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How to Show, Not Tell: The Complete Writing Guide

May 30, 2021
“The girl was afraid of nature and her heart pounded at every terrifying noise. But suddenly her fear disappeared. She touched the ground and felt like her new guardian.” What is wrong with this picture? Well, for starters, this passage doesn't really describe much of the picture. And it fails to make me feel anything as a reader. That's the central problem with

writing

that relies too much on

tell

ing. They

tell

us that the girl is afraid, that the noises are frightening, and that this place feels like a guardian. However, there isn't much evidence to support those claims. "Show, don't tell" is a phrase you've probably heard often in the

writing

community.
how to show not tell the complete writing guide
Author K.M. Weiland captures the distinction best: “Showing dramatizes. “Counting summarizes.” But it can be difficult to identify harmful instances of narration in his own writings. Counting is NOT inherently bad. In fact, all novels are a mixture of telling and

show

ing. It is not always necessary to "

show

" instead of tell. If that were the case, all stories would be ridiculously long and full of unnecessary descriptions. Counting is useful for quickly conveying the passage of time or presenting important facts to the reader without dwelling on the topic. Take a look at the beginning of the children's novel The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett: When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everyone said she was the ugliest-looking girl ever seen.
how to show not tell the complete writing guide

More Interesting Facts About,

how to show not tell the complete writing guide...

It was also true. She had a slightly thin face and a slightly thin body, thin, light hair and a bitter expression. She had yellow hair and a yellow face because she had been born in India and she had always been sick in one way or another. We are told some information about Maria, an unpleasant looking girl who has always been sick. But that claim is immediately supported by the visual proof of her thin face and hair, along with her sour expression. If someone criticizes her writing for "telling too much," it probably means she needs to provide details or a strong narrative voice to make the reader feel something.
how to show not tell the complete writing guide
Good writing invites the reader to visualize the scene and experience the emotions for themselves rather than being told how to feel. In his TED talk “The Clues to a Great Story,” Pixar writer and director Andrew Stanton proposes the unifying theory of two plus two. He says, “Have the audience put things together. Don't give them four, give them two plus two.” Wall-E's opening relies entirely on showing the audience the equation without giving them the answer, and he describes why that approach is effective: “Storytelling without dialogue. It is the purest form of cinematic storytelling. It's the most inclusive approach you can take.
how to show not tell the complete writing guide
It confirmed something I really had a hunch about: that the public really wants to work for their food. They just don't want to know they're doing that. That's your job as a storyteller, to hide the fact that you're making them work for their food. We are born problem solvers. We are forced to deduce and deduce, because that is what we do in real life. It is this well-organized absence of information that attracts us. There's a reason we're all drawn to a baby or puppy. It's not just that they are very cute; It is because they cannot fully express what they think and what their intentions are.
And it's like a magnet. “We can’t help but want to

complete

the sentence and

complete

it.” The same principle holds true for other non-visual modes of storytelling. The key to getting your audience interested in fiction is to imply your meaning instead of always pointing it out. Readers love the process of discovery and puzzle solving. Before we dive into some practical strategies, I want to take a two-minute detour to explore the origins of “show, don't tell” as a writing mantra, since it's not often discussed. In his 2004 book Creative Writing and the New Humanities, scholar Paul Dawson describes how the novel was transformed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries with the rise of realism as a literary movement.
Realism aims to tell the stories of ordinary people with complete honesty rather than romanticizing them. Dawson notes: “Beginning with Flaubert, the trajectory of the novel is often seen as the development of techniques for depersonalizing the narrator in order to erase the presence of the implied author and dramatize the action as much as possible.” Literary critic Percy Lubbock praised 19th-century realists for giving the novel a defined aesthetic, and it is his 1921 book The Craft of Fiction that probably popularized the idea of ​​“showing versus telling.” He says: "...the art of fiction does not begin until the novelist thinks of his story as something to be shown, displayed in such a way as to tell itself." Authors such as Virginia Woolf both praised and criticized Lubbock for limit the craft of writing novels to a formal system.
Her ideas were incredibly influential in the literary world. Basically, the intention of this advice is to turn the author into an invisible narrator and avoid breaking the reader's immersion in the story. Janice Hardy does a similar observation in his 2016 writing

guide

Understanding Show, Don't Tell: "A common rule of thumb: As long as it sounds like the character is thinking about it, you're usually fine. But as soon as it sounds like the author has If you're too nosy to explain things, you've probably fallen into telling it." If you want readers to experience the emotions of your story on a visceral level, you need to know when to show them.
In general, it's better to show moments that involve emotions, opinions, or sensations than to tell them. . Here are six guiding principles for a stronger “show.” Number one: use evidence to back up your claims. If a narrator says that her husband is a kind-hearted person, or the protagonist believes that her best friend is guilty of murder, what led them to that conclusion? Give the reader the same evidence the character uses when it comes to assumptions or opinions. Author Chuck Palahniuk advises banning "thinking" verbs like "thinks," "knows," "understands," "realizes," "believes," "wants," "remembers," and "imagines." He talks about “unpacking” scenes so that the reader feels and thinks what the characters feel and think.
He gives this example: Instead of saying, "Adam knew Gwen liked him." You'll have to say: “Between classes, Gwen was always leaning on her locker when she went to open it. She rolled her eyes and stepped away from her with one foot, leaving a black heel mark on the painted metal, but she also left behind the scent of her perfume. The combination lock would still be warm on her butt. And at the next break, Gwen would be leaning there again.” Palahniuk adds: “Instead of the characters knowing something, now you have to present the details that allow the reader to know them.
Instead of a character wanting something, now you have to describe it so the reader will want it.” You can draw readers into the story by presenting evidence (whether a visual detail or dialogue) and allowing them to come to their own conclusions about the impression you are trying to create. Number two: replace the abstract with the concrete. In particular, be careful when directly expressing a character's feelings. Harvey Chapman’s “Novel Writing Help” blog offers an excellent before-and-after example: Recount: “After his first kiss with Samantha, Toby returned home feeling happier than he had ever felt in his thirteen years.” .
Showing: “After his first kiss with Samantha, Toby couldn't keep the goofy smile off his face the entire way home. When he reached the front door, he jumped cleanly and didn't nearly stumble.” Chapman further explains why the changes work: "Happiness is an abstract concept and must be demonstrated (shown, not told) with concrete details, such as the broad smile and the door jump." Therefore, emotions can often be replaced with actions that allow the reader to infer the emotion. Also be wary of descriptions that use opinion-related adjectives, such as "beautiful" or "strange." In a first draft, he might write: "The dark forest seemed disturbing to me." Okay, maybe the character finds it disturbing, but the reader needs to feel it too.
I need to convince the reader that it is disturbing to use evidence: "The forest vibrated with the cries of long-dead children." That's better, disturbing enough. Replace adjective labels with details that allow the reader to interpret the atmosphere for themselves. One trick to identifying when you're in “abstract” territory is to ask a question Jeff Gerke poses in his book The First 50 Pages: Can the camera see it? Almost all examples of “showing” contain a detail that can be visualized, although you will often want to combine those images with smell, touch, taste, and sound. Author Jerry Jenkins offers excellent examples of how to replace abstract emotions with concrete actions on his blog: Cold?
Do not tell me; show me. Your character turns up his collar, adjusts his scarf, puts his hands in his pockets, and turns his face away from the biting wind. Tired? He can yawn, moan, stretch. His eyes may look swollen. His shoulders might sag. Another character might say, “Didn't you sleep last night? “You look shot.” Another way to think about this idea of ​​“camera” is to consider the effect and not the cause of a particular detail. Check out these additional examples from Jerry Jenkins: Revealing: The temperature dropped and the ice reflected the sun. Showing: Bill's nose burned in the frigid air and he squinted against the sun reflecting off the street.
Telling: Suzie was blind. Showing: Suzie searched the bench with a white cane. Revealing: It was late autumn. Showing: Leaves crunching under her feet. In the first example, the cold temperature is the cause of specific effects on the character, namely Bill's nose burning in the freezing air. Rather than being expressed overtly, details are shown through how the character interacts with the world around him, such as leaves crunching under his feet, making the scene more visual. Number three: replace vague descriptions with specific sensory details. Above all, showing depends on specificity. Unique sensory details make feelings and scenes jump off the page.
Author Delilah Dawson talks about invoking the senses to make world-building seem three-dimensional. In the first draft of a sentence, she writes: "Aga walked through the market, gaping at the rugs and spice containers." Now, you could have said, “Aga marveled at all the wonderful sights in the market,” but instead of using abstract concepts like “marveled” or “wonderful,” you include the concrete action of Aga gawking at the rugs and containers of spices. But although that creates a mental image, it is not very specific and does not invoke any sense beyond sight. In her second draft, Dawson writes: “Aga walked through the market as if she were in a dream.
Spicy cinnamon and rich coffee wafted through the air as she ran her fingers through silk tassels and barrels of golden saffron powder.” Adding details makes this description seem much more immersive and is unique to this particular story. By showing details, she tries to go beyond the obvious and expected. For example, a funeral scene often shows everyone dressed in black when it starts to rain, and the main character is standing with an umbrella in front of his mother's grave. What if you showed details that contrasted with the gloomy atmosphere? If an emotional scene seems too cliché, try changing the setting or the way the characters describe their emotions, as author Gail Carson Levine recommends: “What if, instead of a normal day, it was Christmas Day, in South Texas?
Goodbye drizzle, hello dry air. What if the tombstone has something written on it that doesn't make sense to anyone, but her dying mother asked you to engrave it on her tombstone? Maybe the friend will ask the MC what it means. Maybe they take their mind off the sadness by trying to decipher a saying. The emotional scene is no longer cheesy, because it is different.” Number four: avoid relying too much on body language. Many writing tips suggest using body language to convey a character's emotions. Crossed arms can indicate that someone is angry, while tapping fingers can indicate impatience.
Those physical details can make for good emotional shorthand. However, it's easy to rely too much on body language as a way of showing yourself. In real life, how often do you see someone clench their fists or clench their teeth when they're angry? How often have you done that when you're angry? Facial expressions and common gestures are great for quickly conveying a character's mood, but they rarely evoke an emotional response from the reader. In an article on the Live Write Thrive blog by C.S. Lakin, editor Robin Patchen describes how writers can show emotions through actions and thoughts rather than bodily sensations alone.
As she says, “Having a character clench their fists may show us that they are angry, but it doesn't show us the impetus for that anger. Do you feel frustrated, unappreciated or jealous? She gives a striking example of before andafter. The first version relies heavily on body language: Mary opened her eyes and looked at the clock. Her heart almost jumped out of her chest. The baby had slept almost eight hours. But little Jane never slept more than four hours at a time. Something must be wrong. No again. Her stomach dropped when she remembered the last time one of her children had slept too much.
At first glance, it seems that the story “shows” the character's emotions because her heart and stomach are reacting. But that same lack of subtlety makes the descriptions seem forced and melodramatic. Patchen's second version of this scene moves away from visceral reactions and focuses on the character's individual thought process: Mary opened her eyes and squinted at the sunlight streaming through the open window. She stretched, feeling more relaxed than she had since. . . She sat up and looked at the clock. It was after eight. Little Jane had slept all night. For the first time. Just like Billy. Mary threw back the covers and stood up.
She grabbed her robe from the back of the chair and put it on. She wouldn't think about Billy. The doctor said it wouldn't happen again. The odds against him were astronomical. Billy was almost six weeks old. Jane was almost two months old. This time was different. She had to be. The second example feels more "in the moment." Giving a real-time account of the character's thought process and her interactions with the environment can show emotional nuances better than body language. Patchen also uses strong verbs like “turned” and “snatched” to convey a sense of panic and urgency, along with ellipses that indicate that her thoughts are fading.
Word choice and sentence structure can be one way to show. Robin Patchen ends with this beautiful nugget of wisdom: “Counselors tell us that thoughts lead to emotions and emotions lead to actions. As a writer, you can easily show your character's thoughts and actions. Readers are smart enough to deduce emotions based on what characters think and do. Many times it seems that writers are in a hurry. When you have a very emotional scene, slow down. Let's hear your character's every thought. Highlight some details. Show the actions.” If you need help thinking about how feelings might manifest, check out The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, which lists a variety of ways you can convey different emotions, from heartbreak to wanderlust.
Number five: show emotion through dialogue. Dialogue is a powerful tool to show the reader a character's feelings or personality. Instead of saying, “Mary was mad at Bob,” you could have Mary yell at Bob, “You damn pickle salesman. How dare you!" This is also why many advice articles warn against using adverbs. They weaken the dialogue because they tell rather than show. In the dialogue above, we can tell Mary's tone just by her words , not to mention loudness, since he is yelling. I don't need to write "yelled angrily" because the word "angry" tells the reader information we've already shown.
Similarly, some writers are tempted to “telegraph” intentions. of a character in a conversation, even though the dialogue already shows that information: He tried to be diplomatic. “Please listen to what I have to say.” “Well, that doesn't matter,” he said, changing the subject. “Let's move on to another thing." In this exchange, the author tells the reader what conclusions to draw when he or she must trust that his readers are smart enough to figure it out for themselves. A revised version could include more images and a dialogue tag that conveys a tone specific: He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please listen to what I have to say.” "Well, that doesn't matter," she whispered. “Let's move on to something else.” When writing highly emotional dialogue, it can be helpful in your first draft to pretend that you are writing a play or screenplay, as this forces you to focus on conveying emotions through dialogue alone.
Oscar Wilde is known for his snappy dialogue, particularly in his play The Importance of Being Earnest. In the opening scene, a young man named Algernon visits his best friend Jack, who has come to propose to Algernon's cousin. The dialogue conveys the emotions of the scene: ALGERNON: You act as if you were already married to her. You're not married to her yet and I don't think you ever will be. JACK: Why the hell do you say that? ALGERNON: Well, first of all girls never marry the men they flirt with. The girls don't think it's right. JACK: Oh, that's nonsense!
ALGERNÓN: It is not. It is a great truth. This is due to the extraordinary number of singles seen everywhere. Secondly, I do not give my consent. JACK: Your consent! Based solely on the tone of their words, the reader can assume what the characters are feeling, even if that information is not told directly to the audience. You can learn more about how to write subtext in dialogue in my video on the topic. Number six: filter observations through narrative voice. "Show, don't tell" often means delving deeper into the narrative point of view, whether you're filtering the story through the lens of a character or a more distant narrator.
It's about providing details that allow the reader to feel more connected to the character's point of view through what they are experiencing. This closeness can be achieved by formulating simple statements in a unique way. Reddit user chevron_seven_locked shares some great examples of telling versus showing on the r/writing subreddit: He was a rude and inconsiderate man. This is revealing. We know the character is rude and inconsiderate because the writer told us so. "Get out of my way, you idiot!" he yelled at the woman who was struggling to get her stroller onto the bus. This is Show.
We can deduce that the character is rude and inconsiderate from the situation we have just read. Telling: She felt uncomfortable with him. Showing: She stiffened in his embrace. Counting: The house was huge. Showing: Her entire family could live alone in the kitchen. Counting: he was hungry. Showing: He Almost inhaled the soup. In all of these examples, we learn the same information through Show, but with more flavor and character. You'll notice that all of these examples involve replacing "was" with a more interesting verb, just as in previous examples. Since “was” and its cousin “felt” are often followed by an adjective, that can be a flag marking a place where a stronger verb could be used to create that particular image in the reader's head.
You can imagine a woman rigid in a man's embrace, or a kitchen big enough for a family to live in, or someone inhaling soup. This extends to world-building, backstory, and infodumps in general. Sometimes authors present information as a dictionary definition rather than a world reference that naturally fits into the story. As Janice Hardy points out: “A simple test for infodumps is to check whether the information is for the benefit of the reader or the character. If it’s for the reader, you’re probably abandoning it and it contains recounted prose.” The key is to filter the world building or exposition through the character's perspective.
Hardy compares different ways of showing the same scene depending on the character: The dull example, with Bob: “The rain was pouring down the restaurant window. Bob was sitting at the table, with a pile of pancakes next to him. He stared at an envelope in his hands, while above him, on the wall, a clock was ringing. A Navy SEAL character: “The rain hit the restaurant window like bullets from an Uzi. Bob was sitting at the table, his back against the wall, a pile of uneaten pancakes next to him. He gripped the envelope tighter with each tick of the clock above him.
New orders. Excellent." A scared little girl: “The rain covered the window and blurred the outside world. Bobbi was hunched at the table, her head barely higher than the stack of pancakes next to her. The envelope lay in her lap. She didn't want to touch it, much less open it. He looked at the clock and sighed. Running out of time." Let your characters' emotions influence the way they see their surroundings. The same goes for dialogue that feels like information given to the reader rather than something the character would realistically say. This leads to “As you know, Bob” situations in which one character explains something that another character already knows.
Richard: No, do you know that today we are heading to the land of the Giants to offer you the Jewel of Valencia in exchange for joining our quest to save Princess Isabel? Galavant: Yes, we discussed it last night in great detail. There is no need for your clumsy exposition. In these situations, the dialogue is not written in the character's voice; instead, it is the author who speaks, which takes the reader out of the story. Remember that characters have prior knowledge and experiences that exist outside of the narrative. Showing in dialogue often means including fewer details, as in this example from Janice Hardy: Reader Benefit: “I'll set up a small explosive device to open the door. “We did this when I was deployed to Afghanistan as a Navy SEAL.” Character Benefit: "Um, Kevin, where did you learn how to make bombs?" "The marine." The real purpose behind the “show, don't tell” advice is not to claim that all “telling” is bad writing.
Telling is often necessary to tie different scenes together, and the amount of narration used can depend on the genre, which Stewie Writes captures so succinctly: “Telling and showing are tools for controlling pacing. They help you concentrate and immerse the reader in important moments and anticipate others. What do you want the reader to remember? Identify what your ideal reader wants. Do you want a lush, immersive and meandering journey? Or a thriller at the speed of light? And as author Alix E. Harrow says, sometimes readers want to be told what is happening, as if we were listening to an oral narrator tell a good story.
She writes: “I want a strong narrative voice to come across the stage in a big monologue that explains the whole world to me as if I were five years old. I want the condescending clarity of a fairy tale or a myth, weaving a story together with a series of and then and until. I want a flat Southern voice to come up and say that what happened was…” Harrow specifically defends Micaiah Johnson's sci-fi debut, The Space Between Worlds, as an example of a work that turns exposition into something searing and compelling, with narrative tension. . The opening pages use a strong first-person voice to draw the reader in: When I was young and the multiverse was just a theory, I was worthless: an addict's brown girl in one of those rooms outside the walls of Wiley City. from which people do not leave or go.
But then Adam Bosch, our new Einstein and founder of the institute that pays me, discovered a way to see other universes. Of course, humanity couldn't just watch. We had to go in. We had to touch, taste and take. But the universe said no. Telling is part of what differentiates novels and short stories from movies and television shows. Fiction writers can repress thoughts and feelings in a way that cannot be fully replicated in another medium. The exhibit aims to push writers to try harder with their prose and brainstorm specific details that bring characters and the world to life.
That said, the phrase should be modified to say “show, not just tell.” As a quick cheat sheet, here are some places you might consider telling or combining telling and showing: • Moments unimportant to the larger narrative (like how a character got from Point A to Point B) • Summaries of routines, passage of time or repetitive conversations • Some aspects of magic systems or science fiction world-building (as in the Space Between Worlds excerpt) • Characters' thoughts • Occasional backstory and exposition or (This is usually presented as a broad sweep that tells along with specific details that show , as in the example of The Secret Garden.) And here are places where it is generally best to show: • Emotions o Particularly the main character's feelings and assumptions about how the other characters feel. • Sensations o This includes sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. • Thoughts or Words like “realized,” “thought,” and “knew” can mean this, but don't feel like you have to avoid them completely.
Just make sure there isn't a more interesting way to express it using concrete evidence. • Attributes or adjectives related to opinions o Especially in relation to how a character, place or situation makes the protagonist feel. If you make a statement like, "He was smart," back it up with evidence, such as mentioning the time he Macgyvered a wrench with dental floss and a spatula. • Flat phrasing o This could include overused words or a large number of "to be" verbs such as "was." Show means removeauthor as intermediary and let the reader experience the story firsthand. You can show it through specificity, action, dialogue, sensory details, internal thought, and narrative voice.
Your first draft will often contain more things to show. During revisions, you can review and highlight the parts that need more flavor. Look for points where emotions or descriptions seem vague. Replace them with specific sensory details and vivid vocabulary. If you want to learn more about telling and showing, I highly recommend checking out Understanding Show, Don't Tell by Janice Hardy. It's a short read packed with practical strategies for finding red flags when "counting." As a writing exercise, find a short paragraph or scene from one of your favorite books and replace everything shown with telling. Do you remember the passage I shared at the beginning of this video?
It's actually from a popular novel, except I rewrote it wrong. Here is the original text, which is an admirable example of how to show a character's emotions through her actions and a unique narrative voice. It's from Where the Crawdads Sing by Delila Owens: She Sometimes she heard night sounds she didn't know or jumped from lightning that was too close, but every time she tripped, it was the earth that caught her. Until finally, in some unclaimed moment, the heartache seeped like water into sand. Still there, but deep. Kya placed her hand on the moist, breathing earth, and the swamp became her mother.
Do you find it difficult to show instead of tell? Share your thoughts with me in the comments. Whatever you do, keep writing.

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