In the last couple of weeks, some kind of revolution has been picking up among self-published and indie writers in writing forums. Across Facebook and Twitter, a growing murmur has swelled into a cry of discontent. The mysterious arbiters of writing rules must be overthrown. Among one of the most hated dicta is the much-maligned maxim ‘show, don’t tell’. I shan’t describe my dismay at seeing this ‘rule’ being torn to shreds in comment sections—labelled asinine, dogmatic, dictatorial; threatened with relegation to obscurity. As a writer, an editor, and an English Teacher, it hurt. Not least because, despite arguments to the contrary, doing away with this little maxim will only harm those who spurn it.
Perhaps more worryingly, the adage of ‘show don’t tell’ is widely misunderstood and misapplied, leading to frustration all around. So this week, I interrupt the scheduled listicles to bring you a defence of 'show don’t tell', armed to the teeth with explanations and examples that will no doubt win the naysayers back to my side once and for all.
What does show don’t tell actually mean?
A quote (often misattributed to Anton Chekhov) comes to mind: ‘Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of the light on the broken glass’. While the exact origins of this particular sentence remain unclear, it is an abbreviation of some advice Chekhov once gave to his brother in a letter, and implemented himself in his short story ‘Hydrophobia’:
The dam, flooded with moonlight, showed not a bit of shade; on it, in the middle, the neck of a broken bottle glittered like a star.
‘Show don’t tell’ comes down to this: you need to trust your reader. Give them something to interpret, instead of holding their hand through the whole narrative. Keep your reader actively engaged in the story, let them see the expressions of your characters, the way they move, and the actions they take. Let them decide for themselves what that character is feeling. This doesn’t mean you must show everything in excruciating detail. It is a delicate balancing act. The difficulty is in knowing when something needs to be shown, and when it needs to be told, and more importantly, the difference between the two modes of writing.
In the list below, all of these things seem like straightforward, common-sense writing techniques. Perhaps you are already doing all of these things. But my deep dive into comment sections in the war against ‘writing rules’ revealed that sometimes, we just misapply well-meant advice.
Avoid adverbs
Be specific
Show through dialogue
Use sensory language
Avoid naming emotions
Adverbs:
Why do you hate adverbs? Look. I don’t hate adverbs. I just have a complex relationship with them. Why should they be avoided? Because they become crutch words that rob your sentences and dialogue tags of their flow and impact. As a reader, I must admit to getting more than a little irritated when every other sentence contains a word ending with -ly. Perhaps because it reminds me of marking my students' creative writing. I admit, sometimes, a good adverb adds just the right 'je ne sais quoi' to a sentence. But mostly, my gripe is that they slow down the action, removing the reader from the scene by telling them how they should picture it instead of just presenting them with the picture. In an earlier blog post, I compared them with seasoning. Too much, and the whole meal is spoiled. But with seasoning, it is also important to think about what compliments your dish, and what would throw the whole thing off kilter. So use them with caution and purpose.
When you are about to use an adverb (or are considering deleting one) ask yourself the questions:
1) What do I want my reader to be imagining here, and is there a more engaging way to achieve this?
2) Does this adverb alter the meaning of this sentence in a meaningful way, or will I be repeating myself?
Sometimes, you can replace an adverb by being more specific about the action you are trying to describe:
The problem with ‘angrily’ here is that it isn’t specific about the actions, so the reader doesn’t have a clear picture of what is happening. In the second example, we don’t need to add ‘angrily’ at all, because the anger is implied through the action—the strong verbs like ‘clenched’, ‘wrenched’, and ‘slammed’ show violence suggestive of rage.
We can do the same with dialogue:
Be specific:
'She stood anxiously outside the interview room.' What are you picturing when you read this sentence? If you are anything like me, you are grappling with a vague and amorphous sense of anxiety, and a door that shifts shape each time to try to grasp the image. Although the sentence has told you what is happening, it hasn't shown anything specific. An easy fix: give the details.
She paced the polished corridor, wincing at the squeak her synthetic leather shoes made over the pristine floor, and came to a halt opposite the door. She adjusted her jacket, her hair, her jacket again. The dark-wood door was inscrutable. Her mind raced. The voices from within were indistinct, but already her brain was filling the gaps in the fragments of dialogue. A bead of sweat dribbled down her forehead.
Dialogue:
Dialogue can be an effective method of showing the relationships between characters, and the emotions in the moment. But beware of using it for exposition. It is not so great for showing off your world-building or backstories. The hard and fast rule for dialogue is: does it make sense for these characters to be having this conversation, at this moment, in this context? If you have a character who is new to a place or a situation, it may well make sense that they ask someone questions. But if you have two characters who have a shared experience of the world discussing the ins and outs of everyday occurrences and well-established facts, it reads as though the writer has just popped out from between the pages to give you, the reader, a heads up. And unless you are writing some kind of satire or comedy fiction, the chances are, you don’t want to be tearing down the fourth wall.
If in doubt, look at George Lucas's dialogue in Star Wars, and then don't do that.
Sensory Description:
This advice tends to sew confusion among novice writers. Sensory language is essential to bringing scenes to life, to immerse your reader in the world of your book. But beware the telling verbs:
Saw/smelled/tasted/felt/heard (or their synonyms).
These create a barrier between the scene and the reader, and the description loses its immediacy.
A good question to ask when you find yourself using a telling verb or phrase: Where do I want the focus to be in this sentence? The actions of the character, or their perception of the scene?
In the above example, the emphasis falls on the streets, the commotion, and the plethora of sights and smells. The reader is able to dive directly into the scene.
If instead the author had written something like 'I see people everywhere, I notice the market is alight with colours, lanterns and streamers, the air feels thick with the smell of smoke and stench of alcohol...' The emphasis switches to the narrator, the scene feels more stilted, filtered through the narrator to produce a slower pace, as if the narrator is noting each thing in turn, instead of being surrounded by everything all at once.
Avoid naming emotions
By no means perfect, these lines from my WIP demonstrate this principle. I could have written something like 'I was frustrated, and the tightness of the dress was making matters worse. Panic set in as I struggled to shift my arms enough to cover my exposed shoulders. Overwhelmed and defeated, I allowed myself to finally cry'. Doing so, however, would create more distance between the reader and the character. It would be the written equivalent of your favourite soap star, in the middle of a moment of despair, turning to the camera and telling you, point blank, 'I am feeling really rather upset right now'. It just doesn't have the same impact. In the third person, to stretch this analogy further, it would be akin to the director coming on screen and explaining that the character is having a really tough time. Of course, some famous writers have done just this. This style of writing is a staple of Victorian literature. But in these instances, this style is carried off by a very distinct and powerful narrative voice. In Dickens's case, he also happened to perform readings of his written work to theatres full of people, so the narrator's witty remarks upon the actions of the characters he presents to the audience lend themselves to performance.
You are not Dickens. Nor should you be. What matters is that you are writing your story for your intended audience and purpose. If you have good reason to distance your readers from a particular character or scene, then by all means, do so, and I shall not quibble. But, as with everything in writing, be sure you are making stylistic choices with a purpose in mind. For most of us, our purpose is to create relatable characters and engaging narratives. And it is much easier to keep a reader's attention when you are showing them the scene, than talking over it.
Action and Reaction
One of the most useful ways of thinking about show don’t tell for me is this. For any action that takes place, there must be a reaction. Focus on showing us these reactions. Don’t tell me the sun is shining. Show me the dappled light through the translucent leaves. If a character is heartbroken, show me the ugly crying, the nest of blankets to which they have retreated, the lines of abandoned poetry (or whatever your sad cinnamon roll does in such dreadful circumstances).
Nuance: show, don't tell unless you really need to...
With all this said, there is, and always should be, nuance to the way we apply these ‘writing rules’. One of the strongest arguments I have seen against ‘show don’t tell’ wasn’t, at its core, rallying against the principle, but against the blind application of it to the exclusion of any other style of narrative voice. There are, certainly, moments where you can and should ‘tell’. In fact, now would be an opportune time to show some more of the famed Chekhov quote from earlier:
The dam, flooded with moonlight, showed not a bit of shade; on it, in the middle, the neck of a broken bottle glittered like a star. The two wheels of the mill, half-hidden in the shadow of an ample willow, looked angry, despondent . . .
In reality, he has both shown and told. The narrative voice clearly tells us that the imagery looked angry. This personification gives a sense of the tone of the narrator and their inner workings. But without the showing of the action (moonlight) and reaction (the ‘broken bottle glittered like a star. The two wheels of the mill, half-hidden in the shadow’), the scene loses its depth. Small pinches of telling, done well, can enliven the narrative voice, and add to the picture that is being painted.
Telling is also needed for those transitional moments, or parts of a story that you want to acknowledge, but not linger on. Training montages, for example—once you have shown one, it would get pretty repetitive if you showed the other six months' worth. Travelling, especially in fantasy, can be an opportunity for dialogue or unexpected action, but you probably don't need to show your readers every last bit of the journey. The list is not exhaustive, but the common thread remains: only tell when it would detract from the purpose of the scene. Katherine Macdonald covers this in her blog post with some excellent examples; I heartily recommend it for further reading.
A final word:
Perhaps, after writing all this, I might relent, just a little. Perhaps the powers that be might reconvene to think of a better name for this crucial piece of writing advice, if only to put an end to the griping. It's true, there are certainly times when telling is more suitable than showing. But when you hear 'show don't tell' from your editor, you can rest assured, the line in question really does need to show, not tell.
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