“Show, don’t tell” may be the most repeated, and least helpful, piece of writing advice ever given. As soon as I say that to a new author, they ask, “What does that mean?”
This cute little aphorism sounds so simple and in reality is so complex.
Experiencing is Worth a Thousand Words
The basic idea is easy enough. Instead of telling your reader what a character is feeling or what is happening, you let the reader experience it through action, dialogue, sensory details, and the character’s reactions.
For example: Sara was nervous about the interview. She was afraid she would say something stupid and ruin her chances of getting the job.
Nothing is particularly wrong with those sentences. We know exactly what Sarah is feeling. But we’re being told about the experience rather than experiencing it with her.
Now try: Sara wiped her palms on her skirt before reaching for the office door. She stopped with her hand on the knob.
What was the interviewer’s name again?
Wonderful. She’d forgotten his name before she even got into the room.
Same information. Very different experience.
Put Your Reader Inside the Story
The second version puts us inside the moment. We don’t have to be told Sarah is nervous. We figure it out for ourselves.
And that is usually what an editor means when you see the words “show me, don’t tell me” written in your notes.
Usually.
Because here’s the part that gets left out of that cute little aphorism:
Sometimes you need to tell.
In fact, you have to.
Imagine if every meal, every drive to work, every change of clothes, every passing emotion, and every trip from one location to another had to be dramatized in real time. Your 80,000-word novel would become 800,000 words—and your reader probably never makes it to Chapter Three.
Three weeks passed. That’s telling.
And sometimes it is exactly the sentence you need.
The trick isn’t learning that showing is good and telling is bad. The trick is learning which moments deserve to be experienced by the reader and which ones simply need to be communicated.
If Sara’s job interview changes the course of the novel, you want to be in that room with her.
If she gets the job and spends the next three uneventful weeks filling out paperwork and learning the office computer system, please feel free to tell me that.
This becomes particularly important with character.
A writer might tell me: John was arrogant, but underneath his confidence he was deeply insecure.
Okay. I know something about John. But what if John corrects the waiter’s pronunciation of a French wine, then quietly checks the menu under the table to make sure he pronounced it correctly himself?
Now I know John.
Better yet, I’ve been allowed to form my own opinion about him.
That’s one of the great advantages of showing. It makes the reader a participant. Instead of handing readers a conclusion, the writer gives them the evidence and allows them to reach it.
Perhaps the problem with “show, don’t tell” is that it isn’t really a rule.
It’s a choice writers make sentence by sentence and scene by scene.
Tell me what I need to know.
Show me what I need to experience.
Knowing the difference?
That’s the hard part.