Four Techniques to Show Rather than Tell
By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)
You’ve heard the advice show, don’t tell until you can’t stand to hear it anymore. Yet all of us still seem to struggle with it. I think that’s often because we need a few practical things we can do to identify where we might be telling rather than showing.
If you’ve ever been accused of telling or you just want to make sure you’ve eliminated unnecessary telling from your work in progress, check for these four telling offenders. (There are more than four, but four is what I can fit in a blog post of a reasonable length.)
Naming Emotions
He was angry. She felt guilty. He hated her.
All of these tell the reader about the emotion rather than showing them. Telling emotion keeps the reader at arm’s length rather than letting them experience the emotions along with the character.
Telling: Jennifer was sad because of the death of her daughter.
Showing: Jennifer stood face to face with the delicate porcelain doll Ellie idolized too much to even play with. The doll stared back, her face held in an immortal smile, mocking. No doll deserved to live longer than the little girl who owned her. Jennifer snatched the doll from the shelf and heaved her toward the far wall. The doll’s head exploded like fireworks.
Most emotions in life are nuanced. Telling allows you to convey only the most basic part of the emotion, whereas showing allows you to bring out all the facets. In the example above, Jennifer isn’t just sad. She’s also angry, maybe even a little bitter. That’s very different from a character who is sad and guilty, or a character who is sad…but also a little bit relieved. You lose meaning when you tell rather than show emotion. (Click here to read more about How to Show Character Emotions.)
Showing does force you to do more work in figuring out the layers of emotion your character is feeling, but the result is well worth it.
A tool I recommend for finding ways to show emotions through body language (instead of labeling those emotions) is The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi.
Special Editing Tip: If you think this might be a problem for you, make a list of every emotion you can think of and use the “Find” feature of your word processing program to run a search for those words. You’ll quickly see if you’ve been naming emotions and where you need to fix it.
Descriptive Dialogue Tags
When you have a character hiss, growl, beg, demand, or (insert another descriptor here) a sentence, you’re violating the “show don’t tell” principle. It’s usually a sign of weak dialogue. If you feel like you need to use a tag other than said, asked, and occasionally, whispered or shouted for the reader to understand your meaning, you need to rewrite your dialogue and the beats around it to make it stronger and clearer.
Even if you use asked or said, you might still be telling if you tack on adverbs. (An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, adjective, or another adverb.)
She said sadly. He asked sulkily. She said angrily.
Telling: “Are you sure he escaped?” Annabelle asked anxiously.
Showing: “What do you mean he might have escaped?” Annabelle’s gaze darted to the door, and she chewed the edge of her thumb nail. “He either did or he didn’t. Which is it?”
Explaining Motivations By Using “To”
We each have our private writing demons, and this is mine. If I’m going to fall prey to a telling sin, it will be this one.
Telling: She grabbed her bow to shoot the deer. The arrow arced through the air, and lodged in the animal’s throat. It sank to its knees. Dinner was served.
Most of this is showing. Except for the part underlined and bolded. The problem is we don’t actually see her shoot. We’re told why she grabbed her bow, and then the arrow is flying, but we’ve skipped the part when she fires the shot.
Showing: She grabbed her bow, aimed for the deer’s heart, and released the string. The arrow arced through the air, and lodged in the animal’s throat. It sank to its knees. Dinner was served.
I’ll give you another example.
Telling: Elizabeth went to the woodshed to get the ax. She swung with all her strength and cleaved the stump in two.
It feels strange because Elizabeth goes to the woodshed, but then the next thing we know she’s swinging the ax at the stump.
Showing: Elizabeth went to the woodshed, and yanked the ax from where it hung on the wall. She stormed back to the stump, ignoring George’s I’d-like-to-see-you-try smirk. She swung with all her strength and cleaved the stump in two. Take that, George. She didn’t need any man’s help to survive.
You don’t need to do a blow by blow of every step your character takes, but removing the to construct forces you to think about a passage, and find deeper, more engaging ways to convey what’s happening.
Linking Verbs
We want to avoid linking verbs like was and is in favor of stronger, more active verbs, but we also want to avoid them because they can indicate telling rather than showing.
Telling: She was ugly.
Showing: Richard couldn’t stop himself from staring at the button-sized wart in the middle of her forehead. Even if she didn’t want it removed, couldn’t she have at least plucked the hair?
One or two carefully selected details will dynamically show us that a person is old or ugly, cruel or a flirt. Moreover, showing also gives us insight into the point of view character. What our characters notice and how they choose to describe it says a lot about them.
But won’t showing make our writing wordy?
No, not necessarily. Tight writing has less to do with the number of words used and more to do with making every word count. (Click here if you’d like to tweet that.)
Next week I’m going to look at when we should save the words and tell rather than show.
What other ways have you found to eliminate telling in your writing?
Interested in more ways to improve your writing? Deep Point of View is now available! (You might also want to check out Internal Dialogue
or Showing and Telling in Fiction
.)
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Image Credit: Bartek Ambrozik (via sxc.hu)
Jan 30, 2013 @ 16:11:53
Great breakdown of show vs. tell, Marcy! Thanks so much for sharing it with us!
Jan 30, 2013 @ 16:13:38
These are some great tips! Adverbs are my biggest pet peeve as a reader, especially when stuck onto the end of tags. I don’t know if you are taking requests, but I’d love to see you do a post on how to blend narration with scene. I tend to write very scene heavy & I’d like to work on adding in some narrative. 🙂
Jan 30, 2013 @ 16:14:43
I always take requests 🙂 I’ll add this to my post list.
Jan 30, 2013 @ 16:51:15
Excellent information, something I might not take notice of but should. Thank you
Jan 30, 2013 @ 17:45:59
I don’t think I do the “to” thing very often but in a first draft I find myself typing “felt” a LOT. Great thing to look for when editing!
Jan 30, 2013 @ 23:12:48
That’s a good one. Felt ranks right up there with heard, saw, etc. for distancing our POV as well. Hopefully in the next couple of months I’ll be diving into a series on POV and deep POV and all those distancing words will make an appearance 🙂
Feb 20, 2013 @ 00:54:14
Ooh, you just listed ALL my “go to” words there….
Time for some quality editing time.
Jan 30, 2013 @ 17:53:51
Great examples. Thank you.
Jan 30, 2013 @ 23:11:42
You’re welcome. I’m glad it helped you.
Jan 30, 2013 @ 18:47:50
I can’t help sigh when I see a writer telling when I crave to be shown the real emotional state of a character. I’ve got The Emotional Thesaurus on my kindle, an excellent resource indeed!
Jan 30, 2013 @ 23:11:26
Showing emotions is so much more difficult because we need to dig deep, tap those emotions in ourselves, and choose key details to bring them across. But what it gives the reader in exchange for all our hard work is invaluable.
Jan 30, 2013 @ 21:11:09
Great examples. I’m lightyears ahead of where I was a year ago on this, but my wonderful critique partner is quick to point these out.
But, if you’re taking requests . . . I’d love to see a post about active versus passive voice. This seems to be my struggle du jour.
Jan 30, 2013 @ 21:18:03
All requests welcome. I’ve added active vs. passive voice to my list as well 🙂
Jan 30, 2013 @ 21:54:45
You’re getting the hang of it my dear! Sorry to have to point out all of those “was’s” but I so want your story to be published because it’s a GREAT one!
Patricia Rickrode
w/a Jansen Schmidt
Jan 30, 2013 @ 21:55:26
This comment was supposed to be in response to Suzanne Vince’s comment, but I guess I was in the wrong pew.
Patricia
Jan 30, 2013 @ 23:09:36
No worries 🙂
And it sounds like you’re a good crit partner. We’re often blind to our own mistakes.
Jan 31, 2013 @ 00:50:50
Amen to that sister.
Jan 30, 2013 @ 21:56:17
Great post, Marcy, as usual. Very good examples!
Patricia
Jan 31, 2013 @ 01:45:38
Hi Marcy,
Because of posts like yours, I think by George I’ve got it.
The way you clarify–showing by example, will also help other newbie writers.
Thanks,
Tracy 🙂
Jan 31, 2013 @ 02:27:44
Once again I’m bookmarking your post in my Writing Craft folder. Thanks for the clear explanations and examples, Marcy.
Feb 01, 2013 @ 15:58:20
This post is a heaping bowl of awesomesauce! Wonderfully presented, Marcy 🙂
Feb 01, 2013 @ 16:10:48
Thank you for the lovely compliment!
Feb 02, 2013 @ 15:52:21
Thanks for some great reminders for everybody who writes–Do the work, don’t be lazy.
Feb 05, 2013 @ 01:42:26
I love your tips as they always seem to come with easy fixes. Assuming you have the basic story thrown down on paper, there is always room for improvement, and you are just the guide I need to fix up my broken lines. Thanks! 🙂
Feb 05, 2013 @ 02:03:39
You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say that. I try to find ways to not only explain a concept but also to make it easier to apply.
Feb 06, 2013 @ 13:52:55
Great post!
Just one addition if I may: Observe, watch, notice, smell, taste all belong with saw / see in the telling category.
If there’s a more active way to PORTRAY the scene then go with it.
Feb 06, 2013 @ 15:40:02
As I’m reading, I am finding myself obsessing over my current wip. I can see how I lean towards “telling”. I’m going to do an additional sweep keeping these “show” techniques in mind. Thanks!
Feb 06, 2013 @ 15:57:26
This is the best explanation of “show vs. tell” I’ve read! (May be a function of not reading everything written on the topic…) This is certainly a keeper, one I’ll refer to again and again. Thank you, Marcy!
Mar 04, 2017 @ 06:23:48
Will my story will be uninteresting if the sentences are longer because of showing and don’t tell method? I remember that it said that, it best to keep the sentences shorter and simple. By doing this, it keeps the story interesting.
Mar 06, 2017 @ 10:37:58
Showing rather than telling won’t necessarily make your sentences longer, and even when it does, shown sentences are more interesting than told ones. It’s the quality of the words that matters most–not the quantity.
Apr 02, 2017 @ 19:07:12
Your examples brought to mind several tells in my current WIP. Back to the rewrite.
Thanks for the insightful post.
Jul 31, 2017 @ 08:39:36
I love this show don’t tell post. It’s the first time I’ve actually understood the meaning of it.
and Marcy I hope you don’t mind but I posted most of it on my writing community.