 Welcome back writers, what's shaking? My name's Cam. Welcome back to another video. I make videos on this channel talking about my writing journey and all of the writing related stuff along the way. If you are a writer as well then stick around. I have plenty of videos for you to check out and plenty more to come. Just really quickly as well I've been saying for a bit now that I will be making my grand return the Twitch soon and I actually have a date for you. 8am central standard time Sunday the 7th of August. That's when my next stream will be and that's hopefully from that date I'll be doing it at least weekly. Come along, hang out with some other awesome writers and have some fun. We play games, have chats, we do writing sprints which if you're not familiar with that it's basically a short period of time where we all stop and do some writing and then we check back in and see how everyone went. It's basically just like a big online club. It's a lot of fun, it's great. So today I wanted to chat about something that I've mentioned in quite a few videos but I've never really gone in depth on it. Show don't tell. The one writing rule that I'm sure you've had yelled at you probably a million times by every author with an online writing course and this is something I've always actually been kind of floppy about. Flip floppy there has to be a better word for that. I am a writer I swear. Now show don't tell in theory makes quite a lot of sense and for the most part I do think is very important and good advice but if there's one thing I've learned over my entire time as a writer I don't know how long it's been now but if there's one thing I've learned it's that no one rule when it comes to this or pretty much any art form should be taken as an absolute with very few rare and obvious exceptions. Basically when you're writing rather than telling the reader what's happening or what the room looks like what the character's feeling or what they're wearing you show them. For example instead of the handsome Australian author Tuber seethed with rage when he saw the rotisserie chickens were gone you could say the veins and cams neck bulged as a wave of heat painted his face red. In place of a rotisserie chicken there was now only empty hot no no no no no no no wait wait wait wait one of those examples is pretty boring and tells you exactly what is happening he seethed with rage but the other example doesn't even mention any words like angry yet you still get the message I would say even clearer than the first example. This one is a really easy black and white example of show don't tell doing its job and doing its job well resulting in a better story however there is an issue actually first I'll make it clear that this is just my personal opinion in fact it's my opinion as a reader rather than a writer but I'm not an educator so far be it from me to tell you what to do or not here's my issue a lot of authors take this rule to heart and I'm guessing in the revision stage they go back and they replace every single tell moment with a long-winded descriptive show moment and I don't think this is a good practice show don't tell is something that in my opinion should not be seen as an absolute rule sometimes in fact I would probably go so far as to even say most of the time I would rather you just tell me what's happening or how the character is feeling so that we can move the plot along descriptive writing can be beautiful in moderation but when authors go ass over tit with it we end up with a dump truck worth of purple prose and that is one of my least favorite things again this is just my personal opinion but it's one of my least favorite things when I'm reading what I find is that we end up with as much information in 30 pages as we could have gotten from just three this is why I enjoy books from authors like brandon sanderson because he actually does quite a lot of telling rather than showing but the awesome thing is when he does do showing over telling I appreciate it more and I'm like wow that was a really beautiful section of descriptive prose I don't always get the same feeling when I'm reading from authors that do this with every single sentence because I just become numb to it we talk about in writing this uh this this phrase called show don't tell right and it's become a mantra it's this thing it's like you know anytime anything's wrong in a story people be like well you didn't show enough you told too much and they're often right but show versus tell is not something to hold up as like the absolute gold standard because almost always showing more and pulling down on the pyramid traction requires what more words it's kind of like uh when people say use said instead of any other dialogue tags using said allows the reader to kind of skimpast it but still understand who said what they can move on without worrying about the fluff ironically this is another rule that I take a bit of issue with because I actually do like descriptive dialogue tags sometimes get out of here before I change my mind grumbled the old man is more interesting than me then get out of here before I change my mind the old man said but again I do agree that these tags should be used in moderation kind of like showing rather than telling uh anyway those are my thoughts on show don't tell as a reader but what about as a writer well of course I do try to make sure that I am showing rather than telling in most cases especially when writing fantasy because I want to paint an interesting picture of what's happening with words however I do also try to make sure that I'm keeping the story moving and not bogging it down with unnecessary fluff and unfortunately sometimes that's what showing instead of telling does it adds fluff so sometimes I'll just tell uh for example the soldier whipped around his expression furious you know that the soldier just turned around and he's angry we can move on it's kind of terrifying uh every time I do uh go through and I tell rather than show because I imagine someone reading it and saying to themselves this isn't showing don't tell therefore it's bad writing and I don't even blame them for thinking that like I said this rule has been drilled into us so much that we press on it whether we're reading or writing and to be very clear if I am doing way too much telling rather than showing I should be called out for it criticism is good all criticism is valid even if sometimes rarely I find myself disagreeing my hope would just be that both readers and writers are asking themselves if this line that they're picking at needs more descriptive writing or maybe it works best as a quick tell so that we can just move on so one of the things I learned most from reading Stephen King and you know following his uh writing advice stuff like I read Stephen King's book on writing anyway one of the things I learned most is that unless a character or location in the story is important I actually won't spend much time at all describing them the reader simply doesn't always need to know what this random side character or person is wearing or the color of this random room's walls unless it's important or sets the mood for example in a horror story saying that the walls where as red as blood could really set the mood but readers do have a pretty good imagination they'll fill in the blanks from context alone if I have a random character who happens to be let's say a criminal in a fantasy tavern the reader can imagine what type of haircut they have or what they might be wearing you don't really need to tell them there is a lot that you can do to build the atmosphere in this tavern through descriptive writing but you don't need to go from top to bottom keeping the story moving is incredibly important so what I usually do I just personally I will give one or two things that sets the atmosphere and then I'll move on to what the reader needs to know that's what works best for me personally and that's something that I've kind of integrated from all of the different writing advice I've gotten from courses and authors etc and from my time as being a reader anyway like I always say the beauty of writing is that it's an art form and art form is always subjective so what do you think about show don't tell I would love to hear it and also are there any other writing rules that we've had drilled into us that you're not really on board with stick around for more writing videos go follow my twitch page so you can hang out with us when I go live and until next time good luck with the writing mate catch ya