Another way to attack this problem is change your viewpoint and start again as PERDITA does:
"I had to tell myself I wasn't in Hollywood, but the young Day-Lewis look-alike meeting me eye-to-eye at the bar during the first intermission of Lohengrin was a real 'looker', as Mom used to say. I caught his liquid doe-eyes skimming over my breasts and hoped he had an inkling as to why my nipples were stiff and jutting out from behind my lime cashmere halter. I could feel my full breasts swell warmly as our eyes met for an instant and hoped he caught that too.
He had shoulder-length dark brownish hair, so I hoped he didn't hold too fast with the stereotypes about blondes. I'm a natural via mostly Swedish genes. I may be a ballet dancer but I think on my feet and am almost finished with Wittgenstein's On Certainty."
The factual statement about the brown shoulder-length hair is used as a contrast to the reference about the anecdotal dimness of blondes.
Going back to the original viewpoint ALEX756 gives us:
"He grabbed a shirt out of his bike's saddle bag and pulled it on, trying not to smile as some cute thing at the pay phone paused in her inane conversation to look at his muscles. His brown eyes and brown hair reflected for a moment in the door as he opened it. He didn't see the blonde angel until he was staring straight into her blue eyes. Then he noticed the cherry slurpee running down her green top -- a small bit of slush caught on a nipple."
The original "muscles like a film star" become attractiveness to "some cute thing"
JFINN next concentrating on illustrating the facts:
"He liked that he could look directly in her eyes. It had happened before, he wasn't tall; barely over average height, but it always gave him a thrill when a woman stood his equal. It was all they had in common, but he liked that too. In fact, he liked everything about her. She was day to his night, sunlight hair and eyes like a summer sky. Even the soft lines of her body were the perfect counterpoint to his hardened muscles.
She liked what she saw too. It was in the way she stood, her arousal showing through a shirt the color of freshly cut grass. Her eyes asked permission as her hand lifted, ready to stroke the shadowy curls at his neck. He whispered, "Yes."
The "dark brown, longish hair" is suggested rather than drawn by "shadowy curls at his neck"
Take the scene into a clothes shop and you have a much-used mirror. WILDSWEETONE takes the mirror and instead of using it so the characters can describe themselves, employs it to introduce the pair to each other.
'The T-shirt with its folded short sleeves and trapped cigarette packet fit his body like a glove. Instantly she was aroused, her body humming sensuously, her nipples beneath the green top aroused in exquisite pain. They stared at the shared mirror, a contrast of colours.
Gold hair topped an angelic body that swayed under the green suit as she tried it on. Turning in the mirror, he tugged his new jeans, then wiggled his backside further into them. She gasped at his thin plaited tail of hair as it swung against shoulders strengthened by years of manual labour, her long fingers itching to hold and tug it.
With eyes meeting, both instinctively ducked as the fault in the cheap shop mirror blinded their visibility. Grinning, they turned toward each other and she watched his own arousal as his brown eyes darkened.'
WICKED-N-EROTIC Takes every single detail and gives it a twist, finds a simile, a synonym, a description, an illustration or a new concept:
"His well chiselled body was no doubt the product of many hours spent at the gym. His hair the color of rich chocolate lay in waves around his broad shoulders, and those eyes, eyes like puddles of muddy water that held her in a trance as he approached. She stood across the room wearing an olive tone top that accentuated her voluptuous curves nicely. The sheerness of the top did little to hide her arousal as they stood eye to eye.
Her sun-kissed curls had been what caught his attention as she tossed her head back, laughing heartily with a friend. It was at that moment that he knew he had died and gone to heaven. Now standing in front of her he was wondering where she was hiding her wings."
All the examples so far (with the exception of PERDITA) kept with the third person, almost everyone used the "eyes level" to indicate same height and only half kept the non-factual angel reference. However each and every re-write was personal to that writer. Telling is a very impersonal thing. Showing (or illustrating) lets you know something about the author.
Now follows a contrived method of sticking to facts OCTAVIAN:
"He was leaning on the wall at the health centre when she walked in. She couldn't help but notice the top of his head was level with the 5ft 11inches mark.
