# How do you "Show don't Tell" when you can't show?



## Cosmic-FS (May 21, 2019)

So we all know the rule "show don't tell" when it comes to writing. The reader is smart enough to figure out what a character is feeling through their body language without the author having spelling it out. But what if a character doesn't have a body to express body language with?

I'm writing a fantasy story where one of the main characters is a disembodied soul that accompanies the other main character through the story.  He has no body, no physical presence, only a voice. Dialogue scenes between these two always feels lopsided with one character being so much more expressive and engaging than the other. For the soul character I have to rely so much more on flat out telling what he's feeling that I feel like I'm breaking the cardinal rule.

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with this or examples of it done well. What advice can you give me?


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## xremeidiot (May 21, 2019)

Does this character have a tone of voice? A character’s tone can convey a lot about what they’re feeling, as well as word choice. Are they shouting? Stuttering? Hesitating? Talking a mile-a-minute?


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## PercyD (May 22, 2019)

Ooo! I love this sort of thing-

So a lot of the ways you can "show not tell" in literary works is deploying literary devices to set a tone, voice, or set up the atmosphere.
One good author for this was Lovecraft. Despite being a racist, he could set a tone of general unease using a couple literary devices.

He did so by:

The sort of language he used to describe things
Controlling the pace of the reader- slow things down with where and how long he described things
Envoking some of the techniques used in cinema by describing them, such as having impossibly large scaled creatures to impose a sense of helplessness
Myself, I control the pace by controlling the sentence length. One of the weaknesses is that a lot of short sentences can be uninteresting to read. However, they are really good for high action scenes.


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## Sablesword (May 23, 2019)

The rule is just as well expressed as "dramatize, don't summarize." It's just that "show, don't tell" is pithier. 

If you're writing out the actual dialog rather than summarizing the conversations, then you're close enough to "show, don't tell" for most practical purposes. Writing out several lines of angry-argument dialog is show; telling the reader "they had an angry argument" is tell. 

Also, what point of view are you using? If you're writing from the spirit's point-of-view (either third or first person) then describing the emotions that the spirit feels is just as legitimate as describing the objects that the spirit sees. If you're writing from the point of view of another character, then you'll have to rely more heavily on tone of voice and/or a possible empathic connection between the spirit and the other character. 

If you're the sort of person who finds good examples to be useful for learning how to do things, let me recommend the "Penric" series by Lois McMaster Bujold, as an example of a top-notch fantasy writer portraying a 'disembodied' spirit as a major character.


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## dankedonts (May 25, 2019)

What I would ask myself when telling a similar story is... How is the spirit communicating, and what side-effects might that line of communication have which could be exploited for dramatic effect?

Are the other characters hearing a voice in their heads? Maybe the spirit can also project their emotions as well as their words, whether deliberately or not. The other characters might start exhibiting anger, sorrow, etc, because they are being made to feel those things. Their body language could reflect the spirit's tension, ease, etc as well. They might not even be aware of it until an outside observer points it out.

Are they hearing a disembodied voice? In that case, the spirit is manipulating the air around themself to produce audible sounds. And therefore can possibly produce forcefull gusts of wind or soothing breezes to go along with its words. Maybe producing loud "POP!" sounds as their equivalent of slamming a fist into something.

Also, how well does the spirit remember being a living being? Did they have any noiseful habits which they might be inadvertently 'translating' to the others? For example, if they ground their teeth when upset, they might create a variant of sound that they instinctually remember producing under that stimuli.


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## LadySajani (May 26, 2019)

Like all literary rules, don't obsess too much over it. There're no rules that apply 100% of the time and that includes spelling and punctuation. You need to look at why the rule exists and know why it is that you want to break it. (If you're saying things like "I want to do this whole trilogy in present tense to show that I'm a knowledgeable writer" please... Stop writing. =P) My books use expository dialogue and scene summary when it'll take more than roughly 500 words to draw out a minor background that isn't important to anything other than flow. If you want an example, I can try to get the publishers permission to post a part of my second book where that's really obvious. There's some great suggestions already. Let me add a few.

If all you have to work with is dialogue, there're a few of things that can help. Tone is huge. "You have no right to do that," he said. versus "You have no right to do that!' he shouted. Reactionary dialogue helps as well. You should be able to establish a lot about how this voice feels based on how it responds to the thoughts and feelings of others, ie responding angrily to pleas for help. Lastly, there's expressive dialogue you can use to replace phrases like "her voice cracked just slightly." You can have the voice express what it would do if it had a body. "I'd cry if I could."

Don't be afraid to experiment with things.


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## Cosmic-FS (May 28, 2019)

Thanks for all the responses guys. This soul character has a lot of emotions he needs to express: anger, sadness, dread, his body was taken and he is terrified of what will happen to him if he can't get it back. This is a lot of help.



> Maybe the spirit can also project their emotions as well as their words, whether deliberately or not. The other characters might start exhibiting anger, sorrow, etc, because they are being made to feel those things. Their body language could reflect the spirit's tension, ease, etc as well. They might not even be aware of it until an outside observer points it out.



I really like this idea because the main protagonist is technically being possessed by the soul character. He can take control of his body but chooses not to out of respect (only doing so in certain extreme situations). So having an emotional bleeding effect could be an interesting byproduct to explore.


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## Cosmic-FS (May 28, 2019)

Sablesword said:


> The rule is just as well expressed as "dramatize, don't summarize." It's just that "show, don't tell" is pithier.
> 
> If you're the sort of person who finds good examples to be useful for learning how to do things, let me recommend the "Penric" series by Lois McMaster Bujold, as an example of a top-notch fantasy writer portraying a 'disembodied' spirit as a major character.



I'll be sure to check those books out, thanks.


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## Anthrasmagoria (May 28, 2019)

I recall in Terry Pratchett's books, the character of Death speaks in capital letters without speech marks, so whenever Death had something to say you knew it was him without introduction. He also had a distinct style of speaking. It gave the impression he was on a different plane than the other characters just by the way it was set out.

I don't know if that's helpful, but you can help characterize by tone of voice, the way it's physically written - like Pratchett did as a literary device - the character's vernacular/slang or particular accents, etc. and let the reader infer from the things said rather than explain them. A disembodied spirit sounds mysterious; if I was writing in 3rd person omniscient I might just decide to give them lines in italic or something like that, to denote that they might be communicating telepathically.


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## Tendo64 (May 29, 2019)

If I can add anything (I haven't read through every post on here yet, so I apologize if this was already said), describe emotions, don't say them. Describe senses and memories.

I.e:

Don't: "Seeing the abandoned park, it made him sad. He missed when he got to spend time with his mother here long ago before she died."
Do: "As he swept his gaze over the abandoned park, he felt a pang in his chest. At some point, this place was crowded with people, and distantly, he could hear his mother's eager voice, urging him to get on the swings. Yet soon after, the doctor's voice telling him and his older sister about the dreaded fact that she had left this world chastised him, as it often did whenever he thought of her. And now, this park was empty. No-one stepped foot here. No-one thought twice about this place. Now, he was alone."

I'm no expert, but that's typically what I do.


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