Things that annoy you in fanfiction discussion

[Dullahan]

Show Don't Tell is not an iron-cast rule you must always abide by - it's something that's beaten into you to get rid of writing habits that are immediate in their badness, but also something you need to overcome - ultimately the dichotomy between showing and telling is revealed as a false one in a very, sniff, dialectical way

in this case however the problem is that both writer and target audience are retards

[I3uster]

show dont tell is literally a cia psyop designed to deprive socially conscious artists of an effective method of delivering their message

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Ho...erature/144531

[Laserman]

It's the flagrant violation of Show, Don't Tell that really burns me.

Who talks like that? Under what circumstances would you possibly need to exposit that hard at another character? Who goes around introducing themselves with their power level like that?

[Dullahan]

it's really a back-formation from cinema - 'showing' only becomes thinkable with the photographic perspective, the gaze of the camera - the distinction between 'showing' and 'telling' becomes completely meaningless if you look at anything written before the late 19th century - only with the visual imagination cameras and cinema lend to us are we able to think of literature as being able to 'show' things, to display them to us, to lay them open as if before the neutral gaze of a camera. in reality of course literature can't SHOW anything, the notional distinction people have between 'showing' and 'telling' is really between two different kinds of telling which operate at slightly different levels of abstraction

[SpoonyViking]

Basically, sometimes you need exposition.

[Walnut Sparks]

I've always thought of show versus tell as meaning that you can rattle off adjectives about what a character is supposed to be like, how they're supposed to feel, etc. or you can demonstrate it by their actions. If you inform me that "Jane was a very mean person," but never have Jane think, say or do mean things about/to other characters, she doesn't strike me that way.

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Or in other words, "show" in context means something more like "provide concrete examples and evocative descriptions."

[SpoonyViking]

But sometimes Jane just isn't an important enough character to merit that attention.

[RoydGolden]

I've always thought of show versus tell as meaning that you can rattle off adjectives about what a character is supposed to be like, how they're supposed to feel, etc. or you can demonstrate it by their actions. If you inform me that "Jane was a very mean person," but never have Jane think, say or do mean things about/to other characters, she doesn't strike me that way.

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Or in other words, "show" in context means something more like "provide concrete examples and evocative descriptions."

Pretty much. Like the infamously terrible "Christian" novel Left Behind which constantly describes how its heroes are good Christians, while consistently showing them act like selfish, entitled assholes. "Show, Don't Tell" may not be an absolute mandate, but at the very least it's something that staves off a lot of particularly bad writing habits.

[Five_X]

That's a matter of narrative consistency, not a matter of whether or not you're 'showing' something or 'telling' something.

[Walnut Sparks]

But sometimes Jane just isn't an important enough character to merit that attention.

If Jane being mean is worth mentioning at all, then it's worth pointing out what it is that makes her mean. Otherwise I could suspect the narrator is being unfair and has other reasons for disliking her, or just dislikes her for no particular reason.

[RoydGolden]

That's a matter of narrative consistency, not a matter of whether or not you're 'showing' something or 'telling' something.

It clearly is, at least as Walnut Sparks defined it. The authors are telling us their "heroes" are good people, but can't be bothered to describe them actually doing good things. Of course, in that case it's also symptomatic of far more general problems with the authors' (LaHay and Jenkins) worldview, as in their minds a good Christian just is someone who prays the right magic words to be called a good Christian. Actual good works are irrelevant at best.

[Walnut Sparks]

That's a matter of narrative consistency, not a matter of whether or not you're 'showing' something or 'telling' something.

It's also a matter of what you're "showing" not lining up with what you're "telling."

And yes... ultimately all literature is "telling." But when I for one talk about showing versus telling, what I mean is varying levels of description. Telling is superficial description that's less convincing. Showing is depiction that lets the audience understand what you're getting at. You don't need to say "Jane is mean" when the story depicts specific mean things that she does with little or no niceness to balance it out.

When Jane parks illegally in a handicapped zone just because she doesn't want to have to walk twenty yards to the bank, thinks of the teller as incompetent because she's ugly, and falsely accuses a waiter of spitting on her pizza and tries to get him fired, I can imagine someone doing these things and I feel that person is a huge jerk and I dislike the character for behaving that way.

I'm not advocating having Jane kick the dog just for the sake of showing her as mean. Yes, it ought to have something to do with the story, but if it's not worth "showing" that Jane is mean, then why "tell" me that she is?

[SpoonyViking]

Expediency, sometimes.

[Walnut Sparks]

Like when?

[SpoonyViking]

Off the top of my head: in "Dune", all we know of Rabban the Beast is what we're told by other characters, he only shows up "onscreen" in a single scene, but what we're told is still useful information for us to understand Baron Harkonnen's plans.

[Walnut Sparks]

Could you be a little more specific? I mean, do the other characters talk about what he does, says and thinks, or do they simply give adjectives about him? That's the distinction I mean to draw.

[SpoonyViking]

Could you be a little more specific? I mean, do the other characters talk about what he does, says and thinks, or do they simply give adjectives about him? That's the distinction I mean to draw.

Well, they don't talk about any specific actions of his, but they do talk about his despotic rule (which earned him his nickname). So, a bit of both, but mostly the latter, if I recall it correctly.

[FishyFod]

When the author treats the reader like an idiot, so he spoon-feeds him information. I get that people don't want to sound too vague most of the time, but it's fairly annoying when every action, dialogue, thought or motivation of every character, obvious or irrelevant, is thoroughly explained as if you're reading an essay that analyzes the story you're reading. I want to read stories, not essays. I want to be able to infer those explanations, or else where's the fun in speculating?

Somewhat relevant to the earlier discussion of "Show, don't Tell" - it's an excellent way to solve this problem.

[CritHit]

A little bit of venting here. The general OC hate bothers me, especially in this fandom. There's an entire multiverse of stories to be told, not all of them will fit into the confines of what you know. I'm also bothered by High School and Modern Day AUs in general. It's just taking all the joy and wonder out of something, and turning it into an episode of Degrassi.

I mean, I understand that most fans love the characters of a story more than anything else, but I don't see what's so wrong with loving the world and concept of a story, and wanting to put your own ideas into it.

[Mattias]

It's not that we hate OC's it's that we hate bad OC's.

Hell, Tomb of the Sun God and Manhattan Project II, two of my favourite stories we have here, are almost entirely OC's.