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Don’t Show, Don’t Tell
By Corvus | May 19, 2008
“Show, don’t tell,” is great advice for any storyteller, regardless of the medium. Consider the following two snippets. The first one Tells:
Ben was a shy awkward boy, more at home with a Dungeons & Dragons manual than his fellow students. But he was crazy in love with Sandy. He memorized her routes through the school and would position himself so he could surreptitiously watch her throughout the day. Even the simplest and most ordinary thing she did left him breathless. This was no fleeting puppy love, either. Ben imagined that someday he’d screw up the courage to approach her and they’d embark on a lifelong love affair.
The second one Shows:
Ben lurked in his homeroom doorway, tightly clutching his well worn monster manual to his chest, and watched Sandy walk up to her locker–just like he’d done every school day for the past three weeks. His heart skipped a beat as she turned her head for a moment and he saw the small glimmer of gold threaded, blue hair-elastic at the base of her ponytail. He sighed as her delicate fingers twirled the combination lock. The arc of her back as she swung open her locker left him breathless. He knew that soon he’d tell her of his love and then he could spend the rest of his life watching her gracefully open doors in the enormous castle he’d build for her once he got a real job.
I make no claims that either of those story snippets are great literature, but I know which one communicates more.
By focusing directly on Ben’s feelings in the first snippet, there’s very little room left for the audience to bring their own experiences to bear. Plus while it attempt to tell us all about Ben, we actually get very little idea of Ben’s relationship with his environment and the people in it. And that, as I’ve said in the past, is the best tool for communicating character.
The second snippet focuses on the result of Ben’s internal emotional life–his behaviors. This allows the audience to bring their own emotional landscape to bear on Ben’s actions. It also sets the stage, allowing us to begin building a mental picture of Ben’s school and of Sandy. Our perceptions are still colored by Ben’s perspective, so nothing is lost and plenty is gained.
“Show, don’t tell,” applies to all mediums, from traditional oral storytelling, to writing, to cartoons, to television and film. You might think, at first blush, that it’s hard not to follow this rule in a visual medium like film. You’d be surprised, though, at the number of amateur (and some not-so-amateur) scripts that contain expository dialog that ought to be replaced by action.
Where this rule is routinely flaunted, however, is in narrative video games. Every time a cut scene intrudes, or a voice over drones by, or the player is forced to engage in a long conversation, you can bet the rule is about to be broken. It is, I admit, far easier to provide exposition in a linear media. But even when you’ve got skilled writers handling your gameplay breaks and they are careful to script everything with, “show, don’t tell,” in mind, I think most video games are still breaking the spirit of the rule. After all, video games have a crucial and distinctive difference from other media–direct and persistent audience involvement. And it is on this layer, comprised of Ludic components, that the focus of a video game narrative ought to be placed. It is not enough to, “show, don’t tell,” when showing takes the play out of the experience. So, perhaps, the rule for video games ought to be, “Let me do, don’t show, don’t tell.”
I’m sure there will be some follow up posts to this, but I’ll stop now and see what you have to say!
Tagged:show don't tell, storytelling, videogames. |
May 19th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Good stuff, Corvus. I love discussing this stuff, even though I often find it difficult to formulate coherent thoughts on the subject matter.
This sounds very similar to a comment made on one of Coyote’s recent blogs on cutscenes, where the person essentially expressed the same sentiment: that cutscenes sacrifice “do” for the purpose of less satisfying, and sometimes annoying, “show”. I know you’re referring to more than just cutscenes, but the same argument applies.
I don’t entirely disagree with that.
One of the main questions that this triggers, though, is why? Why do videogames utilize things like cutscenes, voiceovers, and long scripted conversations?
There are probably a number of different reasons, but I think one important reason is that developers reach an important point in the narrative where they feel the “need to show”, rather than continuing to “allow to do”, so to speak. Why the “need”, though? I think it relates back to your point about the crucial and distinctive difference with videogames, the direct involvement of the audience. Because games tend to provide a certain degree of player freedom, the potential exists for the player to miss, partially or completely, the important event or conversation that is about to occur. Since that would reduce the impact of the event on the player and his or her game experience, I think the desire is strong to limit the player’s ability to “screw it up.”
I’m not trying to say this is the right or wrong approach to take, but as the poster on Coyote’s blog stated, if the event or conversation is that important to the game, “then come up with something other than a cutscene.”
Perhaps, but I think we’re finding that those “other” methods are tough to come up with and implement in ways that are really satisfying — both for the player and for the developer.
Interestingly, a comment from a different person on my blog about a similar issue was that “most good-faith players would…realize that they should be focusing on the conversation and generally behaving like a reasonable human being.” While I think that’s true, I also think it’s tough for developers to really trust that their players will always act in good faith and behave normally, whether intentionally or unintentionally. The end result, either way, is that you can have an important turning point in your game leaving some players behind. And, of course, it’s not the player’s fault, regardless of how it happens; it’s the developer’s fault for creating a situation of great importance that is somehow not communicated effectively or consistently to players.
I think it’s just hard, for developers, to come up with ways of “doing” rather than “showing” that are good at accomplishing whatever it is they are trying to accomplish.
May 19th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
I’m not really too good on this topic, I didn’t post on the IGDA thread based on a similar premise:
http://www.igda.org/Forums/showthread.php?threadid=29630
I do agree though, unlike Films, Music, Art, Books, the interactivity of games provides a new problem - board games, card games don’t usually have the same storytelling elements, but do the “do” very well.
May 19th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
That was an interesting thread, but even more interesting is the 2005 Gamasutra article that was linked in that thread, at
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050727/sutherland_01.shtml
Touches upon a lot of the things brought up here, as well as in numerous other discussions of story and game. I’d be interested to hear Corvus’s opinion on it.
May 19th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
I followed through to that same article and began to wonder if I’d already read it and forgotten (consciously) about it.
There will be follow up. This all ties into the idea of the layered narrative.
May 19th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Here’s an avid reader of thoughts on narrative waiting for said followup
You’ve incited the incident Corvus, and I want a followup and conclusion to the plot
Mainly I have absolutely no idea on the topic, since I don’t write much or very well, so knowing more (like me reading the IGDA thread, and that article which I did read when it popped up as a link in it, although I totally forgot about it) would be most totally awesomeness!
May 20th, 2008 at 3:31 am
HA! I’m WAY ahead of you on this one
http://gamedesignreviews.blogspot.com/2007/05/sword-of-mana-do-dont-show.html
May 20th, 2008 at 5:43 am
Nice Krystian!
May 21st, 2008 at 1:55 am
@Rubes: Conversations and cutscenes should be appliead if apropiate. They are not inherently bad or detrimental of the player’s enjoyment. It’s like saying movies shouldn’t have any kind of dailog.
The problem lays in the use of the resources. They are used for complementing the aspects that the game doesn’t show through gameplay. Troubled characters would require playable flashbacks in orther to show through gameplay the happennings of their childhood. The same story can be told through the use of expository cutscenes and dialog. I suppose that the mayority of game developers opt for the latter because actually programming the flashback is not as cost effective as the alternative.
It also has to do with the level of attention this industry has on story (hint: next to none).
May 21st, 2008 at 1:57 am
Lesson of the day: I need to spell-check more.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:13 am
“They are not inherently bad or detrimental of the player’s enjoyment. It’s like saying movies shouldn’t have any kind of dailog.”
I would argue that cutscenes are to games what written text is to movies. The eary silent movies used written text to explain the story because that’s what people at that time were used to as a storytelling device. With time, filmmakers understood that the advantage of movies are their visual characteristics and concentrated more on visual storytelling. Of course, adding audio also helped a bit. Today, written text is uncommon in movies (with the exception of Star Wars).
May 21st, 2008 at 5:28 am
I agree with Krystian, but would narrow the phrase “written text” to just “dialog placards.” There are plenty of uses of text, both external and internal to the images on the screen that enhance the narrative in non-restrictive ways.
December 31st, 2008 at 11:56 pm
[...] blog in this list, so I’m sure it needs no introduction. The post of the year from Corvus was ‘Don’t Show, Don’t Tell’; a point-in-case as to just why he’s the professional storyteller in the [...]
January 1st, 2009 at 6:28 pm
The “Do, don’t show or tell” mantra of game writing is among my favorites, ever since I first heard it years ago at AGC. We ended up talking about gameplay as a great way to tell story when we presented at SxSW:
http://writerscabal.wordpress.com/2008/02/14/sxsw-preview-game-story-and-gameplay
What’s fun is when you do as well as show, so that the player can experience the story in as many ways as possible.