A Practical Demonstration Of How To Actually Show Instead Of Tell - Tumblr Posts

Writing Tips Pt. 8 - Show Don't Tell

Ah, the dreaded "Show, don't tell." The answer that gets trotted out in many a discussion when the question of "How do I improve my prose?" comes up. "Oh, but this is prose. Everything is telling!" some might cry (to which I say, "yes, buuuuut...that's not the point"). But none of that's helpful if you don't know what it means.

So let me show you.

First, for your consideration, an example:

Alice was scared. Bob was hunting her, and she feared for her life.

This is telling. We've told the reader that Alice is scared, that she's fearing for her life. That's as plain as the words on the screen. But it feels flat. There's no real depth to it. The reader can't really empathize with Alice, because while they know she's scared, they don't feel that she's scared.

We've told the reader, but we haven't shown the reader.

A brief diversion. The best example I've seen for how to write this actually comes from another Tumblr post, about how to write pain, though it can be applied to anything abstract.

Please go read because it's very good. I'll wait.

Done? Good.

The short of it is this: the post compares writing pain (or anything abstract, really) to drawing an egg, but you aren't given a white pencil, because we already know the egg is white. We need to see how the light hits it and the colors of the shadows and where the table reflects against the shell and the background behind it. Draw around the egg.

So with emotions, you need to write around them. Don't tell us Claire is happy. Show us, by writing the things that convey that happiness. Describe the bounce in her step, the brightness of the sunshine, the warmth in her chest. Show us Frank's heartache in his shortness of breath, the clenching of his heart, his narrowed focus, the muffled sounds around him. Set the mood rather than just telling us what the mood is.

Or consider a screenplay. In movies and television, characters don't just walk out onto the stage and announce, "I'm angry," and then deliver their lines. They stomp. They throw things. They slam doors. Their facial expressions contort. They flail their arms around in huge gestures and raise their voices. But they don't announce their feelings. You can use this in prose by describing the actions of a character to demonstrate how they feel, rather than just announcing their emotion to the reader.

Back to Alice.

Alice's shoulders quivered, skin dripping with sweat, breath coming in short, desperate gasps as she hid behind the couch. Bob's footsteps thundered through the silent house. The slap of the baseball bat in his hand tapped a tattoo against her eardrums. Louder. Closer. Beating in sync with the rapid flutter of her racing heart.

Now, instead of simply telling the reader that Alice is scared, we've pulled them into her world with description and metaphor to convey how being scared feels. The word "scared" doesn't even appear in the new example, but the reader still gets the message quite clearly.

This is how you show.

That's not to say you can never tell. Sometimes you need to. For instance, if your characters are going to have a long discussion about the intricate details of their preparations for a journey, you probably don't need to actually show us every last bit of that conversation. You can summarize it just fine. Or shorten a journey to a few lines if the destination is what matters more.

But for the most part, use your action words, flex your descriptive muscles, and show us what's going on rather than just telling us, especially when it comes to abstract things.