Show don't tell? How about show don't pad?

You ever hear the phrase “show don’t tell?” Writers, film students, and other artists like to brow beat that phrase every chance they get. Don’t get me wrong. It is a good rule to live by and is essential to good story telling no matter what medium you use, when you really understand what it means. Lately I have found that people seem to think it means use as many words as possible. There is a difference between showing us what is happening, and telling us what is happening in a long-winded fashion. That’s why I want to introduce my version of this phrase: Show don’t pad.

Padding is adding extra words to your narrative, over describing, or using redundant scenes that may seem to have a purpose but in the long run just make your story longer. Plenty of successful authors are guilty of this unfortunately. Like most things though, the more successful you are at something the more you can get away with. When you are first starting out, it may be better to keep things short and to the point. You will impress people a lot more if you can say more with fewer words.

For this demonstration, I will use an example inspired by the wedding feast scene from “A Storm of Swords,” book three in the Song of Ice and Fire series by George RR Martin. First example will be tell.

There really was a lot of food at the wedding feast. Three tables were filled with food and drink. There were three different kinds of meat. There was every kind of bread you can think of, including Pumpernickel, Rye, and Whole Grain. Several different kinds of sticky cakes lined all the tables. They were covered in several different types of frosting. Three different flavored cakes towered over the ends of each table. They were chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. Bob looked over at the tables and thought that it was wrong that there was so much food here when the peasants were starving.

An extreme example I will admit. Now I will show you how to pad this.

Bob saw no less than three tables buried in food. The tables were hand crafted especially for the wedding feast. The king had every carpenter in town working day and night to get them ready for the feast. The craftsmanship had been unmatched and the designs would have been breath taking if not hidden by the tablecloths and the food on top.

Three different carcasses were being carved for the guests. The first was a black pig that had reached maturity not three days before. The pig had been roasting for hours while being basted and spiced with sauces and seeds imported from every corner of the kingdom. It had been roasted to a succulent brown. The second was a turkey. They were difficult to find, so difficult Bob was surprised they had one. One man tore off a drumstick and put it on his plate. Other people picked at it with their hands. The last was a large side of beef. One man from the kitchens was using an axe to cut off pieces for the attendants.

Most of the second table had different types of bread arranged on it, dark loaves, light loaves, some in between. Each loaf gave off its on aroma as if just pulled from the oven. The patrons all used their own daggers to cut off their own slices. Some of them put it on their plate, others at it whole while still at the table.

Let me stop right there. If you are not bored reading the padding, just imaging you are trying to get through a 500-page book. Also, keep in mind that you know it is a wedding feast. Were you expecting them to just serve pigs in blankets and call it a day? Also, are there any concepts in this chapter that you are having trouble wrapping your head around? Of course, there are different kinds of meat and breads. Of course, people are serving the food. Of course, people are helping themselves to other portions. It has been proven in many studies that people who read tend to be more intelligent. It is alright to assume your audience can figure things out themselves, especially when it does not add to the story.

Here is how I would show this scene.

Bob remained in his seat as the guests lined up beside the three tables being smothered by the feast. He took a sip of his mead while the kitchen hand cut a piece of flesh from a pig that Bob probably saw out in the pens that morning. One of the guests wiped his mouth after not waiting to return to his table to try the beef. All the guests laughed and talked over the assorted breads and sticky cakes

Bob rose and turned from the table electing to stand in the windowsill, leaning out with his hands on the wall. He surveyed the townspeople down below. He wondered how many of them knew what a cake looked like, let alone seen three different cakes in the same room. He turned to look at all the guests swarming around the three tables and found it difficult to count them all considering several were big enough to count as two people. He looked back down at the townspeople, not finding one that he would consider large. His ride through the square introduced him to countless outstretched hands that could barely feed a crow if left on the ground. Bob gripped the wall tightly as he bent over slightly closing his eyes. His only comfort came from the image of him grabbing the pig off the table, and throwing it down to the people below.

You will notice in that the food was barely mentioned in the last passage. The scene is not really about the food. It is about the upper class gorging themselves, while the commoners are starving. People do not read fiction to get a grocery list. They read it for compelling stories.