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[Tarrund]

You have saved the community. We are sometimes a bucketload of cliches. (Well, I am.) Thanks, this'll help the newbies.

I second the notion.

John: Alas! Bithinken have I, aboute thy fathom of thine examinement!
Lucy: Fathom? Fathom thine insanity?
John: Thy leader is not attempting to aide thy country. Thy leader desires destruction of thy country!
Lucy: Thus, I FASTE fathom thine insanity...

I love the shakespearen dialogue. Oh, and a quick question ....
Kaptain J, are you writing for any VX projects at the moment?

[Kaptain J]

Mine. But, I love writing. So, I'd write for other people, if they ask me .

[MagicKid]

WRITE FOR MEEEEEEEEEH! Only joking XD

John: Alas! Bithinken have I, aboute thy fathom of thine examinement!
Lucy: Fathom? Fathom thine insanity?
John: Thy leader is not attempting to aide thy country. Thy leader desires destruction of thy country!
Lucy: Thus, I FASTE fathom thine insanity...

I don't know a word apart from have, I, of, insanity, leader, is, not, attempting, destruction, desires.

[Kaptain J]

Exactly.

[MagicKid]

Damn Shakespearean writing x.x

[Psiwri]

Some of this is certainly solid advice, but don't feel locked to it.

A good writer can use cliches and have them work well.

EDIT: Dah! Blast you Kaptain J! This is what I get for not reading the last part of the post.

Remember folks, good writing is only good if you, the reader, pay attention! >.<

This post has been edited by Psiwri: Mar 11 2010, 05:18 PM

[MagicKid]

Don't look if you don't want to face the truth.

Spoiler:

A bad writer uses cliches and makes them so horrible I vomit.

[MenaKatep]

Don't look if you don't want to face the truth.

Spoiler:

A bad writer uses cliches and makes them so horrible I vomit.

Deliciously true.

[MagicKid]

Another truth about me:

Spoiler:

Chatspeak and bad SPaGs make me scream, "GET ME A SICK BOWL! I'M ABOUT TO BE SICK!"

I have a kind of... argument about bad SPaGs. Why do you bother writing or making a game? You don't see games out in the shops riddled with bad spelling, grammar and punctuation, do you? (Exceptions with one teeny tiny mistake) Exactly. So why have them in your game? 'Cause you're so lazy. I don't CARE how old you are, EVERYONE CAN SPELL IF THEY'RE IN ELEMENTARY/PRIMARY SCHOOL OR PAST IT!!! I know a ten year old who says she has dyslexia who can spell better than some teenagers I know.
GET IT RIGHT, PEOPLE!

[Tarrund]

@ny0ne 3l53 h3r3 h@t3 l33t5933k?

Ugh, I hate leetspeak, if you ask me. Oh, and
this thread has turned more into a rant against bad
grammar than a tutorial.

[MagicKid]

Spoiler:

My fault.

[seriousness] Sorry. [/seriousness]

[Kaptain J]

Hey, at least I'm getting replies .

Also, I've actually seen school essays with that crap in it. I, personally, NEVER use it. If I don't say that in real life, I won't say it online...

P.S. I actually know someone who says that stuff in real life...

[MagicKid]

I know people who write so badly even the most experienced chatspeak translator can't translate them... O_O

[Kaptain J]

OMFG! IJGTNT! M33T M3 @ 1! L8ER!!!

[MagicKid]

-hides eyes-

[Fridgecrisis]

I want to go back to, like... fifteen posts ago, to the thing about dialogue. Harmill argued that description and dialogue are both examples of showing. The "Show, Don't Tell" thing goes a LOT deeper than that, I believe.

For the longest time, I thought that dialogue was always a "show" instead of a "tell." After all, if a character was speaking, it was part of the physical action, right? But I posted some of my writing in a writing forum a while back and I got some interesting responses that have really changed how I think about the "Show, Don't Tell" issue.

I now believe that anything can be either a "show" or a "tell." It's not limited to specific kinds of language or whatever. A character might say, "I have a thing against people who wear purple shirts," but just because he says it doesn't mean it's "showing." This is actually a very "telling" statement, because it's the character himself actually telling us something.

Consider this instead. A person walks into the room wearing a purple shirt, and John turns to his friend and says, "Can we leave? We need to leave. Right now." Poor example as it may be, this "shows" the reader that John doesn't like people with purple shirts without him ever saying it directly. He's obviously feeling agitated (he repeats himself: "Can we leave? We need to leave.") and wants to be away from the purple-shirted person.

There's always stuff in writing discussions about prologues being huge info-dumps, where the writer just explains everything they think the reader needs to know before the start of the story. But throwing it in quotation marks doesn't magically make it all better. It's still an info-dump. "Showing" involves more careful use of descriptive clues and subtle hints, making it so that the reader understands something without it ever being stated.

But as a final note, I think telling is kind of underrated sometimes. Sometimes it's just less obtrusive to come out and say, "Lucy is my sister" rather than have a pointless visit from John and Lucy's mom and have her give them both a kiss just so the reader can establish that they're related.

Anyway. Just my two cents.

[JLogan]

[font="Comic Sans MS"][/font]
This is a Great tutorial, thanks a lot.
Sometimes one miss the north.
(All about "showing and telling" is just an incredible amount of crap, we all get the big picture).

[Kaptain J]

You're welcome, and thanks!

[Psiwri]

I want to go back to, like... fifteen posts ago, to the thing about dialogue. Harmill argued that description and dialogue are both examples of showing. The "Show, Don't Tell" thing goes a LOT deeper than that, I believe.

For the longest time, I thought that dialogue was always a "show" instead of a "tell." After all, if a character was speaking, it was part of the physical action, right? But I posted some of my writing in a writing forum a while back and I got some interesting responses that have really changed how I think about the "Show, Don't Tell" issue.

I now believe that anything can be either a "show" or a "tell." It's not limited to specific kinds of language or whatever. A character might say, "I have a thing against people who wear purple shirts," but just because he says it doesn't mean it's "showing." This is actually a very "telling" statement, because it's the character himself actually telling us something.

Consider this instead. A person walks into the room wearing a purple shirt, and John turns to his friend and says, "Can we leave? We need to leave. Right now." Poor example as it may be, this "shows" the reader that John doesn't like people with purple shirts without him ever saying it directly. He's obviously feeling agitated (he repeats himself: "Can we leave? We need to leave.") and wants to be away from the purple-shirted person.

There's always stuff in writing discussions about prologues being huge info-dumps, where the writer just explains everything they think the reader needs to know before the start of the story. But throwing it in quotation marks doesn't magically make it all better. It's still an info-dump. "Showing" involves more careful use of descriptive clues and subtle hints, making it so that the reader understands something without it ever being stated.

But as a final note, I think telling is kind of underrated sometimes. Sometimes it's just less obtrusive to come out and say, "Lucy is my sister" rather than have a pointless visit from John and Lucy's mom and have her give them both a kiss just so the reader can establish that they're related.

Anyway. Just my two cents.

I like dialog.

I like talking heads.

I hate prologues.

I like starting with a -scene-, not an info dump, and to never actually dump info at any time throughout the story. I prefer to have it trickle along, even if I have to use a Mr. Exposition to do so.

If there's no need for the characters themselves to explain something, then don't. Even without deliberate "hinting" just being natural with it will indeed show -and- tell the reader alike what's going on in a mostly passive way.

tldr; Don't try so hard with establishing things, just go with scenes. (What I'm trying to say is; yeah I think the guy I quoted here has some merits in his post.)

This post has been edited by Psiwri: Mar 14 2010, 08:37 PM

[Harmill]

I want to go back to, like... fifteen posts ago, to the thing about dialogue. Harmill argued that description and dialogue are both examples of showing. The "Show, Don't Tell" thing goes a LOT deeper than that, I believe.

For the longest time, I thought that dialogue was always a "show" instead of a "tell." After all, if a character was speaking, it was part of the physical action, right? But I posted some of my writing in a writing forum a while back and I got some interesting responses that have really changed how I think about the "Show, Don't Tell" issue.

I now believe that anything can be either a "show" or a "tell." It's not limited to specific kinds of language or whatever. A character might say, "I have a thing against people who wear purple shirts," but just because he says it doesn't mean it's "showing." This is actually a very "telling" statement, because it's the character himself actually telling us something.

Consider this instead. A person walks into the room wearing a purple shirt, and John turns to his friend and says, "Can we leave? We need to leave. Right now." Poor example as it may be, this "shows" the reader that John doesn't like people with purple shirts without him ever saying it directly. He's obviously feeling agitated (he repeats himself: "Can we leave? We need to leave.") and wants to be away from the purple-shirted person.

There's always stuff in writing discussions about prologues being huge info-dumps, where the writer just explains everything they think the reader needs to know before the start of the story. But throwing it in quotation marks doesn't magically make it all better. It's still an info-dump. "Showing" involves more careful use of descriptive clues and subtle hints, making it so that the reader understands something without it ever being stated.

But as a final note, I think telling is kind of underrated sometimes. Sometimes it's just less obtrusive to come out and say, "Lucy is my sister" rather than have a pointless visit from John and Lucy's mom and have her give them both a kiss just so the reader can establish that they're related.

Anyway. Just my two cents.

Nice post, and I don't really have an argument against the core of what you're saying. I don't want to go as far as saying 'badly' written dialog is 'telling' while well written dialog is 'showing' but I think there's also context that has to be taken into consideration. In your example, if someone enters with a purple shirt and John bluntly states, "I have a thing against people who wear purple shirts", I see it as very unnatural dialog (I suppose it could be considered 'telling' if that's all that happens). I dunno about you, but who just says something like that without any instigation? If he was to leave the room at an unusual pace and someone chased after him and asked him what's wrong then perhaps that dialog would be considered 'showing', even if it's John directly stating a pet peeve. It would make sense for him to say something like that given the context.

And yes, I agree that telling shouldn't be labelled as a 'bad' thing. If used correctly it can help prevent a book from becoming unnecessarily long and drawn out. Certain scenes serve better to be 'skimmed'. Telling is given such a bad reputation because it's typically a sign of bad writing and new writers fill entire chapters with telling and barely any showing.