If showing is better than telling, why is Jane Austen still so popular?

The short answer is this: Because you can get away with more when you write comedy.

Now for the longer version. Pride and Prejudice was originally intended as a social comedy. At the time of its release (as a self published novel, no less), it was considered popular fiction, not great literature. Its success grew from people of middle and upper classes discussing it at dinner parties and was eventually picked up by a traditional publisher. Today we class Pride and Prejudice as Literature because of it's insight into human behaviour and the fact that it remains in print today.

Austen's insight into human behaviour and comical description of such is what drives the novel. Although the plot revolves around the budding romance between two characters, the middle class Elizabeth Bennett and the wealthy "old money" Mr Darcy, their romance is secondary to what the author is trying to say about British society at that time. I think part of the reason why the novel is still so well-respected today is that modern readers can see elements of themselves and their own social groups within the story, for example social climbing, the idea that you can better yourself by having rich and attractive boy or girlfriend, etc. A modern Pride and Prejudice would probably see the mother of five girls trying to get her daughters photographed as often as possible and married off to various businessmen, while one of the younger ones run away with a struggling musician.

Regarding the actual style, people are generally forgiving of books that are classics. Also, writing styles have changed and evolved over the years and the rules of writing have changed with them. The modern novel can see it's roots in most 20th century American Literature with authors such as Jack Kerouack and Truman Capote, and some of their British counterparts i.e, George Orwell. Their writing style was much more spartan than that of authors from previous generations. The writing tended to say far more in far fewer sentences. Often, what is not said in their writing is of more importance than what has actually been said. It is from here that the show don't tell rule emerged. As new generations of writers grow and develop, an author or a book will eventually come along that challenges these rules. (More likely than not, there are struggling authors out there who have already tried. However, until the right manuscript comes along at the right time and place and finds a person willing to take a chance on it, we as readers and writers will not see any change.)

Anyway, I'm not sure any of this really answers your question, but for what its worth, if Jane Austen tried to publish Pride and Prejudice today, she would have just as much difficulty now as she did back then. You'd probably find it listed for $0.99 on Smashwords.

While I am a large fan of 'showing' instead of 'telling' in writing usage, I believe that 19th century England wasn't really the location for a lot of 'showing' to go on, if you know what I mean. You can't say (insert Austen heroine here)'s face contorted with anger, because the heroine in a Austen novel would instead smile and make some sort of witty comment that contained some undercurrent-y barb.

I am a huge fan of Austen novels, but characters in Austen novels are very, very repressed in their expressions. If you've ever read the Gemma Doyle series by Libba Bray, you'll get what I'm talking about. Gemma and her friends are lively, spirited teenagers, but they 'show' a lot more than Austen heroines, despite being in the same era. I feel this is due to their personalities being very different from Austen-characters. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but you won't really have Elizabeth feeling 'the wind dance through her hair' or Anne "feeling the ache in her heart like a physical pain" or whatever the expressions of 'showing' usually tell. And that, for me, is really genius work, on Austen's part. Austen heroine's don't really "show" on a large level, so for Austen to tell the story that way would make it almost less ... authentic, almost.

Anyway, I don't really have a problem with how Austen writes, I love her the way she is. But it's a interesting question.

Jane Austen always favored to focus on the communication process among the characters. Conversations and interactions are much more instrumental in portrayal of characters than mere 'showing' them or describing them. Jane Austen's narrative technique is not considered as perfect nowadays. But Jane Austen will always be respected for her Neoclassicism and Romanticism, hand in hand.

Most Austen books are bought only to stock school libraries. If P&P were published tomorrow the only way it could hope to crack the top ten bestseller list would be to pull a Justin Cronin and have its scant symbolic message hyped harder than the iPad.

She's "well-respected" for the same reason other dead authors move beyond reproach. Try saying anything bad about The Lord of the Rings and you will find out that most of the world holds Tolkien's rambling epic to be the most immaculate piece of fantastic fiction ever written.

Look at Stephen King. When he started out he was just some hack writing scary stories for your entertainment. Now he's becoming more and more respected as he gets older and his first novels begin hitting a nice age. When he kicks the bucket no doubt King will be the Hitchcock of his generation, and scholars will sit around over-analyzing Carrie's hormonal rage or the ambiguous ending of The Mist.

"Ah, these Stephen King novels: they weren't just scary stories. They were scary stories that challenged how we think about ourselves, challenged the very form of the novel itself..."

She's still popular because her characters are kind of archetypes (not sure if that's the right word but I'll use it anyway.) Pride and Prejudice is a love story that's more original than Romeo and Juliet, I think. And a lot of women love Colin Firth, so I guess he and the BBC kind of have something to do with it.

you raise an interesting point, and I wouldnt say that her books are that popular now. They are well known thats for sure, but i think i could probably count the number of students at my school who have read any of her books on one hand. Jane Austen is one of my favourite authors ever and Pride and Prejudice is my favourite novel ever, so to be honest her writing style doesnt bother me and i think that its probably typical to authors of that time period.

Actually, stories in the older days actually did a lot of telling. Storytelling, for them, was all about telling a straightforward, solid and good story that people would want to listen to. As for Austen, her works hold the merit of having characters who are extremely believable. Her books are all very character-driven, and they move forward through the thoughts and beliefs and worries of the people inside of them. It deals with emotions and feelings and this is why the stories are still popular today, whereas the other stories of her time are no longer as famous - because they are plot-based, and the events and surprises and twists that come are not as plausible in today's modern society. How many older book plots could be solved with a fingerprint identification or a blood sample?

Telling isn't bad or anything. I actually listened to Stephen King give a live interview and he said that he thinks simplicity is the way to go. He likes things to be told if they need to be told and shown if they need to be shown. Why do you have to go through all of that "cerulean sheets of fabric" if you can just say the "curtains are blue"? The curtains are insignficant, unimportant, and don't move the plot forward at all. If you wanted to convey the room's appearance, just say the curtains are blue. They don't have a role. They just provide a mental image.

If her hair is brown, just say her hair is brown. Hermione Granger's physical description consists of "bushy brown hair". Rowling doesn't go into detail about it, doesn't say it's "soft, wild waves that flowed down her shoulders" or anything. She has brown hair. That's all. Cool beans.

I, too, prefer a telling style. It's simple and clean and it gets the point across faster. Austen knew exactly when to tell and when to show - tell what's around them, show when her characters are dealing with emotions, her books execute the difference impeccably.

As for skimming conversations - something she does in Pride and Prejudice too, when describing how Elizabeth's relationships with the people around her persist and change after her marriage to Darcy - I think it's just a technique that provides a clean ending. It's like wrapping up a fairy tale. "And Cinderella's stepsisters were condemned to servantry, her stepmother banished from the kingdom, and she and her prince lived happily ever after" or something like that. It's nice. It's uncluttered, it's straightforward, it's solid, it works.

There's nothing wrong with telling. I think it's just a writer's intuition. There are things you want to tell outright, and there are things you want to portray more significantly.

All the best with your writing and reading, Lyra (:

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when you are watching a television or movie it is very easy to get distracted and multi task, where reading a written e book, it usually has your full attention!

Because rules are meant to be broken. A lot of times we forget that the biggest rule about writing is that there actually *are* no rules that must be followed.

That's just her writing style. How she writes. What she does (and does damn well, too).

It's how Cormac McCarthy writes, too. He's able to use grammar as a tool, not a necessity to create a "feel" in a passage. He plays with it, too. It's kind of like, "Hey, let's put a comma there just because I feel like it."