Don't tell me the moon is shining...

  “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” Anton Chekov talking about the use of a well know literary device called ‘Show, don’t tell’ and more recently ‘Show, not tell.’

This method which has many proponents in the world of literature is not a new phenomenon.  Ernest Hemingway opens his novel ‘To have and have not’ written in 1937 with the following lines:


You know how it is there early in the morning in Havana with the bums still asleep against the walls of the buildings; before even the ice wagons come by with ice for the bars?

 

Here Hemingway is painting a picture of early morning in Cuba, he could have easily written ‘One very early morning…’ some writers may argue that these examples are still ‘telling’ although somewhat elaborately. Calling it ‘Show, not tell though does simplify it for our students and is a great way of getting them to use vivid description.

 

Evan Marshall from http://themarshallplan.net/ says:

Don’t just write “The subway station was shabby.”

Write: “Near the edge of the platform, a man with knotted hair held out a Dixie cup to no one in particular, calling, ‘Spare some change? Spare some change?’ Swirls of iridescent orange graffiti covered the Canal Street sign. The whole place smelled of urine and potato chips.”

Perhaps both are telling but one is telling in much more detail.  The latter has much more detail and drama.

I use film widely in my teaching and I use film to demonstrate this technique.

The following two extracts are from a music video called 'Titanium' by David Guetta. 

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He was cycling really quickly.

The police appeared at his front door

Here we can see that he is cycling rapidly. However the director zooms in on the actions that we should be focussing on.  He uses a tight shot on the boy's feet and pedals as well as his face.  So we can use this to demonstrate to pupils that rather than telling, 'He was cycling quickly.'  We can show; 'His feet were pedalling furiously, his face was set in a mask of determination and houses zoomed past on either side. 

In this clip the police arrive at the boy's house.  We know it is the police through inference and deduction.  However, students often want to write; 'then the police arrived!'  In this film the director again shows the pupils what to write about, for example:
'Shadows appeared at the bottom of the door but the boy hadn't noticed.  They then appeared at the top of the door in the glass then the outline of a deadly weapon was silhouetted against the window blinds.'

The boy was bored and his father was frustrated.

Suddenly a whale appeared.

These two excerpts are from one of my favourite films on The Literacy Shed, called 'Catch a Lot.'

In this clip we ask the pupils to write about how the two characters are feeling, something they have inferred from their body language.  Students may write, 'The boy was bored and his father was frustrated.'  Once again the film shows us what to include in our description of these two feelings for example:

    The boy released his oars, puffed out his cheeks and let out a dramatic sigh.  His father noticed this and covered his face with a meaty hand drawing it downwards.

In this clip we get our first taste of the excitement felt by the father figure when he knows a whale is close. 

Children invariably want to write 'Suddenly a whale appeared' at this point.  I ask if the director has shown a whale?  Can anyone see a whale?

No - what can we see? A spout of water.  So instead of writing 'suddenly a whale appeared' we write what we can see, for example:

He heard a noise and in the distance he saw a huge spout of water erupt from the calm ocean.

Our readers will know this is signalling a whale.

There are many other examples in the films on www.literacyshed.com and I may follow this blog up with them if people think it is useful.

Thanks for reading and I hope you leave a comment.

Rob