On Showing, Don't Tell

I noted Viet Thanh Nguyen's criticism on the idea of show, don't tell as a maxim for creative writing.

I think his argument holds water. All I am doing with this piece is giving my opinion why show, don't tell has taken hold in writing: the movies. 

Prior to the arrival of film, or so it seems to me, novelists used the biography or history as the basis for its stories. This allowed for more than just showing  the content of a narrative.

In support of my these consider this from C. S. Lakin's  The Fun Way to Learn How to “Show, Don’t Tell”:

Sol Stein in his book Stein on Writing says, “Twentieth-century readers, transformed by film and TV, are used to seeing stories. The reading experience for a twentieth-century reader is increasingly visual. The story is happening in front of his eyes.”

This is even more true in the twenty-first century. As literary agent and author Donald Maass says in Writing 21st Century Fiction: “Make characters do something that readers can visualize.”

 This Itch of Writing Bog posted an article Showing and Telling: the basics which defines showing but also telling:

TELLING is for covering the ground, when you need to, as a narrator (whether the narrator is a character, or an implied, external narrator in a third person narrative). It's supplying information: the storyteller saying "Once upon a time", or "A volunteer army was gathered together", or "The mountains were covered in fine, volcanic ash". So it's a little more removed from the immediate experience of the moment. The more I talk about Telling, the more I call it informing, sometimes explaining, and occasionally understanding

 Meanwhile, Blue Pencil Agency has 10 Way to 'Show Not Tell'. This includes my favored method of telling  - exposition.

Along these lines is Putting Cinematic Technique into Your Pages via Movie Analysis from Live Write Thrive.

But the issue raised by Nguyen are touched on by these tips. Some things need to told. The trick seems to my mind to do so in an artistic manner. I still have not finished with John Dos Passos, but I think he was working on this problem of conveying what needs said for understanding the world between showing and telling in his USA Trilogy.

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