“You can’t just kill off the bugs and expect no consequences” is such a fitting analogy!! Thank you for this piece — it gave me some inspiration for something I’m writing right now😆
to me, feeling is a higher form of knowledge than the cerebral retaining of information. “show don’t tell” helps me to create feelings that live in your body for the duration of the film and a while after. that might not be the same feeling in every person who watches, but that’s the beauty of an audience - that’s when my art comes to life!
i may not remember every plot point but i remember feeling devastated right along with lola, i remember desperately wondering who tabitha is or when this could’ve happened.
anyway, love the piece, i look forward to every new inigo drop!! 🙂↕️
yes! the inhabitance of feeling happens in us when were shown it. when we see someone tearing up a house, we know they're angry. them simply saying, "i am angry" is reductive, it doesn't provide the best sustenance for our imagination. so i'm 100% with you!
My favourite part of editing is finding bits of “telling” exposition that would favour better as “showing”. It forces me to sit in the character’s head and emotions. Loves what you said about clarifying the “show” aspects as well because that also depends on pacing and impact. This was a lovely read.
As an amateur writer I will take all the advice I can get, and even I could not be sold on the “show is bad, tell is good” binary. If there’s something I have learned in my writing journey that there is literally no right way or wrong way to write. As you said it’s all about making choices, calculated choices, about following or breaking the rules intentionally. Thank you so much for writing this piece its soooo good!!
Yes. I think there's also something to be said about how much of the author's trust in the reader is entwined with the reader's trust of the author and their subsequent investment in the prose.
When Patton says something like "people won't understand what you mean," my brain goes "well, what are the acceptable temporal and bandwidth-sensitive thresholds for understanding something?"
Say, for example, you have a Lola-esque scene with this same husband-wife argument, and it's taking place at their house, which happens to be decrepit and falling apart. Husband shouts "And that's why I cheated on you with Tabita," and the next (perhaps chapter-closing) line goes something like "And Lola gazed up, praying that it had just been the ceiling finally giving out."
I would understand her sadness marginally quicker if it was just "This made Lola sad," but the value of the prose would be kneecapped and shaved down to just expressing her sadness. But by showing, the line can also be read as a momentary conclusion to an ongoing story tension like "Are they going to make it through another day without another piece of their house crumbling?" (they do, but it's overshadowed by an emotional cost), or as a way of showing that Lola would now prefer the collapse of the house over dealing with this interpersonal heartbreak (maybe, up until this point, she was fixated on the plight of the house and subsequently took her marriage for granted, idk). All this, and you still understand that Lola is sad.
It's the economics of curiosity, really. Good prose rewards reader investment with the activation of multiple interpretive neurons/vibes. Very much worth the few extra seconds it takes to fully digest the prose, if you ask me.
“You can’t just kill off the bugs and expect no consequences” is such a fitting analogy!! Thank you for this piece — it gave me some inspiration for something I’m writing right now😆
Thanks for reading, Noah! Don’t hesitate to send it when its done!
Will do! That’s so kind of you.🎉 Thanks!
filmmaker here!
to me, feeling is a higher form of knowledge than the cerebral retaining of information. “show don’t tell” helps me to create feelings that live in your body for the duration of the film and a while after. that might not be the same feeling in every person who watches, but that’s the beauty of an audience - that’s when my art comes to life!
i may not remember every plot point but i remember feeling devastated right along with lola, i remember desperately wondering who tabitha is or when this could’ve happened.
anyway, love the piece, i look forward to every new inigo drop!! 🙂↕️
yes! the inhabitance of feeling happens in us when were shown it. when we see someone tearing up a house, we know they're angry. them simply saying, "i am angry" is reductive, it doesn't provide the best sustenance for our imagination. so i'm 100% with you!
thank u so much for reading 🥰🫶🏾
My favourite part of editing is finding bits of “telling” exposition that would favour better as “showing”. It forces me to sit in the character’s head and emotions. Loves what you said about clarifying the “show” aspects as well because that also depends on pacing and impact. This was a lovely read.
As an amateur writer I will take all the advice I can get, and even I could not be sold on the “show is bad, tell is good” binary. If there’s something I have learned in my writing journey that there is literally no right way or wrong way to write. As you said it’s all about making choices, calculated choices, about following or breaking the rules intentionally. Thank you so much for writing this piece its soooo good!!
Yes. I think there's also something to be said about how much of the author's trust in the reader is entwined with the reader's trust of the author and their subsequent investment in the prose.
When Patton says something like "people won't understand what you mean," my brain goes "well, what are the acceptable temporal and bandwidth-sensitive thresholds for understanding something?"
Say, for example, you have a Lola-esque scene with this same husband-wife argument, and it's taking place at their house, which happens to be decrepit and falling apart. Husband shouts "And that's why I cheated on you with Tabita," and the next (perhaps chapter-closing) line goes something like "And Lola gazed up, praying that it had just been the ceiling finally giving out."
I would understand her sadness marginally quicker if it was just "This made Lola sad," but the value of the prose would be kneecapped and shaved down to just expressing her sadness. But by showing, the line can also be read as a momentary conclusion to an ongoing story tension like "Are they going to make it through another day without another piece of their house crumbling?" (they do, but it's overshadowed by an emotional cost), or as a way of showing that Lola would now prefer the collapse of the house over dealing with this interpersonal heartbreak (maybe, up until this point, she was fixated on the plight of the house and subsequently took her marriage for granted, idk). All this, and you still understand that Lola is sad.
It's the economics of curiosity, really. Good prose rewards reader investment with the activation of multiple interpretive neurons/vibes. Very much worth the few extra seconds it takes to fully digest the prose, if you ask me.