Show Don't Tell: a mini lecture

One piece of writing advice that tends to hang up a lot of writers is the infamous “Show Don't Tell.” Unfortunately, it’s become so ubiquitous as to be little more than a cliché and thereby practically meaningless. And yet, it still haunts every writer that I talk to with the gnawing sense that they cannot “tell” anything.

For the record, I like to treat writing advice like the pirate's code: more like guidelines than actual rules.

Our goal is not to flawlessly execute a writing system or perfectly abide by writing rules. Writing rules and systems are meant to support the creation of the work, to help us produce the effects for the reader that we’re aiming for.

When we say “Show Don't Tell,” usually we are only trying to address a handful of common writing pitfalls rather than laying down an unbreakable rule. For example:

Demonstration of Character

When people say “Show Don't Tell,” one of the things they're often referring to is how the characters come across on the page.

The reality is that your characters should behave in accordance with who they are. Their qualities should be evident in the decisions that they make in the story, which naturally shouldn't require them being narrated to the audience.

But that doesn't mean that it's never acceptable to provide a description of a character or their characteristics.

For example, a POV character may pass judgment about the kind of person another character is. This actually tells us far more about the POV character. Or there may be a lapse between what a character thinks about themselves and how they actually behave.

The point is that your character's behavior should prove out what kind of character they are. Similarly, when a character changes, that change should be evident in their behaviors and decisions as well.

Demonstration of Emotion

Another place where “Show Don't Tell” is often applied is emotion.

Second hand reported emotion tends to have less impact than connecting that emotion with visceral feelings, behaviors, or sensations. One way to think about emotions is a cluster of experiences that we apply a label to.

“Sad” is itself abstract, but the experience of your eyes stinging, your limbs shaking, or the attention lingering on the photo of a since-passed relative more readily evokes the emotion than naming the emotion itself.

Specificity of detail

A third use is attempting to communicate the specificity of details.

Supposedly, the “Show Don’t Tell” advice is originally attributed to a letter from Chekov where he says

“In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you’ll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball.”

Notice that he doesn’t say “show don’t tell” at all. Rather his focus is on specifics and the grouping of details to best effect.

The details you choose depend on what you want to draw your reader's attention to. If the quality of the darkness outside isn't important, only the fact that it is dark to indicate time or the passage of time, it may be just as well to say it was dark outside rather than describing the texture of the dark. If you simply tried to follow “Show Don't Tell” all the time your manuscript would end up being 800,000 words long, and 99% descriptions because you tried to show everything.

“Show Don't Tell” naturally breaks down as an all encompassing rule.

Instead, what I think is much more useful is to think in terms of specific and relevant details.

Where do you want to draw the reader's attention? What effect are you trying to create? What details about characters, about the environment, or about the POV character’s thoughts or feelings will help produce that effect?

When you're telling a story, you are curating an experience for the reader. So if something isn't relevant, feel free to gloss over it and then spend your word count on the things that are important. Then you can look for the details that will most meaningfully convey and evoke that experience.

Don’t worry about “Show Don’t Tell.” Instead, think about where you want to direct your reader’s attention.

This was originally a mini lecture I gave in Novel 101 which you can watch below!