6 Ways for Writers to 'Show' Instead of 'Tell'
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“Show don’t tell” is one of the most frequent pieces of advice in writing circles. On the surface it sounds straightforward: rather than telling the reader, “She was sad after reading the letter,” show them by describing her sadness. For example, “As she read the letter, her hands began to tremble. By the last Farewell, the weeping started and wouldn’t stop.”
However, some would argue that turning every 7-word sentence into a 20-word sentence will simply lead to bloated books. Others fear that describing a feeling might increase the ambiguity for readers who feel sadness (for example) in a different way. And how does this showing fit in with advice for tight writing stripped of anything superfluous, as recommended by writers like Ernest Hemingway?
Here, we’ll dig into 6 practical tips to show instead of tell to help you know when and how to use this literary tool (and deploy it to greatest effect).
1. Focus on Feeling
Showing feelings achieves two important aims: it illustrates how the character feels a particular emotion, and it presents the reader with a visceral array of physical sensations to improve their sympathy with the character. Even if a reader hasn’t experienced the same situation as the one the character is going through, tying the emotion back to physiological responses could bring to mind times when the reader felt something similar.
To use this technique, pay attention to how your emotions feel in your body. Do you get hot or chilled? Do muscles tremble, get tight, or strain? How do heart rate and breathing shift? What about sweat, involuntary movements, tears, shivers, or prickled skin? It helps to pull from these responses when writing, but keep in mind two characters may not express the same emotion in the same way. A bottled-up character might feel rage silently, the only sign a reddening of the face and a slightly shaking fist; while another character may find rage makes them scream and throw things.
Figure out how each character expresses their feelings in a way that’s true to their nature and refer to your notes when you need to tug on the reader’s sympathy. Even if they don’t agree with the character’s actions and reactions, sympathizing with how they’re feeling can improve their understanding and acceptance for the ways your characters behave.
2. Employ the Senses
Emotions aren’t the only way to draw a reader into the story. To make a scene come alive on the page, remember to engage the five senses: sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch. Many new writers default to describing what everything looks like, and this often results in a lot of telling: “The cat in the room was orange and very friendly.” But by employing the other senses, you can make that cat feel real. “As soon as I entered the room, an orange cat bee-lined for me, tail waving. As soon as I touched its long, soft fur, a rumbling purr filled the silence.”
The first example tells us facts. The second example puts us in the room, gives the cat motion, and creates connection. Instead of telling the reader the cat is friendly, we show it in the waving tail, the immediate greeting, the loud purring.
To employ this technique, look for places where you state a fact to the reader and see if you can rephrase it in atmospheric detail, characterization, or interaction between your protagonist and the world around them.
3. Get Specific
Another way to show is to get more specific with your nouns and adjectives. To avoid needing to launch into a telling explanation, find more efficient ways of introducing an object, person, or place.
Rather than, “The amusement park was out of service and no one had been there in twenty years to clean it, so all the roller coasters were overgrown with ivy. That was all that could really be seen behind the gates.” Try, “The abandoned amusement park hunkered behind the boarded-up gates. Behind them, the spines of ivy-clad roller coasters jutted into the sky.” We used a combination of evocative verbs and specific adjectives to condense this description. By making our subjects of observation carry the verbs, we also avoid passive sentences.
The same goes for rooms, meals, and background characters. Rather than just a single woman, a strange car, a bowl of pasta — get specific. Consider the different impacts of a stout widow versus a voluptuous redhead; a gleaming Lamborghini versus a rusted-out Chevy; an aromatic bowl of linguini alfredo versus a bowl of anemic macaroni with not enough cheese.
Look for places where you may have rambled a bit, and see if there are ways to choose less but more impactful descriptions to show the reader what you mean. By choosing your words with care, you’ll paint a clearer picture right off the bat, and then you don’t need to waste words explaining.
4. Use Active Verbs
Try to deliver information by turning a statement into an action. Like our sadness example (a noun), we used trembling hands and unstoppable weeping (verbs) to show the feeling in action. Look for places where a fact can be demonstrated through movement: running late, being overworked, getting frustrated, feeling ill, etc. In these cases, you don’t necessarily need to completely remove the told fact. By adding in more shown detail, you can make that fact have more punch.
For example:
Janet was running late. She already had two strikes against her and she was still on probation. If her boss caught her one more time, she’d be fired. She ran for the train but missed it. She ended up having to call a cab.
At the office, she tried to sneak from the elevator to her cubicle without being seen, but her boss caught her and called her to his office. She was filled with dread.
Serviceable, but not very engaging. Let’s see what a bit of showing can achieve.
Janet ran as fast as her pumps would allow. She reached the platform winded, only to see her train disappearing down the track. “Come on!” she shouted after it. “I can’t afford to lose this job!” Looking at her watch, there was nothing for it; she’d have to hail a cab.
Twenty frantic minutes later, she slunk out of the office elevator, eyeing the safe haven of her cubicle just across the hall. She might actually escape that third strike after all… Behind her, a throat cleared.
“Janet.” Her boss’s hard voice punched through her fleeting optimism. “Late again while still on probation? My office. Now.” Janet’s heart sank all the way down to those stupid pumps.
See how we get more context, setting, and clarity when we use those verbs? Janet’s body language, her struggles, her actions, thoughts, and words carry us through the information we so dryly delivered in the telling version.
5. Weave Information into Action
Another place where writers often get called out for telling is in exposition. Now, exposition is not inherently a bad thing. Where it becomes a problem is when authors “info-dump.” This usually happens when they’re setting up something important to the plot, the character’s backstory, or the worldbuilding, and they realize the reader really needs to understand some fact or detail in order for the next scene to make sense or have an emotional impact. It’s good to write these scenes out because they can help the author understand these crucial connections, but be sure to review them during your revisions.
Usually you can break up info-dumps by weaving the salient details back through the previous scenes. Rather than telling us your hero is afraid of dogs, is there an earlier scene where you can have a dog bark from a passing car and show them flinching? This kind of showing is really a kind of foreshadowing. Trust your reader that if you indicate a detail—an allergy, a hidden weapon, a favourite relative—when you use a dramatic twist regarding this detail later, readers will remember.
Of course, choose moments that have space to deliver these details. Slotting too many into the midst of a fight scene can disrupt your momentum. But if you have a scene full of dialogue, or a transition from one location to another, these quieter moments can be the perfect place to deliver revelations, hints, or important details.
6. Find Balance
Some of these tips require a few more words, others require a few less. How do you make sure that you’re not telling when you should be showing? It’s all about balance. Save the showing for important moments: emotional scenes, foreshadowing details, building out a setting, or delivering crucial information (as we discussed above). But if there’s something utilitarian that needs to happen for pacing — a skip in time, getting a character from work to home, or smalltalk that doesn’t reveal anything new or important — these are the places where you should condense and tell.
Three years later,
Yes, obviously things happened in three years, but they aren’t relevant.
The whole drive home, she was on autopilot.
If she’s on autopilot, the character isn’t engaged, so we shouldn’t have insight into what exactly happened.
They talked about the weather and their sons’ upcoming soccer game, but all the while, her eyes kept drifting to the coach.
The character isn’t focused on what they’re discussing, so we don’t hear the specifics; her attention is clearly elsewhere…
See how in these “telling” examples, we’re skipping over things that aren’t important to our story? Remember that what you choose to omit has just as much meaning as what you choose to include. Consider “showing” like pulling the reader in close when you want them to pay attention, to be immersed, to feel something. Meanwhile, “telling” is like fast-forwarding, glossing over, or creating distance. Books need both to create a smooth and dynamic reading experience.
So, the best advice is not to never tell — but to know when and why to tell, and when and how to show.
