It’s one of the oldest writing “rules” in the book, and probably dates back to the time they were carving stories on stone tablets: Show don’t tell. You hear this all the time. Here’s what “show don’t tell” means.
UPDATED 5/30/19
What show don’t tell means
With the understanding that “if it works it works,” and there are always exceptions, in general: universal emotions should not be “told.”
It’s not interesting to be told that Brad is sad or Mary is merry.
Instead, we should be shown how the character is reacting to their feelings.
We should see Brad crying or Merry jumping for joy.
Why we find reactions interesting
I’m of the opinion that we read books in order to get to know our fellow humans better. We are empathetic animals and are able to put ourselves in the shoes of characters, and thus, we have a pretty keen idea how we’d be feeling in any given situation the characters find themselves in.
And emotions are universal: we all feel sad, angry, happy, emotional, etc. etc. But how we react to those emotions are completely and infinitely different. That’s what we find interesting when we’re reading books and it’s what show don’t tell means.
Being told that a character is “angry” is not very interesting. We’re reading the book, we know his dog just got kicked, of course he’s angry! It’s redundant to be told that the character is “angry.”
More interesting is how the character reacts to seeing his dog kicked. Does he hold it in and tap his foot slowly? Explode? Clench his fists?
Even if it’s a first person narrative and the character knows he’s “angry,” it’s more interesting for the character to describe how he’s feeling or what he’s thinking rather than saying, “I was so angry!”
Other applications of show don’t tell
This also applies to:
- Physical descriptions – It’s not interesting to merely hear that someone is “pretty.” What characteristics make them pretty?
- Characterizing relationships – It’s not interesting to only hear that two people are “close.” How are they close? What do they do together?
- A character’s thoughts – Rather than diagnosing your characters, show them teasing things out and being more vague with their thinking, just like a regular human being.
Basically, whenever describing something, especially something universal: specificity wins. That’s what show don’t tell means.
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Daniel – That was a great example of show and tell where the author shows just enough details to create a visual scene in the readers mind, but then shapes their interpretation of what they are seeing by telling them something.
A quick show and tell:
John looked up at a Henrietta and smiled, glad that she’d come. When his eyes met hers, pink blotches spread across her narrow face. She pushed her thin, brown hair behind her ears with trembling fingers, and as he knew she would, she dropped her eyes to study the splintered floor beneath her feet. His smile widened, and he reached for her hand.
His friends shuffled and coughed behind him, but he ignored them. He knew they thought Henrietta was plain, and for reasons he would never understand, they didn’t see what he saw when he looked at her.
— Now, in this example, I don't have to waste valuable word count showing what each of John's friends see when they look at Henrietta, and for that matter, what John actually sees when he looks at her.
BTW, Patty, style is adaptive to both the genre and the scene based on what the writer is trying to convey artistically with minimal words. By explaining the sound that his character's shoes made on the marble floor as she approached, Daniel is giving the reader a sense of both the physical space in the scene and the protagonist’s increasing anxiety as she approaches. In a single sentence, the scene moves forward in the readers’ minds.
If she is only a passing distraction to the other characters in the scene, then the first sentence would be sufficient, but if the author needs to use her approach to convey something important, the first sentence would be flat writing.
Christine H,
I completely agree.
Anonymous,
Let me make this plain. I am saying that I, a reader, would not continue to read a book that included Daniel's third example in it. I might continue reading after the first, depending on what followed it.
You disagree. That's fine.
Somehow, the publishing industry needs to keep us both happy if it wants us to keep buying books.
The way that is done is not by publishing books written only in one type of style, but by publishing different books that appeal to different people.
That's why we have genres. That's why we have some books written in past tense, and some books written in present. That's why some are told in first person, and some are told in third. That's why some books have a very fast pace (my kind of book), and some have a slow, steady pace.
The problem isn't that you prefer Daniel's kind of writing. It's that not everybody does, nor should they have to.
In the late Roman Republic, Cicero and Caesar were considered the greatest writers and orators. Cicero had a flowery, complex style. Caesar had a simple, lucid style. They both had their admirers, and who was better generally depended on who was being asked.
I prefer "she smiled" to "the corners of her lips turned up like [insert simile here]." I prefer "she blushed" to "her cheeks reddened like a June rose." I prefer "she was slight and pretty, with black hair and green eyes" to a paragraph telling me how she smelled, and how she walked, and what kind of shoes she was wearing, without saying how she actually LOOKED.
Had I been Roman, I would have preferred Caesar to Cicero.
I like stories with a lot of dialogue and a lot of action, enough description for me to be able to imagine what's going on, and enough exposition so I understand who's doing what and why.
That doesn't make me right, and you wrong. That doesn't make me wrong, and you right. We like different things. That's all. The world has room for different tastes.
Nathan,
I wonder if you would ever think of adding an editing hat to your many talents?
I don't know if that would be must too much or a conflict of interest, but you are obviously invested in helping writers improve their skill.
I would love to see you groom and prune writers, perhaps hold a workshop here and there anyway.
I'd bet that any new writer with a good story but a few missing links that you worked with seriously, would be capable of exceptional output.
Thanks, anon. I actually wear that hat almost every day. Almost all agents these days help their clients editorially in advance of submissions, and even afterward, so I'm very regularly working on editorial notes and reading my clients' work. I appreciate your confidence.
Daniel,
Wow, love your third example! It tells me almost as much about the character who's the narrator as it does about the woman he's describing. Not everyone would be as helplessly attracted to her as he is. When you write, "…seemed to him like the ticking of some terrible clock." it’s clear that that this is his personal reaction to a situation over which he has very little self-control, with time ticking away toward the exact moment when he gets involved with someone who’s trouble. If other people are in the lobby, there are probably many who would stay away from a woman like that. Nice writing!
If a woman ever purrs an acknowledgment to me, I might just tickle her under the chin and give her a treat.
Patty-
Obviously, you don't want a simile like that on every page. You don't want more than a handful of those in a book.
I totally agree that, e.g. "She blushed like a June rose" is much worse than "She blushed." Strong verbs stand on their own and rarely need further elaboration.
I don't like an omniscient narrator describing somebody as "pretty," though. Who thinks she's pretty? I want to attribute that assessment to another character.
BofA-
Fair point.
Thanks, Nathan. Echoing PurpleClover and others, it's good concise advice regarding showing vs. telling. I'll add it to my 'Writing Rules', 20 pages of insight I've collected that I think help me write and edit. Cheers
Patty said “The problem isn't that you prefer Daniel's kind of writing. It's that not everybody does, nor should they have to.”
Let me make this plain too. I don’t think we are talking about the same thing. The topic had nothing to do with me prefering Daniel's kind of writing.
You seem to be defending yourself as though others here have disparaged you personally and your preferences.
As far as I understand, the discussion is not about style preferences – it’s specifically about showing vs. telling.
For example, let’s say that you and I are given ten facts to include in a paper. The exercise might be to tell our readers the facts. When we are done, though we will have both told the same facts, our overall writing styles would be distinctly different.
Daniel’s examples were on mark regarding the topic. He portrayed how writers may mix showing vs. telling to reveal and convey more than what is actually being said in a scene. In his examples, Daniel used three different writing styles and different mixes of show vs. tell for a similar scene. In doing so, he changed how the reader would view the female character and for that matter, how the reader viewed the male looking at the female. His examples gave the reader varying degrees of insight into the characters. If, as a reader, you need another sentence that spells out the color of her hair and eyes, all right, but nothing he’s said here precludes including those physical details.
If you don't like how the examples are portrayed or the writing styles, okay, but is it on topic? As a rhetorical question, how would you write a scene to convey an anxious protagonist's first meeting with a dangerous, fashionable woman, who uses her beauty to manipulate and ruin men?
If you were to write an example, then you will certainly have demonstrated your preferred style of writing, but will you have revealed as much about the characters’ true characters and their relevance to the story as Daniel accomplished to do in so few words? Maybe you would have. And if you chose to use dialog, that’d be great. Depending on its execution, dialog may also either show or tell or both, which I believe was the original point.
To be even plainer, when you say that you would put down a book because you didn’t like ONE phrase in the book, you weaken your argument about tolerance for different writing styles – if that is what you are trying to do – and it comes off as defensive and rude when you direct such comments toward another poster’s examples.
Daniel, for the record, since Patty made it a point in this dialog, I would not have been putting down your book. Thanks for sharing.
Ooh, one of my favorite examples of showing good details is from Hoot. I like how just one event shows you so much.
Thanks for the post, Nathan. I'm usually a lurker on your site, but couldn't help commenting on the old 'show don't tell' rule.
I agree with a previous comment thhat both showing and telling are writing techniques that are equally valid. Personally, I need a good balance of show and tell in a story, but if there has to be a choice between the two (not that there should be, mind you), I'm firmly on the 'tell' side of things. Showing ends up telling me too much ironically. I know, some will say that that means the 'show' hasn't been done well, but that's pretty subjective, isn't it? I like the use of description (the 'telling' kind) so that I can paint a scene in my mind without having to read about someone slamming a door or jumping up and down in joy. Too much action for me, especially when not everyone expresses what they feel in a 'showy' way. You can say a person is pretty and blue eyed btw without being redundant because I've seen some ugly looking blue eyed people before:) Blue isn't always pretty, so here the 'tell' has added a layer to the story. And it gets annoying to me if I have to keep learning every little bitty thing about a character from another character.
What really makes me disturbed though is something that's been raised already: there's room for all kinds of writing techniques in the world. I like having an array of styles to read, different ways to picture a story. It's like looking at a watercolour or oil painting; very different, but equally needed to explore the spectrum of creativity that painters (and writers) have to offer.
Anyway, I hope the so-called writing rules that are whacking writers on the head nowadays will not result in generic literature, or worse, dogmatic literature, where one style is deemed 'better' than the other despite the fact that writers and readers are all very different.
Whitearrow
Anon-
I think Patty takes issue with the simile. I put it in there to tie the woman's approach to the man's anxiety, and the sound of the heels against the marble floor works to establish the setting.
My larger point was about the decisions an author has to make.
For example, developing that same scene, I could describe the building lobby in a lot of detail. I could talk about the revolving glass doors, and the security guard, staring imperiously at passersby from from his perch behind a high desk. I could talk about the twenty-foot high ceilings and about the soft, organic light.
I could describe the corporate art installation in one corner. It's composed of sharp, angular steel beams intersecting undulating shapes made of molded plastic. The company paid an extravagant sum for this thing five years ago, when everybody was flush with boom cash; now the colors in the plastic seem to be fading and the piece is covered with a thin layer of dust.
But none of these things relate to the action that is taking place; these details are entirely extraneous to the plot. The objective is to illustrate this space as economically as possible, not by telling instead of showing, but by efficient use of carefully-selected details to create a visual or tactile impression in the reader's mind, without interrupting the momentum of the plot. If you do it right, they'll see the thing without you ever having to describe it.
Contemporary narratives, I think, need to move forward with energy and purpose, and this is especially true for debut authors who will be allowed no indulgence from the various gatekeepers who have to approve new work before it gets published.
Daniel,
What struck me about your last post was that I was taken in by your descriptions of the building lobby; if you had included it in the original piece, it would have set me up with a living background for what came next. Of course, that's just my (one reader's) preference.
As for the ending of your post: 'Contemporary narratives, I think, need to move forward with energy and purpose, and this is especially true for debut authors who will be allowed no indulgence from the various gatekeepers who have to approve new work before it gets published.'…..hmmmm what can I say to that:
(a) When I write, I write for my story and my vision of it. It may tell the story terribly to some, or it may be brilliant, depending on who you ask.
(b) What conveys energy and purpose depends on what each individual's perception is equipped with to see that energy and purpose, and can be achieved with either show or tell.
(c) If I start telling my stories based on what the publishing industry wants me to say (and I don't think it's quite so rigid, based on the types of books that have been coming out these past few years), I wouldn't be a storyteller anymore, I would be someone else's version of a storyteller. (Note: this does not mean a writer shouldn't listen to their editor)
(d) Writers have historically been revolutionaries in style, if not plot, even if that means going against the grain of 'rules' of the day. Many classics/bestsellers today have been surprises to those who predicted what 'contemporary' literature should be about in any given generation.
(e) I don't think the use of a writing style is about asking for indulgence from anyone. It's about what works for the writer when he creates his story. If the writer is any kind of storyteller worth his salt, the person he's telling the story to is gonna get it, regardless of the style used. A pity if that has been lost in the whirlwind of trying to achieve the magic formula that all readers will like (which, btw, doesn't exist, unless you're counting Harry Potter, a story with a huge amount of 'tell').
And why change the way I write because of what others see instead of what I see? I see 'tell' as a gorgeous form of expression for any writer who uses it. And as a reader, I read 'tell' very vividly, while scenes in 'show' often fall flat for me.
Ultimately, I think it's just a case of preferences, for both writer and reader,and bringing in thoughts of gatekeepers who allow no indulgence is too restrictive a way to approach a creative art, whether or not those gatekeepers do exist.
Whitearrow
Daniel,
Daniel said, "The objective is to illustrate – – as economically as possible, not by telling instead of showing, but by efficient use of carefully-selected details to create a visual or tactile impression in the reader's mind, without interrupting the momentum of the plot. If you do it right, they'll see the thing without you ever having to describe it."
I couldn't agree more.
Many prominent authors have stressed the importance of carefully measuring what we – tell – our readers. The consensus has been that when authors paint a scene or character in minute detail, they diminish the collaborative process of creating an individualized world with their readers. In other words, although we lay the foundation of our imaginary worlds, when we release it to the readers, it becomes theirs. Every one of them will individualize that world for themselves.
If a 100 readers were provided the same detailed physical attributes of a character (including the specks of hazel in her grey eyes), and they were asked to create a composite of the character that they imagined, I have no doubt that all of the composites would be distinctly different. Why? Because the readers didn’t physically see the same person. They see different characters, who have the same attributes, in their imaginary eye.
I’ve recently distributed my novel to my (well-read) focus group. After they finished reading the novel, I asked them to complete a rather detailed survey about the plot, pacing, voice… and characters.
In the novel, there is this one particularly over-the-top character. Though I gave the readers very few descriptive details about the character (e.g. He let his thin-rimmed glasses slip to the tip of his nose), I never described his physical appearance.
In the survey, I asked the readers to describe several of the characters’ as they imagined them. And for this particular character, they provided very detailed but very different descriptions – even the race of the character varied – but not a single reader said that any of the characters in the novel were under described.
When I asked them to prioritize their favorite characters, I was surprised that this same character was the favorite character for many of the readers. He was also the character that they most related to. Why? I think it was because he was their character. The reader created the physical image that best suited their ideal for the character’s personality.
What an enlightening experience this was for me!
Interesting post!
In my personal experience, the key component in Showing vs. Telling is Behavior, Behavior, Behavior:
This works for both novels, movies, and television — it's okay to tell the reader that someone is: stubborn, kind, generous, rude, witty, rash… but then you must SHOW it. Actual examples of that behavior should be present in the text. The reader should not have to 'take your word for it'. They won't truly internalize the characterization, and build the personality in their mind, unless they actually get to "see" it happening.
The same with character relationships. Good father & son relationships, bad mother & daughter, close friendships, unrequited love — the reader needs to be presented with specific examples, moments between them that support how the author has classified the relationship.
Think of it like a high school or university essay — you've presented your thesis, now PROVE IT. Supporting details are required!
This is sometimes called "earning" a character label/moment/plot twist when people critique television. The writer has to build up the character to earn the classification of kind, irresistible to men, brave, etc. or to prove to the reader/viewer that Person X deserves to be rewarded or punished.
A professional critique (from Diane Bailey) came in yesterday with the same theme. Great advice for me. Now, I'm off to write it right…
Wow! This post received a lot of feed-back. So what else can I write, which hasn't already been written here?
Other than, Nathan as long as you keep posting I'll keep reading & perhaps learning something from what is written.
My moment of enlightenment!
I have been reading my way through all of Nathan's advice blogs. As I was reading this article and I began to understand showing versus telling everything else began to fall into place. I reached the tipping point of knowledge, but I still need to learn a lot. I see now that my first attempts at writing are trash. I am guilty of of telling too much and showing too little, and many other errors, but this allows me to understand many other things Nathan has been saying.
Thank you Nathan!
If I want to see something, I will watch a movie, watch the news, or go outside and see it.
If I want to learn something about other people and what they think under a variety of circumstances, I will read a novel.
A novel polluted with attempts to compete against movies make me want to gag.
Just tell me your story and tell me what the characters are thinking about in the story,
This is such a valuable tool – thanks for sharing! Showing versus telling can also be applied to all kinds
of other opportunities, e.g. creating business pitches, conveying sympathy, blog posts etc. Here's an article
I wrote from the perspective of a fiction editor, if you're interested https://catehogan.com/show-dont-tell-rule/