Show, Don't Tell - part I

by giraffmang

I am sure that most writers have heard the expression ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ many times before. It is a well-intentioned aphorism and is right up there with ‘Write what you know’, and ‘Kill your darlings’. But what does it actually entail?

Well, the first Point that needs to be made is DON’T DO THIS EXCLUSIVELY! Seriously… could you even imagine a piece of writing in which nothing is told, and everything is shown. The average novel would balloon from a comfortable 90,000 words to double or maybe even treble that size. Some things need to be told. As with most things in life, there needs to be a balance. As writers, we need to learn when to show and when to tell.

With this in mind, I’m embarking on a journey into looking at striking that balance. In this multiple-part posting, we’ll examine why ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ is so popular; how we can incorporate it into our writing; look at some examples, and when to not follow the rule!

What is ‘Show, Don’t Tell’?

At its most basic, this is an approach to telling stories via actions, thoughts, words and sensory details, rather than in cold, hard, factual exposition. The origins of this technique are lost in the mists of time… but the Russian writer Anton Chekhov is regarded as the grandfather of said aphorism by popular culture. “Don’t tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

Chekhov would illustrate the night-time scene by providing the readers with sensory details and context clues rather than flat out statements.

He wrote, in a letter to his brother, Alexander, in May 1886 –

“In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you’ll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball.”

Chekhov would choose to illustrate a night-time scene by providing readers with sensory details and context clues rather than flat-out statements.

Why is ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ so popular?

The technique is used to provide an immersive reading experience. Rather than asking readers to process the story on a mere intellectual level, the writing is intended to pull readers into the narrative, allowing them to almost experience it rather than just hear it.

Storytelling is a sensory experience. Writing can be infused with more of a storytelling sensibility with sensory details. A busy market square can be described simply as such, but it is a perfunctory description. Many people read for escape and want to be transported into the writer’s world. What does it feel like to be there… the sights… the smells… the sounds (but be careful of naming the senses – that veers away from showing to telling).

Many readers also love the minute-to-minute detective work that asks them to interpret why the narrator has chosen, for example, to describe a bead of sweat trickling down the protagonist’s neck. Is he hot; is he nervous, or scared?

By employing the tenants of ‘Show, Don’t Tell’, the writer encourages the reader to engage with the story actively.

This technique also encourages the writer to depart from a reliance on heavy exposition and to rely on the reader’s senses and tell their story in a more emotionally engaging manner.

An exercise in character showing.

Make a list of your character’s personality traits, strengths, and weaknesses. Pick one from each list and write a brief scene where the character demonstrates these traits without mentioning the words (or their derivatives) themselves.

An exercise in setting.

Think back to Chekhov’s advise to his brother and rewrite this ‘classic’ line by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (regarded as one of the worst opening ever and has become something of a cliché). It’s probably the most famous example of telling around.

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents…”

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