A Writer's Show-and-Tell

Okay, so here I am sitting down to write a story. My main character is tall, red-haired and has a long tail. So--- I write: "Melinda was tall, red-haired and had a long tail."

But--- wait a minute! A writer is supposed to show, not tell, and that was telling. So--- I pen a scene illustrating the fact that Melinda was tall, another one that established that she was red-haired, and a third scene where we very definitely are informed about the tail thing.

I re-read. Eww, ick! My story is now cluttered with three irrelevant scenes! And while 'show, don't tell' is supposedly an important rule, the much more important one is this--- EVERYTHING in a story, even the stuff that seems thrown in to give it color and flavor, is there to do one thing--- to move the story forward.

Sometimes that means--- especially in a science fiction or fantasy work where there is quite a bit of infomation the reader needs to have to understand the story--- that you have to tell things.

A section of story where you tell some things is called an info-dump. Like the contents of a nuclear waste dump, an info-dump can grow too big to be safe, so unless you want your readers to glow in the dark, keep the amount conveyed in any one dump small.

Some writers convey information in dialog. So, instead of saying 'the alien Lizards only had one language back on their planet, Home, you have a bit of dialog where the alien Lizard Ttomalss says 'Why do you Big Uglies (humans) have so many languages? On Home, we have had only one language for tens of thousands of our years.'

The dialog method can go very badly wrong. When you find yourself conveying loads of information in dialog, and, worse, when your characters are telling one another things they obviously already know, you are writing dreadful dialog and must be stopped. No one wants to read, 'As you know, Kodos, our home planet is so civilized that we have not had a war in fifty trillion years,' said Kang. 'And as you surely know,' said Kang, 'our official planetary sport was changed from public executions to bikini designing a million years ago. Aren't we just so civilized!'

READING ASSIGNMENT: Reading the novel of your choice, take note on how the author is giving you information. How do you learn what the main character looks like, for example? (I hope there were no mirrors involved.) What came in the form of 'telling' and what was 'showing'? Do you feel the author made the right decisions on when to tell and when to show?

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How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card
On the Prowl by Patricia Briggs
Write Great Fiction - Dialogue