History Quotes / ShowDontTell

->''"A lot of characters in modern cartoons are simply mouthpieces for the writers. They speak in the writer's voice rather than the character's voice, tell the jokes that the writer and his writer friends think are funny, but are totally out-of-character for the character who is actually saying them. This common writer's flaw is known as "writerspeak". "I'll bet that asteroid will burn out in the atmosphere and shrink to the size of a chihuahua's head". That's writerspeak. It's informational, a setup for a gag that is supposed to happen at the end of the cartoon. A gag that the audience will predict the second they hear the writerspeak setup and congratulate themselves when they find that they were duped into being right. A gag that the cartoonists are not allowed to actually make funny by drawing the payoff funny. This is a line of dialogue that could be read by any character in the story. To the writer of a line like this, the characters are interchangable, just an assortment of extra mouths for the writer, whose mouth doesn't appear on screen. The writerspeak writer avoids writing character specific dialogue by using catch phrases. If you just tack on [[TheSimpsons "D-oh"]] at the end of the line, then you know who said it. You could change that to [[TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles "Cowabunga"]] or whatever else and instantly define your characters."''

-->-- John K, [[http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/04/writing-8-dialogue.html "Writing For Cartoons 9 - Dialogue"]]

->''You see, the difficulty of DarkSouls is the single biggest narrative device the game has. You don't need to be told that you're a weak piece of trash. [[NintendoHard The game will let you know that]]. You don't need to be told that you're in a dying world: you're experiencing it. You don't need to be told that this boss is a badass and you should fear them, you'll be feeling it as battery acid pump through your veins while you helplessly flail about trying to avoid their attacks while also doing damage when they're near death, but so are you. You don't need to be told that this is a world with a cycle of pain and suffering and death with brief relief in success because that will be your life.''

->''There's this woman with a wooden leg who also wants revenge on the same person. Even though her business seems booming, she says that he ruined her career. Literally, all they do is show a picture of her as a ballet dancer, and you get it. No tons of dialogue, no big explanation scenes, it's just one picture and boom, you understand.''

-->'''WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic''' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r3nALWHQaA on]] one of the (admittedly few) merits he found in ''Film/TheLoneRanger''

-->'''WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic''' on one of the (admittedly few) merits he found in ''Film/TheLoneRanger''

-->-- '''[[{{Nedroid}} Reginald]]''', [[http://nedroid.com/2011/02/advice-about-comics/ Advice About Comics]]

-->--'''''HardcoreGaming101''''' [[http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/myst/myst2.htm on]] ''{{VideoGame/Riven}}''

-->''Notes: This scene was clipped from Chapter 11 "Complications." It bugged me to remove it, but I couldn't put my finger on why that was, so I let it go. When it was too late to put it back, I finally realized what was bothering me. Though I refer to Bella's clumsiness in gym several times, I never really show it in action. This was the one time that Edward was "watching," and thus the natural place to showcase that clumsiness. Ha ha.''\\
-- StephenieMeyer on [[http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/pdf/twi_outtakes_badminton.pdf a deleted scene]]

-->''Okay, Beartato. It's time to begin my comics class. Lesson one is "Show, don't tell." What this means is- Beartato, sit down! What the- Oh no! A pterodactyl has appeared and it's carrying Beartato away! Beartato is using his martial arts training, but now there are '''two''' pterodactyls! They're taking him to their nest! Now he'll'' never ''learn about "Show, don't tell!"''\\
-- [[{{Nedroid}} Reginald]], [[http://nedroid.com/2011/02/advice-about-comics/ Advice About Comics]]

-->''Any dickhead with a bluesuit can be (and is) taught to say "make it clearer", and "I want to know more '''about''' him". When you've made it so clear that even this bluesuited penguin is happy, both you and he or she '''will''' be out of a job. [..] any dickhead, as above, can write, "but, Jim, if we don't assassinate the prime minister in the next scene, all Europe will be engulfed in flame".''
-->--'''Creator/DavidMamet''''s [[http://www.movieline.com/2010/03/david-mamets-memo-to-the-writers-of-the-unit.php master class memo]] to the writers of ''TheUnit''

-->''Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the things you are describing. I mean, instead of [[AndThatsTerrible telling us a thing was "terrible,"]] describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "delightful"; make '''us''' say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, "Please, will you do my job for me?"''

-->''"In Gehn's bedroom, you can find a spherical machine with a lever on it. If you activate the lever, you will see a video of a woman saying some gibberish: "[[SpeakingSimlish Blurga? Scrugla pridla bugga.]]" Boring, right? Well, you have to understand that this woman is in fact Gehn's wife and that the D'ni words she is saying can be translated as something like: "Is this thing on? My dear Gehn, I will love you for all eternity". Considering the woman in the Imager looks thirty-ish and Gehn looks almost seventy, it really makes you wonder: How old is this video? How many times has Gehn watched it during his thirty years of confinement in a lonely world? It almost makes you [[SympathyForTheDevil feel some sympathy for the despot he's become]]. You can also find his journal on his desk, where most of his writing is steady, self-assured descriptions of his nefarious plans, except for a single entry about his wife. It is extremely pale and shaky, ending in a smudge that suspiciously looks like [[EvenEvilHasLovedOnes a single tear]]. This really blows my mind: it's got to be the most understated tidbit of background information in a video game. How many games require you to have knowledge of an imaginary language to understand all the nuances of its story? And ''Riven'' is literally full of little things like these, which almost no one will ever notice. I feel for the Miller brothers since it must be frustrating. Maybe it's a bit like being the curator at the Louvres, who sees a new bunch of slack-jawed yokels walk around his museum every day, "oooing" and "aaahing" at the pretty sights for a while, without ever noticing anything about the deliberate use of colors, contrasts, lines or the different artistic movements and their place in history."''

--> ''Ash kept trying to stand up to me, but he was absolutely bad at it; he couldn’t even think of anything to argue back with.''
-->--An Anti-Ash '''Pokémon''' fanfiction.

-->-- '''[[http://permanent-monday.blogspot.com/2008/01/2008-pound-cat.html Garfield: Permanent Monday]]'''

--> ''You're supposed to weave exposition into the narrative: not hand the player a fucking glossary!"
---> [[ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee]], on [[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1569-Final-Fantasy-XIII Final Fantasy XIII]]

-> ''Ash kept trying to stand up to me, but he was absolutely bad at it; he couldn’t even think of anything to argue back with.''

--> ''Conflicting experiences:''
---> The first – and most apparent – kind is ludonarrative dissonance. What does that mean? Ludonarrative dissonance is when you watch a game cutscene where the hero laments his distancing relationship with his family, and then in the next moment, you’re driving a car over a hundred people. Ludonarrative dissonance is when a great warrior ally monologues about how cunning and fearsome he is, only in the next moment, he’s running in circles, blocking your path annoyingly, and then gets shot dead instantly. It’s when what the story ''says'' and what the player ''does'' or ''experiences'' don’t match up.
-->-- Blogger '''hitboxteam''' [[http://hitboxteam.com/designing-game-narrative on]] game design

-> The first – and most apparent – kind is ludonarrative dissonance. What does that mean? Ludonarrative dissonance is when you watch a game cutscene where the hero laments his distancing relationship with his family, and then in the next moment, you’re driving a car over a hundred people. Ludonarrative dissonance is when a great warrior ally monologues about how cunning and fearsome he is, only in the next moment, he’s running in circles, blocking your path annoyingly, and then gets shot dead instantly. It’s when what the story ''says'' and what the player ''does'' or ''experiences'' don’t match up.

-->--'''Creator/CSLewis''', letter to a fan who requested writing advice

-->--'''Creator/DavidMamet''''s [[http://www.movieline.com/2010/03/david-mamets-memo-to-the-writers-of-the-unit.php master class memo]] to the writers of ''TheUnit''

-->--'''DavidMamet''''s [[http://www.movieline.com/2010/03/david-mamets-memo-to-the-writers-of-the-unit.php master class memo]] to the writers of ''TheUnit''

->''Any dickhead with a bluesuit can be (and is) taught to say "make it clearer", and "I want to know more '''about''' him". When you've made it so clear that even this bluesuited penguin is happy, both you and he or she '''will''' be out of a job. [..] any dickhead, as above, can write, "but, Jim, if we don't assassinate the prime minister in the next scene, all Europe will be engulfed in flame".''