Show & Tell

Show, don’t Tell.

It’s one of the most popular pieces of advice writers hear- and often a useful one! But what exactly does it mean and is it always the right advice? 

Showing, for writers, is about immersing the reader in the book’s world. Bringing it to life through (usually) sensory experiences lets the reader feel like they are actually there: they are smelling the food from different street vendors, feeling cobblestones or concrete beneath their feet, feeling the different textures of materials your characters touch, etc.

Maybe emotions are being described in ways that the reader feels them along with the characters. Do you find yourself crying along with the main character? Then you are definitely immersed in their experience!  

Whatever is happening, the reader is there, at your character’s side, instead of feeling like they are at a distance and being told a story. 

But, as we learned back in school, it’s show AND tell- because you just can’t show everything.

Think about how long your book would be if you described every single detail of every single thing. You’d go crazy writing that. And your reader wouldn’t really enjoy it either.

Why?

Imagine your character is walking down the street, going from their bookshop to the hardware store. 

Is something important going to happen? Maybe they are noticing clues that will help later when they figure out who the murderer is, or this is where they bump into the cute dogwalker for the first time- then yes, add details! Show us things! Emphasize how important this moment is in your character’s life! Things are happening that are critical in advancing the plot.

But sometimes a walk down the street is just a walk down the street. If it isn’t important to the plot, we don’t need all the details. Think back to the movies where to show the passage of time they flipped pages of a calendar. Sometimes all you need to know is: time has passed.

“Show versus tell” is a balancing act that writers practice all the time. You’ll always try to balance the pace of your story with wondering if you’ve immersed your readers in your world with enough details. 

That’s where editors and beta readers come in handy- make them tell you if they think you’ve gotten that right. Read not only other books in your genre, but the reviews of those books. See if other readers felt like they were in the world or just along for the ride.