Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Show, don’t tell
It never fails to amaze me how much “show” it takes to convey the information in 100 words of “tell.” I’m guessing the ratio is something like 10:1.
Yup, just checked. I eliminated two paragraphs of “tell” with 2700+ words of show. That’s more than 10:1.
In fairness, I accomplished a hell of a lot more in those 2700+ words than I did with those 200+ words. But I’m still wondering what to do with something like 2000 more words of “tell” — which was a hell of a lot of political exposition. And I know that I just need to man up and cut the stuff. Very little of it is truly essential.
D.
I always start by asking myself how much of that tell is actually needed for the story. 2000 words worth of political exposition cried out to be cut, not shown? Also, it’s not necessary to ‘show’ every little action in a larger picture, give us the highlights of your character leaping from log to log across the river rather than describing every single log?
It was necessary . . . only in the sense that I had to do it for MY benefit. I had to understand the politics so that I could write it, just as I had to construct a timeline so as not to trip over myself later.
The infodump is truly unnecessary, though.