"Show, Don't Tell" -- dumb advice

[Roy Hobbs]

Her wet whisper--
"Roy, if you want to, it's Okie-Dokie with me."

She hung up the phone and I headed for Oklahoma. So, fol-
lowing her obvious clue, I spent last night at the O-Dokie Mo-
tel in downtown Oklahoma City.

This morning, while waiting for shower water to heat and my
wash-and-wear shirt to drip dry and Iambe's knock on the door--
and with nothing better to do, I decided to discuss with myself
the matter of those ‘show, don’t tell’ prescriptions so prevalent
in many English writing instructor's classrooms-- dispensed
with and without license.

I thought, surely, I would rather be TOLD of Timbuktu, fearing
that the flies, adders, sandstorms, etc. would offset the romance
of being SHOWN it; and I would rather be TOLD the door than
SHOWN it. On the other hand, I would rather Lucinda SHOW
me her cottage bedroom on the snow driven moorlands of the
Margaride than TELL me about that delightful;y warm place
where spreads her downy coverlets inches thick and that little
window which opens to a scene of folded snow and birch trees.

But these thoughts were introductions only, lead-ins to the matter
I assumed would be of interest once I had had my assignation
with Iambe and returned to the Vegas poker tables where my writing
ideas are worked out in Hegelian synthesis.

But I have been wrong before, as my ability to guess what takes
wet cake and what leaves cake to dry is quite deficient.

And maybe I was wrong -- totally wrong-- to come to Oklahoma
City in the first place to meet-up with Iambe. But when she said
" ... if you want to, Okie-Dokey," and the way she said it, I was
caught.

It is now clear to me that ‘show-don’t-tell’ is productive advice
only if one understands the principle of subsumption and how
simple school-taught outlining works. For example. As I told
my eighth-grade class back in 1999 in Wagon Tongue, North
Dakota,

"State your thesis- "He Was Mean," then illustrate it.
"
My neighbor, Tom Feddicky, is a mean man," is TELLING, I
told my class. "He kicked dogs and hanged cats," is SHOWING.
But Hathaway Junior, whose dad raises hogs and grows corn,
said, "But isn’t, ‘He kicked dogs,’ also TELLING? In this way,
"Mr. Feddicky lifted his Acme boot, pulled back his leg at the
knee cap hinge and jammed that boot right into the head of an in-
nocent Collie dog asleep under the chestnut tree.

Isn't this SHOWING at another LEVEL to a TELLING sentence
that was considered, before, to be a SHOWING sentence be-
fore?"

Well, that kid was smarter than most kids and instructors I meet
in English classrooms. He was right. ‘Show, don’t tell’ is a matter
of subsumption and levels. And I’m weary of it as a prescription
that makes no sense to me, at all.

So, as my shirt dried and the water heated, motel lights flicked a
neon green ‘$58.95 Single' sign, I realized Iambe had fooled me
again, had led me on a goose chase and was not coming.

Right then Iambe might be on a slow boat to China with the man
who wrote Stardust-- and had, as an example of antonomasia,
a ham and cheese Hoagie wrapped in waxed paper for late night
snack while looking out on the briney, the moon big and shiney.

[Leanne]

"Show, don't tell" is as over-dispensed as Ritalin, in this you are absolutely correct. That is not to say that it is wrong, just misused and oft quoted by those who have not understood it in the first place. It's perhaps better to say "infer, don't prescribe". People assume that "show" means "use images" and "tell" means "use words", which is a pretty difficult distinction to make when you're writing pictures with words.

Depending on the purpose of the poem, too much "showing" can be just plain irritating -- if you're writing a light, humorous piece, you usually want people to understand it immediately, so making them go back and decipher/interpret/infer on their own is going to be counterproductive. However, in many other kinds of poetry and indeed other texts (not just the written ones), I find it more effective to give people multiple pathways into and through, so that they may wander where they please. The road not taken, and all that

[abu nuwas]

The highly prescriptive nature of this saying is obvious bunk. In the case given by Roy and his student,however, ''shoe'' might be what? Hand-made English which cost a fortune of a (as it happens) a chestnut colour? Pointy black ones, with the smell of leather? Nasty plastic things, coloured red and white for no obvious reason? And what about the chestnut? Is it green and what colours are in those greens? Or is it winter, with black bare branches against a grey sky? Appealing to the senses makes a good deal of sense --- even if just giving information, it is nice to know the colour of a lethal snake; and Timbuktu was once a great centre of learning, so that a description of masses of precious, unique, crumbling manuscripts in some dusty mosque or school would not be useful, but it would give the reader an idea of the soul of the place.

Leanne hits the nail bang on the head when she says that in a a light, humorous piece, easy comprehension demands a different approach; and in fact, I am pretyy crap at all this sensual appeal, in poetry.

Iambe? What kind of a damnfool name is that?

[billy]

isn't this show and don't tell;


This morning, while waiting for shower water to heat and my
wash-and-wear shirt to drip dry?

i have to admit to often saying "show don't tell"
while some poetry is best done in a flat monotone of "i sad, she said" i much prefer something with graphics.
i really like abu's writes on this so instead of copying them, just consider them pasted.

sometimes a cigar is a lot more than just a cigar.

[abu nuwas]

isn't this show and don't tell;


This morning, while waiting for shower water to heat and my
wash-and-wear shirt to drip dry?

i have to admit to often saying "show don't tell"
while some poetry is best done in a flat monotone of "i sad, she said" i much prefer something with graphics.
i really like abu's writes on this so instead of copying them, just consider them pasted.

sometimes a cigar is a lot more than just a cigar.

Billy -- Much flattered, but I have had further thoughts.

I think there are shades of description. The most telly one is where everything is abstract. Then there are examples like yours, which Plato would have understood well enough. We do not know what manner of morning it is. Is it hazy, wet, sunny, parching, fresh? Those appeal to our senses; so would colour-- blue, gold, red, grey? So with the shower water: the drops of water will not appear without colour, they will be lit by the lighting or light around, and the surround. What colour is the shirt. what does it feel like, long-sleeved or short?

Plato would have said that although there are all sorts of fashions and colours and sizes of shirts (or spoons, or mornings) they must have an essence which enables us to say ''That is a shirt (or spoon)'' And he thought this was more real than the flim-flam of our world. But writing using such abstractions is not very satisfying for the reader who would like to build up a mental picture.

Sometimes a good cigar is a smoke....

[billy]

the quote i used was from the prose poem above.

personally i like descriptive tell mixed with abstract or sometimes ambiguous show;

While waiting for steaming water to cloud
silver on a cold shower door

i was just trying in my own bad way to show that more than what we think is show, and often we call it tell.
descriptive narratives are often more show than tell yet come across the reverse of the fact.