The pot, the vase and the kettle: ‘Show not tell’ and the role of visual art

Abstract

In this paper I investigate relationships between word-images in fiction and visual images in photography, film and multi-media in order to contribute to knowledge in relation to using ‘show not tell’ in creative writing. The immediate impetus for the inquiry is pedagogy in terms of my desire to understand the complex role of visual art in teaching ‘show not tell’ in creative writing workshops. As such, the inquiry concludes with an overview of a university-level creative writing workshop using visual art. While it is perhaps self-evident that visual art and fiction directly and indirectly influence each other, and that all representations are shaped by similar cultural shifts and expectations, less work has been done to show the relationships between different visual art forms and assumptions made about the portrayal of the real in fiction. The article is exploratory in nature and shows that, influenced by different art forms, the desire to ‘show not tell’ has been connected by writers and critics to the need in various periods to prove social injustice, to depict abstract, internal states, and to provide a sense of mortality, materiality and embodiment in response to modern life.