Show and tell

In creative writing circles, we often talk about “showing” versus “telling”, and new writers are frequently advised to prioritise the former over the latter (Show, Don’t Tell!). But what does it actually mean to “show” and to “tell”? And why is showing apparently better—if it is at all?

To start with, let’s define what we mean when we’re talking about showing and telling. To “tell” is to communicate information by describing something directly or giving explicit exposition. For example:

Excited for the party that night, Danielle opened her jewellery box. To her surprise, however, her favourite necklace wasn’t in it. She knew immediately that her sister Stacey had taken it, and stormed off in a rage to find her and give her a piece of her mind.

“Showing”, on the other hand, is a less direct, but more vivid, way of communicating information by describing the indications or consequenses of the thing you really want the reader to know about. Instead of stating that a character is afraid, you might say how they start trembling and all the blood drains from their face. You might also use imagery here, using comparison to paint your picture. To continue our previous examples, this is how we might show rather than tell:

“Stacey!’

Danielle swept down the hallway like a hurricane, an empty jewellery box in her hand.

“How many times have I told you not to touch my stuff?”

Stacey poked her head out of her bedroom, fiddling with a silver necklace.

“But Dani, it looks so cute with my dress!”

“Cute, schmute,” Danielle growled, “that’s my necklace from Grandma, and you can’t have it!”

So we can see that the two different descriptive techniques can accomplish the end goal in very different ways, and with very different results. But how do they compare? Is showing really inherently better than telling, or are they both equally effective?

Time for a showdown

The answer is, of course, that there is no black-and-white answer. (Those of you who have been subject to my wisdom before now will be entirely unsurprised by this turn of events.) We know already that showing and telling work in their own singular ways, so it stands to reason that you’ll have better results with one or the other, depending on what else you’re doing.

If you have a lot of information to convey, such as exposition or worldbuilding, using a “telling” method can be overwhelming for a reader—taking in lots of new data at once is tough on the brain. By folding that information into actions, subtext, and inferences, you can make the process less of a slog. There’s also the added benefit that you don’t have to stop the action in order to communicate the relevant details.

One situation where it may be more beneficial to give information directly is when you’re bridging a gap between two scenes or events. When you have smaller bits of context to bring readers up to speed on, there’s much less danger of boring or bewildering them, so “showing” isn’t as big an improvement. If that context is less vital (such as indicating that some time has passed), it’s not necessarily going to be worth the effort, either; trying to build up action in which to convey the information is also likely to get clunky and less natural.

Just like with most writing techniques, you need to get a nice balance to keep readers invested. If you “tell” too much, you risk adding density and distancing the reader from the characters and action. An overabundance of “showing”, however, might lead to stilted characterisation and awkward scene structure. In order to hit that nice middle ground, think about which pieces of context are more important and where you have large amounts of new information to communicate—these are the places where you want to focus your “showing” efforts. For the stuff that needs to be said but could be easily skimmed, stick to the direct exposition; that will make your really important descriptions stand out more.

So where did the preference for showing come from?

When we’re just starting out telling stories, our instinct is to say what happened. “I went to school. I made a friend. We had lunch together. There was a dog on the way home. His name is Trevor.” We have something to say, and we just… go about saying it.

Learning to communicate through action and subtext takes practice, and it sometimes requires some reminding. This is what we remember: being told as budding writers that we should show the information through the way the characters do things, not just say what they’re doing. And as budding writers, we do often need the nudge.

But, as is so often the way with writing “rules”, the things we remember being taught are just part of the story. We needed to learn how to “show”, but we can’t forget how to “tell” either. The key is to know which strategy works best where.

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