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My favorite part about this week’s readings was LaPlantes chapter, Why You Need to Show and Tell: Dramatizing and Narrating. Her take on telling (narration) and showing was pretty helpful where I have this mindset that it is better to show the reader and not tell the reader everything. Recognizing the differences between the two, as she states, “is a critical aspect of your development as a writer.” (148) I think that her descriptions of what is showing and what is telling on page 148 was very helpful for me to develop my story some more and add some subtext without revealing too much information. In the past, the way I saw narration was through the lenses of time. I saw it as: pause, explanation, continue. Sort of like from Disney’s Emperor’s New Groove when he stops the movie to break the 4th wall and circles things like how sad he is etc. On page 153 LaPlante touches on the aspect of time and narration, “…the precise mix of scene and narration that a writer chooses is one of the most defining elements of his or her particular voice, or style.” (153). I agree with her that as a writer writing breaks in time for narration is used in special cases and or to just flow with the writers style.
ReplyDelete-Marco Garza
Upon reading chapter five we are given a great tip in our writing process in which LaPlante titles “showing and telling”. Now I feel I can truthfully admit that in the past my writing has always fluctuated between not enough of one or the other, but after going over this suggestion I feel I have a better footing in filling in the parts that lack an equal amount. I used to think that there was a preference or that there was supposed to just be either or. LaPlante discusses the significance of providing both for the reader and that showing and telling goes hand in hand, working together. I enjoy how LaPlante provides examples of one paragraph told in “telling” and one in “showing” and you could clearly see that example two had so many different aspects of the small clip story that were able to breathe life into the experience and even added dialogue. The story of Brownies was a much unexpected story with a twist ending. I was definitely taken off guard to find out that what they thought they heard was just miscommunication and to reveal that troop 909 were special needs individuals. It definitely makes a person think twice about how we choose to react to certain things and to think carefully about how we deal with our differences.
ReplyDelete-Clarissa Cardenas
After reading chapter 5 of LaPlante’s book was interesting to read. I really enjoyed how she gave us two different examples on how to write a good story. One by “telling” and the other one was “showing”. Both of these examples were different and she showed it real well. The way she wrote the “showing” part was well written and is an example of what good writing is. I really enjoyed reading it because of how much detail she put on the “showing” part, it was much better than the “telling” version. After reading this chapter I feel like I can improve my writing more and I would read this chapter again if I am ever stuck while writing a story. As for the story of Brownies I had to admit I was a bit shocked about the ending as well as all the other parts of the story. It is one of those stories that shows readers that it is never good to jump to conclusions and to be careful on how you treat others. From the beginning of the story I could feel that there was going to be a twist but I was not expecting that. Overall these readings were interesting.
ReplyDelete-Leslie Perez
In chapter 5 LaPlante explores the notions of “showing” and “telling”, but not before she totally bashes the old age saying of “show, not tell.” (147) I agree that each has their place in literature, but to say that “it is not always right” (147) to “show” I think is not very good advice. I can see where LaPlante is coming from, however. It is quite difficult to properly show what is happening in your narrative so telling young writers that the saying is not always right seems like a good idea. The problem is that just because it is a hard thing to achieve doesn’t mean we shouldn’t attempt to achieve that excellence. Her descriptions of what is showing and what is telling is very informative, especially the line graph at the end of the chapter literally placing stories to show which ones show the most and which tell the most. The story from ZZ Packer titled Brownies does a good job of showing rather than telling. If we were told from the beginning that troop 909 was a special needs group it would have taken from the story. Showing is what makes a good story. Without the “showing” element we are just filing a police report.
ReplyDelete-James Attwood
Reading Chapter Five of LaPlante’s book provided great advice on the importance of showing and telling in writing. I thought this chapter helped evaluate the difference of narration and exposition while emphasizing the balance that is required for some styles of writing. It makes sense how the two elements of writing complement each other to enhance the writing to another level. The story examples provided highlight these details along with bad advice on what to avoid and what to improve if your writing happens to follow this pattern. I feel that reading this chapter has helped me remember what I could improve on and understand the value narration and details has in moderation.
ReplyDeleteFor Brownies, I thought it seemed like a clever little story about a group of girl scouts who were being discriminated because of their color. The fact that ZZ Packer incorporated details about their lives in Atlanta and introduced issues that were happening now created a time frame for the story. However, to my surprise, I found that a bout in miscommunication caused these girls to be the very people they hated against Troop 909, a troop with special needs individuals. It gave these girls a sense of power over people that were different than them. This became a mirror to their own struggles as people have different opinions on certain things. Above all, the importance of detail and narration highlighted the writing to present such a tale.
- Joseph Gonzalez
In Alice LaPlante’s chapter five, she discusses the saying I have learned this summer in playwriting and further in poetry about showing and telling. I agree with LaPlante’s view of the saying, ‘“Show, not tell”’ that it is better to balance out the showing and telling of a story instead of disregarding telling for just showing. I like this chapter because it clearly illustrated the showing and telling that I still have trouble with, especially, I feel so in the poetry course. The part I loved the best was the section of ‘How Showing and Telling Complement Each Other’ and what LaPlante states, “We use the two together to achieve whatever effect we want.” With this section, LaPlante says it is fine to use telling so long as it is used effectively. In ZZ Packer’s ‘Brownies’, I liked how the telling and showing is balanced and engages the reader. With this balance, you can see the backstory of several characters such as Mrs. Hedy in the middle of a divorce and how Daphne created a poem which Laurel admires. Overall, I liked the story about Laurel’s camping trip and how the story’s narration is structured to show Laurel’s youthful point of view and how she is ignored by most of the others even being mostly referred to as ‘Snot’ before her name is even revealed.
ReplyDeleteSylvia Lopez
I personally feel as though, despite the usefulness of the advice given in Chapter Five, that it’s better suited for those who have already been writing for a while. Those that can better analyze their own work and break down how they’ve either “shown” or “told” a certain piece of the narrative. Instead, I would say that for general courses like those you’ll take in your first years at a university and in conversations between students workshopping, that the common definition of showing and telling is perfectly suitable. LaPlante seems to have a strong opinion towards that definition - the idea that we need to show more and tell less - and as clear as the examples might have been a new writer could easily have felt overwhelmed. Especially since in the chapter’s explanation of a better approach to showing and telling, the two began to overlap. You could “show” if your telling was strong enough throughout the piece and vice versa. It’s certainly effective and I won’t say that I don’t agree with LaPlante, but personally I would like to write a few more pieces before I began to bring my short fiction work under that intense of a microscope so to speak. Taking on the guise of a broken record here, as someone that leans more towards poetry I can definitely see how the two have a much more intricate relationship and I already see myself approaching it in the way LaPlante does in this chapter. However, that’s only because I’ve written enough pieces that I feel comfortable taking those extra steps.
ReplyDeleteZZ Packer’s Brownies is a great example of LaPlante’s method. There’s strong showing in the details of the campgrounds and members of the narrator’s troop, but we see the balance of telling whenever the narrator drops in certain narrative keys that will set up to the eventual reveal.
-Joaquin Castillo Jr
Chapter 5 puts one of the most common pieces of advice in writing under the microscope. Show don’t tell. It was interesting to have this “Show, Don’t Tell” mantra explained, and example provided about what parts of a story are which. Page 148 provides a quick overlook of the differences between showing and telling, with showing integrating details into the story, essentially filtering details through the plot and characters to the reader, whereas telling skips the filtration and gets right to feeding it, farm to table, to readers. LaPlante then goes on to show how, while not the worst advice to give, “Show, Don’t Tell” is not the fix all solution to writing and at times can be harmful to a piece. As with a lot of the advice present throughout “Method and Madness”, it is all situational. In some cases, the advice holds well, but in other cases it will hinder a writer. Telling could become the trademark style of a writer, their method and style giving their story the defining attribute it has that makes it a masterpiece. Of course, that is not always the case and learning how to balance showing and telling would serve a piece well. And of course, understanding rules and styles allows for us as writers to develop our own styles by adopting older forms and/or bending the rules to create original styles that integrate into our own personal style.
ReplyDelete-Aaron Garza
Chapter 5 of Method and Madness goes into the idea of making sure to show rather than tell when writing a story. Although she doesn’t explicitly say it’s wrong to tell in a story – it's made clear that the preferred method of writing a story is to show what’s happening. This is something that I don’t necessarily agree with since I’m not someone who tends to write many descriptive scenes but focus more on dialogue in whatever it is I’m writing. That is not to say that the advice and she gave and examples she used were something I disliked in general. I find it to be the slightest bit annoying at this point when anyone tells me to show and not tell because, again, description isn’t my forte although I still try. I did, though, like that the chapter went into sections on Narration and when telling is a good idea in a story. At first glance, the entire chapter may seem like a Do’s and Don’ts instruction manual but LaPlante does a good job in maintaining why most things can also be good. My skepticism at Showing more than Telling was once again made present while I read Brownies but as I got further into the story, I realized why it was used in this chapter. The story was one in which telling anything would have lessened the overall impact of it. If anything, we gained more from the way the story was shown rather than told.
ReplyDelete- Angélica De La Cruz
I don't necessarily agree with LaPlante. I feel like there should be a balance of both showing and telling. For example, a writer could use dialogue as a form of telling and description/narration for showing. Also, showing can be enhanced by what the characters say and choose to do. I feel that if there is a balance of both concepts then the reader would have a better idea of whats happening, and everything's not a vague picture. I always see it through the eyes of film as well which does the same of a story only is done visually, a movie can depict more of whats happening in the surroundings of a characters in various manners which can intrigue the film viewer even more while showing us what is really occurring through the actions and words of the characters. Of course to much of something is a done deal for me, if a writer is going to show me more than tell me, then might as well reveal and spoil everything to me instead of involving me in the story the right way. Thats just my personal opinion that I stick with; of course the reading "Brownies" was an accurate depiction of what LaPlante was trying to get at "showing not telling" however precisely because of this, I just craved more out of the reading. And proves my point, I feel like our own style can be unique without enforcing this ideology that LaPlante suggests. We can be creative while using both concept, a majority of my favorite novels and films/movies balance the "show" & the "tell."
ReplyDelete-Andrea Castaneda
For me, I think a balance between showing and telling is perfect. It can lean more towards one side more than the other, but completely showing or completely telling would make a story bad if it is not done correctly. This is what I think LaPlante is trying to get to through this chapter. Sure, if you can do it well, then go ahead, but as LaPlante mentions, too much of something could be bad. ZZ Packer’s Brownies is a great example of this, most of it is just telling but there is dialogue. I have mixed feelings about this shorty story though, I liked it, but I constantly drifted away from reading it, and I had to reread what I read blindly. The story is great, but I think it has too much telling, but at the same time, it has the right amount of showing. I can’t say I loved it, but I can’t say I didn’t like it either. In short, the content is great, but the format (at least for me) made it feel like a drag, not because it was boring or any, but because it felt very slow to get the point across.
ReplyDeleteSo, Brownies is not a complete tell, but it leans more towards it. It certainly has showing on it, so I believe that doing a story using only one will be extremely difficulty. Showing and Telling really seam to go hand and hand. But I also think it depends on your experience as a writer more than anything.
-Alexis Perez
Every English class ever will go over the section of “showing vs telling”. I’ve still been confused until now. LaPlante covers this in chapter five and gives examples of different excerpts on different parts of the spectrum. A good story will not always have a balance between the two. The examples she gave us ranged from completely showing to completely telling. While I understand her idea that there should be a balance between them, the amount that you should write of either can never be defined. At the end of the day, it relies solely on what the writer thinks is best for the story they are trying to tell. LaPlante did help me understand what is classified as showing or telling. Before reading this, I was still quite confused between the two. The best explanation she gave was to imagine showing as something that, “can be performed in a dramatic genre.” And with telling, the section with stopping the “clock” was super beneficial for me. In “Brownies” by ZZ Packer, we see a lot of dialogue and the actions of characters which leads me to believe that this story does more showing than telling. It shows conflict between the troop Laurel is in and a troop of girls we don’t know very much about until later in the story. Any details we are given are very unreliable from the narrator which makes for a more unexpected reveal about Troop 909.
ReplyDelete-Gabriela Urbano
I feel relieved after reading Chapter 5, “Why You Need to Show and Tell,” and am happy to learn that doing both is important. Even though the rule of “show don’t tell” was ingrained in my brain during my Intro to Creative Writing class, I still found it difficult to follow. I realize perhaps this is true because I am still working to find my “voice” as a writer, but I think writing will be easier now that we have “permission” to break this rule. LaPlante’s definitions that clarify the difference between narration/telling and dramatizing/showing are really helpful to me (148). I especially like the examples that show how both elements of showing and telling can be used together in a story. As LaPlante says, “good telling is difficult to do,” but her advice to be specific and concrete, instead of general and abstract in narration, is also really helpful (156).
ReplyDeleteZZ Packer’s story, “Brownies,” strikes a nice balance of both showing and telling. Packer uses a lot of narrative, combined with dialogue and character action. In this story, the “telling” is quite effective in conveying the voice of the narrator, which sets the tone for the whole story. As LaPlante says, finding the right mix of showing and telling “is a major part of finding your voice as a writer,” and this story is a perfect example of that (161).
-Dorie Garza