Be told "show don't tell" all my life

>Be told "show don't tell" all my life
>Read pic related
>All he does is tell
How was he able to get away with it?

Attached: Kurt_Vonnegut_1972.jpg (936x1388, 282K)

YOU CAN'T RUN YOUR LIFE ON PLATITUDES AS LAWS DUMBASS THEY WILL FUCK YOU IN THE ASS

I get so enraged when hearing the phrase "show, don't tell". What ungodly fuck created this saying? It has no correlation to literature. This is, by all accounts, a medium of telling. How do you "show" through words? Literature is using words; you can't simply "show" people a certain meaning without resorting to words. Here, look at this:
>John walked across the street.
Did I properly show you? Did I properly tell you? Was this a fine mixture? Fuck you, rat.

I think it's more about emotional content

>His heart was pounding as he walked accross the street
Probably better writing than simply stating "He walked accross the street. He was excited". Vonnegut does employ the later often and it seems to work, so I duno

>The concept is often attributed to Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, reputed to have said "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." What Chekhov actually said, in a letter to his brother, was "In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you’ll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball." [6]

>literally favoring style over substance as a rule

Attached: yuck.jpg (637x360, 7K)

I am going to rape Anton Chekhov

Lots of great writers tell (Borges and Bolaño, to name a few Yea Forums favorites). As with most writer's workshop rules, there are so many exceptions that the rules become useless. Though in general I think they tell amateur writers to follow this rule so their writing has a greater sense of immediacy.

It's to champion aesthetic beauty, you culture of resentment dope.

>What ungodly fuck created this saying?
The CIA played a big part, like with most shitty things. They were scared af that Socialist Realism would catch on in English, so they funded a bunch of think tanks and MFA programs to inculcate this style.

Attached: 61KEzjW3ytL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg (333x499, 55K)

Show us a passage or we're talking in abstraction.

"Show don't tell" is a rule in the same way "Don't start a sentence with and" is. It's not essential, but you're probably too dumb to execute it properly so just don't do it.

Have you literally never read a book before?

You need to learn the rules first before you can break them.
You autist.

Show dont tell is basically just a way to create symbolism.

Its about emotions you fucking retard. Dont say "john is sad"
Say, "john layed in bed all day and didnt take a shower for 6 weeks"

I heard it's "show emotions, and tell everything else."

Borges' prose has never been anything special, it's his creativity that made him a great writer.

damn, sounds like you've never crossed a street before

The point is that he expressed that creativity by doing a lot more telling than showing, and with enormous success.

ps: be good / have style

No

John has depression.

Passive voice and flowery exposition is meant to aid imagination in unimaginative reader, to help em imagine things by hinting the details of the scene (iceberg). The point is to coddle the reader, at the expense of being clear/concise.

Good writers don't need to use crutches of excessive exposition - when it is the story itself that is enthralling. Asimov famously used straightforward "tell" and frequent active voice.