Is this show or tell?

Rather than show versus tell, I'd point to 'in response' and 'umdaunted', which are narrator's thoughts intruding on the stream of action.  It would be perfectly proper in a report of the battle, but might take away from a story about the battle.

Is the PoV character observing or analyzing?  Or both?  Is she creating a report?

Is this paragraph about the battle, or about her reaction to it?  Without context, I assumed the former.

I think Vern's point is right on target. To me, "tell" is a dry narration of events as they happen. Medical writing is the classic dry "tell":

"The patient presented with a history of blunt force trauma to the abdomen. An exploratory laparoscopy was performed, revealing 20 ccs of bright red blood in the peritoneal cavity..."

It's as if the purpose of this writing style is to strip away all drama from even the most dramatic scenario. So if you're describing a battle, show the events in graphic, action-packed detail. If you merely summarize what happened, you're introducing the kind of clinical detachment that makes a scene less tense and exciting.

In your specific example, I think sentences like "The marines were hopelessly outnumbered" and modifiers like "In response" are dry "tell" -- the kind of narration you'd find in a war documentary. On the other hand, when you describe the colonel charging at the enemy and firing his crisper (cool name for a weapon, BTW), even after an arm has been blown off, that's riveting stuff -- definitely "show." I'd also go easy with the adjectives and adverbs. Others may disagree, but I find that prose choked with modifiers reads more like "tell" in that it tends to ramble on rather than cut straight to the action/point. Your example, for instance, is cluttered with extraneous modifiers (highlighted in caps below) that kill your pace:

"walked [PURPOSEFULLY]"... "[HEAVIEST] stream"... "moved RELENTLESSLY forward" (why not just "charged/barreled/pressed/drove forward"?)... "[HEAVILY] muscled man"... "[CONTINUED] firing his crisper" (why not just "fired his crisper"? or "kept firing his crisper?"), etc...

In sum, ditch the extraneous adverbs/adjectives and passive sentences (e.g. "Soon, weapons fire targeted the Marines from three sides..."; "causing the enemy to fall back in fear") and your battle scene will be much more gripping.  --Gray

Here are my two cents:

I will start with the terminology. Above, Vern stated anything on a written page is “told” as opposed to anything on a movie screen that is “shown”. This is absolutely true. Thus, we writers cannot show anything unless our books include pictures, drawings, or photographs. Everything we write is a narration, therefore, everything is “tell”.

The above said, the word “show” is used in the expression “show don’t tell” looking forward to highlighting a writing style currently in fashion, not necessarily the act of “showing” as defined by a dictionary. This writing style is nowadays being forested based on the assumption the readers prefer it—an arguable assumption that can be discussed at length in another thread.

According to Patricia C. Wrede’s (author of The Enchanted Forest Chronicles) blog (2015)  “ …’show’ generally means ‘dramatize.’” Furthermore, “‘Telling the reader’ means giving the reader the conclusion they would draw, without giving them any of the actions or thoughts or descriptions that would lead them to that conclusion. That is, rather than saying that George is both mean and a miser, the writer ‘shows’ him complaining about his restaurant meal in order to avoid leaving a tip, turning the heat down on a bitterly cold day, kicking a puppy, etc.”

From my standpoint, and according to Wrede’s definitions, which I consider valid, the paragraph Norm d´Plume is quoting is a combination o “show” and “tell” elements:

“Soon, weapons fire targeted the Marines from three sides as Classiarii forced their way through other hatches”, is SHOW, because the narration is being dramatized.

“The Marines were hopelessly outnumbered.” This is telling. No elements are provided to draw the same conclusion (e.g., amount of soldiers on each side).

“In response,” This is telling, because the reader has no means to reach the conclusion Montford is acting “in response of”.

“Colonel Montford stood up and walked purposefully into the heaviest stream of oncoming fire, taking out one Imperial after another until they blew off his left arm at the shoulder.” This is showing, even though “walked purposefully” can be considered telling. There are ways to dramatize “walked purposefully”, like “strode stomping his feet”, “his gaze fixed on the enemy”, “shoving away the people on his way”, which would help the reader to conclude that he “walked purposefully”.

There’s no pure “show” and there’s no pure “tell”, even though you can have a higher number of either element in a paragraph/scene/chapter/novel leading to conclude that it is a “show” or “tell” story.

My personal conclusion is that Norm d’OPlume’s paragraph is “show”. It would be “tell” if it would be written in the following way:

“Outnumbered, the marines were attacked from all sides. In response, Montford retaliated, even though he lost an arm. The marines followed him and the enemy withdrew.”

Because there’s no dramatization, “tell” is shorter than “show”. IMO, nobody writes a 100% show or 100% tell story, even though, nowadays, stories tend to have a higher “show” component than, let’s say, 50 years ago. The reason why there are no “pure” show or tell stories is because both writing styles have their right moment in a story. E.g., “Two months passed” is tell. As a writer, you are not interested in narrating in detail what happened during two boring months, and neither is the reader. You fast-forward the story from February to April because the next event relevant to the story cannot take place until the winter is gone and the weather has warmed up a bit.

Whether you show or tell depends on the circumstances. You can tell “John is angry” or show that he is angry because you narrate he’s kicking the furniture, yelling, cursing, and throwing objects out of the window. You can tell Jane blushed, or show she felt her face hot and, when she saw herself in the mirror, saw her cheeks red (in the latter case, the reader will think, “Oh, she blushed!”).

“Show” also involves description. “A nice cottage,” is telling. Describing it was a little, perfectly well painted cottage in the middle of a forest, that it had a chimney that heated it to a comfortable temperature (you can show even more by indicating it was 23°C), that the furniture and the linens were in good condition, and that it was clean and few disturbing sounds could be heard in the night , is showing. The reader will then conclude: “Oh! What a nice cottage”. Whether there’s enough room in your story to describe everything, is another pair of shoes. Too much description may be boring. Too little may hinder the reader’s ability to properly picture the settings.

IMO, the reason why so many how-to books and writing gurus insist in “show vs. tell” is because, as I started in my first paragraphs, there’s the impression XXI century readers prefer the “show” writing style, or, stories with a higher number of dramatized scenes and richer description. Whether this is true or not, is debatable. Time will tell if the “show” style is really superior. In past times, too much dramatization or too much description was considered info dump and discouraged.  Now it’s the other way around. A matter of taste.

Kiss,

Gacela

Reference:
Patricia C. Wreder. (2012, July 15). Show vs. Tell [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2016/ … style.html

A little off topic, but how many video streams are there? If the watcher is watching him walk toward the enemy blasting one after the other, I picture a video stream behind him somewhat. But if his eyes are bulging, there has to be a stream from ahead of him as he walks toward the enemy, sans arm. If that's the case, why so many video cameras in the corridor? How often does someone on the bridge have to keep an eye on the corridor outside the bridge? Or are these those floating video stream drone things always hovering about? Ha ha ha!