Is "show, don't tell" bs writing advice? I have tons of lore and if I showed it all instead of telling it, my book would become far too long.
>>23949854Better advice is show most of the time, tell only sometimes
>>23949854Don't show it or tell it. The best fiction has a fully fleshed out world and lore with strong internal consistency, but only allows the reader to glimpse at it.
>>23949854Read Ready Player One and 50 Shades of Grey for great examples of "Tell, don't show" and form your own opinion on this topic.
If you must lore-dump then try to space it out, only give the necessary information at the time when it's absolutely necessary. You can use "novel thought" or a characters inner monologue as a vehicle for this, or a conversation with secondary character.
>>23949860/thread
There's ways around it though. Like have the narrator/protagonist be a foreigner to the part of your world or even the world entirely because he was isekai'd or something.
>>23949901Stop doing this shit, lore dumps are cancer even when there's a plausible explanation for it. The only reason they're so common is because of the conceit of the author: he wrote all of that bullshit so he's damn well going to make you read it.The Silmarillion never should have been published and I'm ashamed that Tolkein caved and sold out when offered stacks of cash for it. The fact that the Unfinished Tales was published is an even bigger outrage than the Rings of Power. The latter is just slop inspired by Tolkien's work, lord knows there's been plenty of that in the last 70 years. The former is an actual affront to the man and his legacy, like revealing a magician's tricks. If the magician himself chooses to do so that's one thing, but for someone else to systematically compile and publish his notes to the world reveals an almost unbelievable level of contempt.
>>23949923This is, of course, the best approach. Fuck lore. Fuck Tolkien's autism. He should've stopped after The Hobbit.
>>23949930Lore is important, but it's background work for the author and using it as filler for the book is insulting. I don't have a particular problem with the Lord of the Rings since while it borders on being lore itself it stays on the proper side of the line. If it was about Gandalf or Aragorn or even Boromir it would have been awful genreslop, but the fact that Tolkien was about to keep the story firmly focused on the four literally who midgets who accounted for half of the Fellowship saved it, and kept it relevant for decades later.Too many modern authors miss that fact and write "stories" that are themselves nothing but background lore. Look at gurm, every one of his viewpoint characters are lords and ladies and chosen ones and dragon mothers. Or at Bakker, who approaches genius when writing about a fat useless outcast and his whore girlfriend, and then goes off on a tangent for an entire book about how some king of wherever conquered a city and murdered the inhabitants or fed his army roasted monster and then had a huge gay sex orgy. Fully half of his magnum opus is just dry, boring history books about shit that never happened. Might as well read nonfiction and learn some names and dates that sort of matter. Stories are about people acting within a setting, not about the setting itself.
>>23949854You misapprehend "show don't tell". Showing is shorter than telling.>The guard plainly saw the assault on the boy, he ashamedly turned his head towards the street in the other direction and ambled off, shoulders slumped.This shows the police are weak or corrupt, that virtue is lacking, the populace are accustomed to these conditions because they've not agitated for change and that the guard knows he's wrong and feels guilty. Me writing this all out is lengthier and more boring than playing it out to the reader.
>>23949854>lore No one gives a shit about the history of your setting.
>>23949967A large chunk of fantasy fans are autistic and love treating fantasy lore like a history book though
>>23950001Hence the number of hacks like gurm that can get rich by writing garbage for retards.
>>23950001>we want the autistic audience Go for it, then.
>>23949868tell don't show can be great with an unreliable narrator
>>23950047In that case you have to tell and show just the right amount of each. It's never worthwhile to tell without showing.
>>23949854Lore that can't be shown is lore that has nothing to do with the plot. Don't waste the reader's time with it.
>>23949860This. Lord of the Rings is infinitely better for the fact that Sillmarillion exists even if you've never read it.
>>23949854"Show; don't tell" is great advice, but it might be more accurately stated as "be very deliberate about what you're showing and what you're telling." Consider the following:> She practiced and progressed quickly through the children's ranks. When she started high school, she had already earned adult mastery. Her parents were there when she received her belt. They must have been proud of her, but at the time, she felt only pride in herself. She felt it was a success she had earned. I am telling about the character having learned judo, which is telling=bad. I am showing the character's relationship with her parents, which is showing=good. I am showing the evolution of the character's understanding of her own egocentricism, which is showing=good. This is a story about a woman learning empathy, not about judo. The texture of the belt in her hands when the instructor handed it to her does draw the reader into this character's experience, the experience of realizing that she hadn't been paying attention to the people around her. Almost every sentence *both* shows *and* tells. Take care to show the things that are important.>> 23949860If you want to learn how to present lore, you should read and watch plays. Whereas in a novel, the reader expects to the shown the conflict as it evolves, in a play, the audience expects to be dropped into the moment of conflict resolution and have to infer the backstory as necessary. Let your lore remain hidden and pay it out into the story only as necessary. The reader will reward you by imagining that the hidden lore is even richer than what portions you reveal. If you need an example, compare "The Hobbit" to "The Lord of The Rings." It might not be obvious why the later feels so much richer and more magical until you learn that "The Silmarillon" was written between the two.
>>23949923>The Silmarillion never should have been published and I'm ashamed that Tolkein caved and sold out when offered stacks of cash for it.He didn't, that was also published by his son.
>>23949854Nothing wrong with "telling" if it's done competently. A narrator explaining a character's family background, or a well-placed conversation between characters which fleshes out the setting can be just as effective, if not more so, than showing. The trouble is that too many aspiring writers end up just creating unwieldy exposition dumps which do not serve the story, hence the axiom. I do think that it's a bit more difficult to "tell" competently than "show" competently, I suppose, which is probably why "show, don't tell" gets repeated ad nauseam.
>>23950416>Almost every sentence *both* shows *and* tellsThis is generally a good trick, but your example isn't the best since the telling and showing are syntactically separate. E.g. instead:>She recalled her parents' beaming faces when she received her Judo master's belt and that, in the moment, her only pride was in herself.Her receiving her belt is entirely subordinate to the more interesting-sounding clauses about her parents. It's the same exposition and "she received her Judo master's belt" is no less "telling" than anything you wrote, but it's mentioned only in passing with the actions remaining the focus of the sentence. (but yeah overall the takeaway is just to write sentences that are structurally more exciting to read. this can be done well with purely "telling" but it's harder to pull off)
>loreIf you use this word seriously you’re already a shit writer because you have zoom zoom brainrot
>>23949854It is bad advice. All the greats told. Oscar Wilde, Dickens, they all did it. SDT is just a meme fed to new writers to encourage them not to be lazy, but there is definitely a place for telling when it speeds the story along.
a while ago i came to an epiphany, the phrase "show dont tell" doesn't really work, i would rephrase it to "describe dont tell", to me this works better.Describe lovedescribe feardescribe the city
>>23949868>50 Shades of GreyNever going to read that, but I heard it got slammed hard for its terrible prose.
>>23950416>I am showing the character's relationship with her parentsHow? All it says is her parents were there, which is telling a fact. "They must have felt" is guesswork on her part, and is neither showing nor telling.
>>23949854I've only heard that in the YA contextAre editors/authors saying that for other genres?>>23949857>>23949868Uh oh someone tell Flaubert because the first 60 pages of Madam Bovary is all exposition with almost no dialogue
>>23949854>no purple prose>show don't tell>write what you knowall of this is bullshit is taught to braindead MFA women who end up writing syphilitic sex diaries and harry potter rip-off #27688pick 5 authors you love and then experiment, combine, emulate prose until you develop your own styledisregard writing rules and critics, and women most of all (not just in writing)
>Show>Don't tellPedo
>>23950796some of my favorite authors are womenwhatchu think about that
>>23949985I'm pretty sure "the police are weak and corrupt" is shorter than what you wrote.
>>23949854>I have tons of lore and if I showed it all instead of telling it, my book would become far too long.Your book would be shit regardless of whether you showing it or telling it. Nobody wants to read an imaginary encyclopedia.
>>23950806Lmao
>>23950791Flaubert was on a level of talent where the rules don't really apply to him. Some scrub trying to publish his first fantasy slop novel should accept that he's not the next Flaubert and just follow the conventional wisdom.
>>23950520This.“Show don’t tell,” when elevated from being an effective tool for certain scenarios to a universal law, is evidence of the hegemony of genre slop in current “literature.”Lolita is one of the most magnificent examples of “tell, don’t show.”
>>23950895The book I'm writing is historical fiction and plays out over several centuries, the lord is essential for the story
>>23951807pretty cool anon, keep it up. i remember reading somewhere about some guy who was a foreveralone and died. when the cops searched his house they found a 100,000 page manuscript; it was apparently some sci-fi opera of grand proportions or something.probably no hope of it getting published, but you never know.
>>23950374This is like those political cartoons where the artist self-insert is calm and rational and the opponent is some 'I AM SILLY" caricature. The "bad" example is just low effort while the "good" example is four times the length. It's easy to make one style look better than another when you intentionally write one poorly and the other well.
Don't take advice seriously. Once you have absorbed the simple fact of "mature writers think about this thing" there is nothing else worth taking to heart. The best advice is advice that gives you something new to think about.
show don't tell is general writing advice to stop writers from summarizing their entire story. It isn't a rule that you have to "show everything, tell nothing."
>>23951838I agree with you, but the second example is better even if you throw out all the extra bullshit and just keep the last two paragraphs. It's not really what this thread is about though. Saying a character is angry is forgivable, wasting a dozen pages enumerating the historical actions of the various political factions in Elfdaria is not.
>>23949854>I have tons of lore I assume you're writing fantasy/sci-fi. In this case, just write an in-universe encyclopedia like Herbert did with Dune and reference it at the beginning of the book. Those who are curious about worldbuilding will either read it or reference it throughout reading, those who don't care about lore should be able to skip it and just read the plot.
>>23949854So don't share your lore retard. It exists, it's there in the background. If you want you can go fill appendices or lore-book and give it to anyone who's interested, but only reveal to them and show what's necessary for the story
>>23953046>only reveal to them and show what's necessary for the storyIt's even better if you don't even reveal what's necessary to the story and make the reader figure it out. It only feels lame and shitty if your lore is inconsistent and makes the reader feel like you didn't do your homework.
>>23949967Why in the world are you reading a fantasy novel if you're not doing it for the lore? That's like the only appeal.
>>23953513Don't forget that most people cannot understand hypotheticals. They can only think of people, and they cannot distinguish between real people and book characters. They also have to anthropomorphize everything, including inanimate objects and abstract concepts, because they only understand natural processes as a result of a conscious action. And since to them even our real world doesn't exist outside of human perception, the idea of another, imaginary world is completely incomprehensible to them. When they read books, they just skip over everything that isn't dialogue or human interactions.
>>23949854Show don't tell is a basically a silly meme (in the original sense of the word). Long story short it's a good rule of thumb for unexperienced writers and not a hard set rule of writing. A master can bend conventions in writing, like in any other art.
>>23953513Why not? Fiction is fiction, setting your story in the present or even in history differs only from fantasy in that it invites the reader to assume certain knowledge of the background lore. Different people see the same events differently, so relying on reader's assumptions of the lore of reality can have unforeseen events. Imagine setting a series with religious overtones like Dune or The Prince of Nothing in the present, do you think it would have the same effect? Separating the setting from the reader's assumptions gives the author a freer hand in telling the story he intends.>>23953737Midwit post, you're exactly the person you're complaining about and you don't even realize it. No ability to think in hypotheticals or imagine on your own so you need the author to hold your hand at every possible moment and describe to you exactly what to think.
>>23949854There are two possibilities:A) Readers might not care about your lore and could lose interest if you start explaining too much, orB) Readers might be intrigued by your lore, but their curiosity could wane once they know everything there is to know.Both issues can be mitigated by treating lore like a mystery, gradually revealing information throughout the story.
>>23950796true"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, know one knows what they are." - Somerset Maugham
>>23949854It isn’t a catch-all bit of advice, but it should motivate you to think about how you could write exposition more creatively. You want the lore to arise naturally and unobtrusively from the narrative progression, whereas if you have a character whose sole purpose is to infodump the protagonist with lore then imo it feels very clunky. also >>23949860 is good advice too, if you reveal too much then it kills the mystery. You want to breadcrumb your reader with enough to keep them engaged, while also giving them an incentive to read on and learn more about the world.
>>23950374The first style is much better, it's just not as fleshed out to make it seem worse in the comparison. I bet a woman wrote this article because the second is chicklet prose.
