Current Events > "Show, don't tell" is amateur advice.

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Skye Reynolds
04/13/17 8:03:38 PM
#1:


Once people have a name for the stuff that's explained to the audience rather than shown, exposition, they grow to detest the concept. If a guy is 27, unemployed, and smoking pot in his mom's garage, you're not supposed to say that he bounced from job to job. No, you're supposed to slow the film's pacing to a grinding halt and give us a montage of him working minimum wage jobs before giving up on work as a concept. If that character is the protagonist, yeah, you might want to take a minute or two and show us that. If that character is a supporting character, your word should be good enough.


Sometimes in life you relay information to people and it doesn't trigger flashbacks.t Why should movies, TV shows, or written stories be excluded from being able to do the same?
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Soviet_Poland
04/13/17 8:34:45 PM
#2:


Well, yeah. It's amateur advice because generally an amateur needs to master the fundamentals first. Have you ever read someone's work where the exposition was just too direct? It's really, really bad.

A master author has the experience to know when telling might be indicated over showing, and that's why they can break conventions.

An amateur can't. That's why it's amateur advice. It's for amateurs.
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"He has two neurons held together by a spirochete."
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chill02
04/13/17 8:35:40 PM
#3:


narration has no place in a movie
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Ave, true to Caesar.
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