One of today’s writer hashtag games involves “Show, Don’t Tell.” Since I have seen approximately zero participants demonstrate an understanding of the concept and my blood pressure is skyrocketing as a result, here’s a quick tutorial.
What Telling Is NOT
Dialogue, character thoughts, and narration are not what is meant by “telling.”
Conveying any form of information to characters and readers is not what is meant by “telling.”
Someone is always telling the story. This ubiquitous axiom obviously is not advising against that.
What Telling Is
“Telling” is when the author interjects a vague, bland, toneless summary rather than writing a dramatization of the information they wish to convey. In fact, this whole concept may be easier to grasp if you recast the advice as “Dramatize, Don’t Summarize.”
Bob was angry.
The moon was full.
Clare did her makeup.
These sentences are information-shaped containers that the writer couldn’t be bothered to fill.
Readers always fill in some blanks because it is neither possible nor desirable for writers to record every minute detail, such as the type of collar on Aunt Gertrude’s dress or every step of a waltz during which a conversation takes place. If, however, the details omitted are significant or so frequent the text looks like a primer for beginning readers (“The sky is blue. The sun is hot. The water is wet.”), that voluntary blank-filling is replaced by heavy lifting.
Readers get testy when they feel like they have to do the author’s job for them.
Converting Telling to Showing
Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness—an empathy—was necessary if the attention was to matter.
—Mary Oliver
If you want readers to care about what you’re directing their attention toward, you have to find the feeling in it rather than reporting the bare minimum of information in a blah lump of “telling.”
Using the above examples:
Anger can manifest in a lot of ways, from silence to mass murder. Show Bob acting on his anger or grappling internally with his anger so we know what kind it is. Show how Bob’s anger affects other people.
If he threw his phone in the middle of a packed playground, he’d give a kid a concussion.
Might be worth it for the completely novel experience of seeing a mother take an interest in her child.
Unlike Samantha. Half an hour late for visitation, she finally deigned to text can’t. No explanation. No acknowledgement that what she couldn’t do was drag her ass to a park to see her daughter for the first time in four months.
Must have exhausted herself with that fucking apostrophe.
“Daddy?”
He scooped Jaci up with one arm and bussed her on the cheek, then broke her heart for the millionth time. “Bad news, peanut. Mommy can’t make it.”
A full moon isn’t a novelty. What’s special about this one that it deserves to be mentioned? If the distant satellite isn’t really the focus, show its effect on things in more intimate proximity.
The darkened second-floor window reflected the moon, round and bright as the silver candy dish in the parlor below—the perfect target for a fusillade of peanut M&M’s.
Cosmetics are a language unto themselves. Leaving it at “put some on” is as useless as a movie subtitle that says only “speaking in a foreign language.” How does Clare feel about what she’s doing to her face? What effect does she intend it to have on others?
Clare leaned as close to the mirror as she could without bumping the end of the eyeliner against it. Poking a stick at her eyes had been much easier when she wore contacts, but Harold said they were vain. Easier to crack her spine over the sink every morning for the rest of his life than to argue about the relative moral virtues of vision correction.
Thicker line on the top lid now that her skin was slumping over her lashes and swoop! up from the outer corner, perky as the curl on a duck’s ass.
Harold called this “war paint,” oblivious to the irony.
She donned this mask only to keep the peace. With him, her mother, her clients. With everyone who had righteously powerful opinions about the correct way for a woman to present herself to the world, like Moses came down from the mountain bearing the Commandments on one arm and the first edition of Biblical Vogue on the other.
Yes, these are all longer than the sentences that inspired them and took considerably longer to craft. They are also clearly participating in a story rather than rushing through an indifferent synopsis. Filling those empty vessels requires words and time.
Warning Signs
“Telling” frequently but not always uses a form of “to be” (is, are, was, were) to report that a thing exists in a state. Many writers, editors, and copy editors include a search for those words in their workflow because they’re associated with many writing weaknesses, including but not limited to vague, bland, toneless summaries. (No, not every instance of “to be” has to be killed with fire. Just the ones that suck.)
Less-searchable “telling” verbs also tend to be weak. For example, “put on” clothing is empty, while “squeezed into,” “shimmied into,” and “armored herself with” clothing evoke movement and attitude about the same act. The only way to catch these is by examining every sentence during line edits.
When Telling Is a Good Choice
Sometimes a summary is the way to go! (Nuance in craft? What a concept.)
If time passes and nothing of note occurs during it, go ahead and tell readers you’re eliding an uneventful period.
The latter half of the trip passed without incident.
If a character has to bring another character up to speed about events that readers just read in their entirety, summary is probably preferable to redundancy.
Sierra told Cerise the whole muffin saga.
Then get on with dramatizing the meaningful stuff.
“My STYLE is vague, bland, toneless summaries, and I shall never yield!”
Okay. Good luck with that.
I hope this helps. Never seeing another bad “Show, Don’t Tell” take is all the thanks I need, but if you’d like to express your appreciation via more direct action, my Ko-Fi cup is open to tips.