It's a different kind of telling than what you describe, but I think it's still fantastic telling. Here's the way Charles Dickens describes Scrooge:
"Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster ... A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it once degree at Christmas."
This is classic telling. The call to "show, don't tell" demands scenes in which he interacts with characters, showing us his miserly ways. And yet this one simple paragraph accomplishes all that in some of the best writing ever done in English. Good telling is just as magical as good "showing."
To your point: The tendency in literature seems to be an obsession with planting the exact form of the scene into the reader's head, as if it were a stage-play or a movie. Amateur writing, for example, is often marred by descriptions of the character's costume. The lead's attire is important, to some extent; however, if the author doesn't want their work to read like a wiki, they must rely more on the imagination of their reader.
Strictly speaking , I don’t think we’re dealing with an either or proposition here. As a rule, you should show rather than tell but sometimes you need to tell.
For people who find these thoughts interesting, I recommend Wayne C. Booth's *The Rhetoric of Fiction*. A fascinating book on the topic of how writers appeal to readers in their prose.
Well said, Peter. Everyone has a worldview that takes shape in the fiction they write. I heard someone say recently that Jane Austen doesn't moralize, which is one of the things that makes her writing timeless. I entirely disagree. The list of plot points that promote the morality of her worldview would be too long to write here -- and the nostalgia for her certainty is partly what makes her writing timeless, in my opinion. I've had fun recently writing new stories about Jane Austen's characters in 21st c. Atlanta with the desire to reaffirm her moralizing for a world that's aching for it. You might enjoy this short read in which George Wickham and Henry Crawford go out for drinks and run into Isabella Thorpe. It's called "Resurgens." https://katesusong.substack.com/p/resurgens?r=2iyrll
I completely agree that Jane Austen relentlessly moralises. You don’t notice it so much because it’s funny and because it’s revealed through the characters rather than dictated by the narrator.
Austen’s a seminal “show and not tell” writer. Especially in comparison to a predecessor like Samuel Richardson, shouting who’s virtuous and who not from the frontispiece on.
Peter -- just saw that you wrote this and not Liza (another opportunity among many this week to embrace the onset of middle age). I corrected the name above and am happy to have discovered your work. Subscribed and looking forward to more!
"Show don't tell" is obviously a simplistic and overdone piece of advice. For a thorough and very good discussion of this and related issues, dive into Wayne C. Booth's classic "The Rhetoric of Fiction", originally published in 1961.
It's a different kind of telling than what you describe, but I think it's still fantastic telling. Here's the way Charles Dickens describes Scrooge:
"Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster ... A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it once degree at Christmas."
This is classic telling. The call to "show, don't tell" demands scenes in which he interacts with characters, showing us his miserly ways. And yet this one simple paragraph accomplishes all that in some of the best writing ever done in English. Good telling is just as magical as good "showing."
To your point: The tendency in literature seems to be an obsession with planting the exact form of the scene into the reader's head, as if it were a stage-play or a movie. Amateur writing, for example, is often marred by descriptions of the character's costume. The lead's attire is important, to some extent; however, if the author doesn't want their work to read like a wiki, they must rely more on the imagination of their reader.
Strictly speaking , I don’t think we’re dealing with an either or proposition here. As a rule, you should show rather than tell but sometimes you need to tell.
For people who find these thoughts interesting, I recommend Wayne C. Booth's *The Rhetoric of Fiction*. A fascinating book on the topic of how writers appeal to readers in their prose.
“but—to take a cue from the Russians—authors still need a compelling moral vision to write enduring work.”
This quote hit me like a truck. Awesome, insightful article. Thank you for the read!
Yeah. Good lit does both. Show and tell. Do too much of either and it upsets the delicate balance.
Well said, Peter. Everyone has a worldview that takes shape in the fiction they write. I heard someone say recently that Jane Austen doesn't moralize, which is one of the things that makes her writing timeless. I entirely disagree. The list of plot points that promote the morality of her worldview would be too long to write here -- and the nostalgia for her certainty is partly what makes her writing timeless, in my opinion. I've had fun recently writing new stories about Jane Austen's characters in 21st c. Atlanta with the desire to reaffirm her moralizing for a world that's aching for it. You might enjoy this short read in which George Wickham and Henry Crawford go out for drinks and run into Isabella Thorpe. It's called "Resurgens." https://katesusong.substack.com/p/resurgens?r=2iyrll
I completely agree that Jane Austen relentlessly moralises. You don’t notice it so much because it’s funny and because it’s revealed through the characters rather than dictated by the narrator.
Austen’s a seminal “show and not tell” writer. Especially in comparison to a predecessor like Samuel Richardson, shouting who’s virtuous and who not from the frontispiece on.
Peter -- just saw that you wrote this and not Liza (another opportunity among many this week to embrace the onset of middle age). I corrected the name above and am happy to have discovered your work. Subscribed and looking forward to more!
"Show don't tell" is obviously a simplistic and overdone piece of advice. For a thorough and very good discussion of this and related issues, dive into Wayne C. Booth's classic "The Rhetoric of Fiction", originally published in 1961.
https://open.substack.com/pub/johnnogowski/p/on-saunders-kindness-and-swimming?r=7pf7u&utm_medium=ios