We often hear writing instructors say, Show don’t Tell! But Showing versus telling is a difficult element to get your brain around.
With Showing, the key isn’t to describe everything and fill in the gaps for the person, it’s to let them into the pov character’s head and communicate enough for them to experience with the character –their emotions, their journey.
Let’s take a common issue: conveying emotions.
If you say: She felt grief, or even eg; (and this is more common), “Grief overtook her”, you are pinpointing one emotion your reader must feel with the character. Instead, show us how despair makes her feel – physically, or act, or think, or even see the word. Let us into their heads:
E.g.: She stood at the edge of the closet and stared at his polished shoes, at his pressed wool suits, at his crisp silky red ties. A tidy man. Not the kind to wrap his car around a tree. But there, in the back…she pushed aside the shirts and pulled out his letter jacket, the one he’d wrapped around her the night they’d met. She inhaled. Thirty years, and still his scent lingered. Please, let it linger. Please let her rewind, go back to the fight, erase her words. Erase his anger. Without a word, she stepped inside the closet, closed the door behind her, pulled the jacket over her, and wept.
Never once do I say that she is grieving – but (hopefully) you get it. The point of not telling, and showing isn’t to dumb down the reading, but rather to connect us more to the POV character.
Here’s a rule of thumb, also – Tell actions that are common to all of us – she tied her shoe, she made coffee, she answered the phone. SHOW things that you want to make impact.
E.g. – if you want the answering the phone to have impact, then have her reach for the phone, check the caller id, maybe hover her thumb over the receive button. Then push it before her courage fails (or whatever).
Telling is when you TELL someone how to feel. It relates to the emotion to the story. If I had said, She stood in front of the closet and grieved, that would be telling the reader her emotion.
Further from that, but also a bit telling, is She stood in front of the closet and felt grief course through her.
Better would be She stood in front of the closet and wept.
Best would be to use the action – the example I gave.
Ask: How does the emotion impact your character, and how can I show it without telling us what the emotion is? Show us the emotion, don’t tell us that it exists.
Also — Adjectives TELL, Specific NOUNS and active VERBS show…However, TELL us when it’s something usual and normal. He sat. He didn’t bend at the knees and lower his body. She took out the toast and buttered it. Not, she gripped the bread with two fingers, trying not to let it burn her, and then, with a knife, spread butter across the surface.
And by the way, physical description is not telling.
Narrative can be telling, if it is a long passage of back-story. But two lines of back-story are not telling. Can they be conveyed better? Sure – put them into dialogue – a much better way to convey back-story. Or even, inner thought. But that is also not telling.
The bottom line is… What does a POV character DO because of what it is (aka, feels).
A man cries because he is sad, a girl cowers because she is fearful, a plane roars because it is loud
Here’s some CLUES to know when you’re telling:
Felt, -ly words, watched, saw, was (when was is used as the action verb), saw, looked (like she “looked” happy) – anytime you use a word to simply state how something is.
There are times to tell, but if you want to make an emotional impact…show.
Now, after you’ve written your novel (or even now!) Go to step 11 to learn how to SELL it.
