Of all the pithy
little axioms preached at students of screenwriting, the most
oft-repeated is the command to “show, don't tell.” The phrase
sounds simple enough. “Show” and “tell” are two of the most
basic verbs in the English vocabulary. Yet the vaguery surrounding
this three-word statement has caused endless confusion and even
controversy over whether the advice is even valid. Once again, the
“script gurus” have dumbed things down to the point of
obfuscation.
Allow me to shed a
little light on the subject. “Showing” vs. “Telling” is
really just a plain-English way of articulating mimesis vs.
diegesis, two of the
oldest concepts in the Western philosophies of art. These terms sound
old and Greek because they are old and Greek, dating back to before
the time of Plato. For the sake of the reader, I will not go into the
numerous tedious arguments surrounding the terms, and at the risk of
reductionism I will boil things down to their basics (so I ask that
anyone familiar with the topic please forgive me for any lack of
exactitude). So let us begin by broadly stating, mimesis is an
approach to art that “shows”; diegesis is an approach that
“tells.”
Now,
these terms tend to be difficult for newcomers to keep straight. So
it helps to remember them in relation to similar and more common
English words. Mimesis
comes from the same Greek root as the words “mime” or “imitate.”
As this connection suggests, mimesis refers to any artistic attempt
to represent an object, image, action, event, etc, in sensory detail
so that the thing represented appears in “present” in some form.
This can range from a simple pictorial representation of a subject to
an exact imitation which makes the subject seem real and existing
within in the receiver’s midst. Dramatic actors may thus be
considered the foremost practitioners of mimesis, as their craft
entails the reproduction of actions, emotions, and so on with such
accuracy that they appear real and immediate. As such, staged live
theatre is the most mimetic of art forms (more so than cinema, for in
theatre the dramatic action occurs within the immediate presence of
the viewer without cinema’s spatial and temporal discontinuities).
Mimesis therefore “shows”—not only visually, but potentially
through all the senses—while the receiving party “observes.”
Recipients are expected to take in the sensory information and form
conclusions it in the same manner that they make sense of all the
stimuli they encounter in daily life.
Diegesis, in
its original usage, roughly
translates as “to guide” and corresponds with the modern Greek
word for “to narrate.” Helpful English sound-alikes include
“description” or “diagram.” Diegesis always presupposes a
speaker and an audience spoken to. Some individual, wherever he or
she may be, is in control of the discourse and responsible for
guiding the receiving party through it. Along with describing or
explaining its subjects, diegesis will often include a degree of
interpretation or commentary. It “tells” from a specific point of
view. Rhetoric, the art of influencing opinions through speech, is
therefore the most diegetic of art forms. (In the classical sense,
that is. The ancient Greeks considered rhetoric to be the highest
art, but modern academics now place it in a category outside the
“creative” fields.) Like rhetorical speeches, diegetic
storytelling relates events in a manner whereby all content is guided
and therefore mediated by a narrator, with the discourse focused upon
whatever the narrator considers most significant.
Comparing
mimesis to diegesis, one finds that mimesis is primarily sensory
while diegesis is primarily verbal. The former presents
a receiver with this or that (more or less objectively); the latter
tells the receiver of
this or that (more or less subjectively). Diegesis often contains
ready-made interpretations, while mimesis allows receivers more
freedom to interpret content for themselves. There are also sharp
differences in terms of the sense of distance
felt between the receiver and the content or speaker. With mimesis,
the content feels close, present and “real.” Meanwhile, the
entity who presents the work (the artist, creator, “speaker”)
seems to reside at a distance or to be entirely absent. Diegesis
creates the opposite experience. The creator/narrator holds a close
and present relation with the receiver while the narrated content has
the quality of feeling distant in space or time. (That is, the
speaker relates something that exists in a place or time different
from the “here and now.”)
To
provide a comparative example, let us say I want to present you with
the historical tale of the assassination of Julius Caesar. In a
diegetic mode, I could stand on a stage and give a lecture on the
event; tell who was there and what they did, emphasizing or
elaborating on certain points, engaging your interest through my use
of language. Yet to tell the story in a mimetic mode, I would have to
remove myself from the stage and do as William Shakespeare did;
present performers intended to “be” the event’s participants
and play the scene out action for action (more or less accurately) as
if the event were occurring in the moment. The first “tells,” the
second “shows.”
To
turn this information into advice on proper screenwriting, our path
must briefly pass through literature. Literature is an entirely
verbal medium. Though it relates sensory information for readers to
imagine with their mind’s eye, all this information must be given
through written words. This, along with the constant presence of a
narrator (whether this presence be overt or merely implied), requires
literary discourse to lean toward diegesis rather than mimesis. Yet
literature also allows a certain range of freedom between these two
poles. A work may employ a highly diegetic approach, with the voice
of an outside narrator constantly intervening into story action to
supply his or her own judgments or opinions. (Laurence Sterne’s
Tristam Shandy presents one of the most extreme examples. Less
radically, Charles Dickens frequently adheres to this style.)
Alternatively, narration can be limited to a style that comes close
to mimesis, verbally relating only what might be seen, heard, or
smelled by an unattached party observing the “scene.” (Ernest
Hemingway used this style.)
Cinema,
in contrast, is not a verbal medium. It communicates with near
exclusivity through image and sound. The audience sees and hears
events as they occur, with the implication that the events are
“real.” Cinematic discourse must therefore lean much closer to
mimesis than diegesis.* Cinema “shows” and expects the viewer to
do much of the cognitive work necessary to piece information
together. Cinema cannot explicitly dictate the viewer’s mental
experience the way literature can; it can only lead a viewer’s mind
in certain directions through indirect means. The command “show,
don’t tell” is therefore an injunction to craft narratives in
ways that play to the cinema’s strengths while avoiding its
weaknesses. Communication ought to occur primarily through images and
actions while avoiding an over-reliance on words.
Yet
herein lies the rub for screenwriters. Though screenwriters create
narratives intended to be composed of images and sound, they must
momentarily capture these narratives in written words on a script's printed
page. Screenwriters must therefore perform a literary function in
service of a non-literary medium. Walking this tightrope between the
mimetic and the temporarily diegetic thus becomes one of the greatest
challenges of screencraft and quite often the trap into which many
newcomers fall.
The
command “show, don’t tell” is particularly relevant to two
common amateur stumbling blocks. The first occurs in the area of a
script’s passages of action or description—that is, the words on
the page which no one other than a select few will ever actually
read. “Show, don’t tell” reminds screenwriters that they are
not literary authors. A writer may enjoy penning long flowery
descriptions, complete with intriguing background information and
cheeky asides, but all these words are essentially useless as they
will never be translated onto the screen to become part of the final
product. Here is another axiom in the world of screencraft: “If it
is not on the screen, it doesn’t exist.” Unless the information
is sensory information which a director, performers, or crew
can directly express in image, action or sound, it will never reach
the audience and wind up dead on the page. Screenwriters must strive
for a mimetic, not a diegetic discourse, which “presents”
everything essential for a viewer’s narrative comprehension in
audio or visual form. If writers absolutely must imitate a literary
style, they should be Hemingway and not Dickens.
The
second area where developing screenwriters are prone to telling
rather than showing occurs within moments where the script must
provide important background information. Now the easiest way to give
this information is to simply “tell” it to the audience.
Voiceover narration or long expository speeches are the most common
offenders here. While these methods do provide the necessary
information, their flatly diegetic mode tends to bore the audience as
it fails to play to the cinema’s ideal form of discourse or provide
viewers with the desired audio-visual stimulation. In other words, a
lot of “telling” has been put into a medium that thrives on
“showing.” As a result, such passages fail to promote
mentally-active viewership by engaging the audience’s sensory
interests. They instead turn viewers into passive, uninvolved
listeners, making the experience feel dull and anti-dramatic.
These
are, of course, not the only areas where “show, don’t tell” is
immediately relevant. However, I hope this article has cleared up
some confusion. By referring to the opposition between mimesis and
diegesis, “show, don’t tell” reminds storytellers
what the cinema is as a medium, where its strengths lie, and what its
narratives should or should not do. Cinematic stories function
differently than stories in mediums such as literature, and thus must
be executed in the most appropriate discursive mode.
*
Note: Some caution must be used regarding the word
“diegetic” in a cinematic context, as film critics and production
professionals often use the same word for completely different
purposes with completely different definitions. In its non-theoretical usage,
“diegetic” refers to anything which exists within the story
world. The best example comes in the form of music. If a scene
features a song playing on a radio—a song all the characters can
hear—this is “diegetic music,” since it exists within the story
world. In contrast, a musical score added to the film’s soundtrack
is considered “non-diegetic” or “extra-diegetic” music since
it exists outside of the story world and can only be heard by the
audience. It is important to not confuses the two uses. This article
uses the term "diegetic" only in its classical sense; that is, its
opposition to the mimetic.
