SHOW, DON'T TELL

You’ve probably heard it a million times.

Well... here it is again.

Show, don’t tell.

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” -Anton Chekhov

To understand what it means, we need to understand the difference between the two.

Telling

Kate was really nervous

Showing

Kate’s eyes darted around the room, fingers trembling as they twist at the hem of her wrinkled dress.

“Relax,” he murmured, placing a gentle hand over hers to steady it. “We’ll be out of here in no time.”

See the difference?

You don’t go to the doctor and tell them you’re sick. You tell them that your throat is sore, your head is pounding, and your skin is flushed. Then they diagnose you. Start with the symptoms.

Your readers want to feel what your character is feeling. Building up each sensation and going in-depth about the specifics of what exactly they are experiencing helps your readers connect to them.

We tend to dumb things down with language. We like to shorten and simplify. We say, “I feel sad” to describe a symphony of different physical, emotional, and psychological experiences all occurring at once that we've forced down into one very broad word. Because going into the details of what is going on in each of those categories would be over-sharing and take too long to explain. But that is exactly what you want to do in writing.

There isn’t just one “angry.” There is dry anger, where you lose all rationality and feel yourself go hot. There is wet anger, where you get so upset that the tears just bubble over into your voice and down your face. There is protective anger, disappointed anger, anger you know isn’t really justified but decide to feel regardless. Second-hand anger, fear masked as anger. Do you see how saying, “He’s angry” doesn’t really connect your reader to a specific, relatable experience?

Take time to explore your own emotions. You can chalk it up to feeling happy or embarrassed or relaxed and leave it there. But I’m telling you, your writing will improve tenfold if you take a moment to pause in the height of that emotion and pay attention to what your body is doing, where your mind is going, what are you really experiencing in every sense. Then, write that down.

A good exercise for this that I've used is to run yourself a warm bath. Take your time, and then pull the plug. But don't get out. Sit there, knees tucked into your chest, arms wrapped around yourself. Let yourself be cold, feel what that does to your emotions, listen to your teeth chatter, pay attention to each water droplet as it runs down your skin. Let yourself be entirely present and experience something uncomfortable, let yourself be sad. Sit with your emotions and pay attention to each of your five senses in that moment.

It teaches you to just take a moment to really connect with your entire body and pay attention to how each part of you reacts to certain emotions and situations. Continue to do that in your own life, pay attention to people's body language and how you know they are feeling a certain way. Then you'll have a better understanding of how to show and not tell. Because rarely is someone going to tell you that they are happy, sad, angry, or any other emotion. You just know because everyone around you is already using show, not tell every day. You just have to learn how to recognize and replicate it in your writing.