Helen frowns while reading her draft story.
She purses her lips, and wonders, Why does the story feel flat? Why does it seem to drag on? Where has the drama gone? Is it too long?
Okay, she thinks. Time to cut down my story.
She removes a few sentences here, scraps a whole paragraph there, shortens another sentence. After crossing out words for over 20 minutes, she’s reduced her word count almost by half. Phew. With a sigh of relief, she treats herself to Jasmine tea with carrot cake.
But, hey, what happened to her story?
It seems even worse than before.
How come?
Sometimes stories are too short rather than too long
When a writer hasn’t painted vivid imagery, readers can’t picture what’s happening. That’s when a story feels flat. Devoid of drama. Dull.
To let readers experience your story, show rather than tell:
- Telling means giving a brief, factual statement.
- Showing means using sensory details and describing actions to direct a mental movie in your reader’s mind.
For instance:
Showing is: She yawned.
Telling is: She is hungry.
Showing is: Her stomach rumbles.
And the best way to learn the difference between showing and telling?
Firstly, study how authors use this technique in their writing. Start with the examples below. And secondly, practice.
You can use the 9 examples below for practice:
- Review the “to tell” statements and consider how you can prove these statements (such as he’s nervous, she’s lonely). How can you see or hear that someone is nervous or lonely? Which actions demonstrate it?
- Write down two or three actions or sensory details that show rather than tell.
- Compare your notes to the “to show” examples.
Ready?
Show Don’t Tell Examples: How to show emotions
To demonstrate someone’s emotions, think about what somebody does when they feel angry, hungover, or happy.
How can you see their anger in their movements? What does an angry face look like? What are they muttering or screaming? What would they say when thinking aloud?
Example #1: He’s nervous about his job interview
In his book Behold the Dreamers, Imbolo Mbue shows Jende is nervous:
His throat went dry. His palms moistened. Unable to reach for his handkerchief in the packed downtown subway, he wiped both palms on his pants.
Can you hear the internal monologue droning on in Jende’s mind?
After the monologue comes a tactile description of his throat going dry and his palms moistening, and then you can picture Jende wiping his palms on his pants. Vivid?
Example #2: Kate feels lonely, despite sharing a house with four other people
In her book The Lido, Libby Page demonstrates Kate’s loneliness as follows:
They are people that she has heard grunting in the heat of sex (thin walls) and whose pubic hairs she has untangled from the shower plug, but she doesn’t know where they all came from before arriving here in this house, or what their favourite films are. She doesn’t really know them at all. And they certainly don’t know her. But what is there to know really?
Can you feel Kate’s loneliness, symbolized by the lack of interaction?
Example #4: She was angry
From Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep:
Have you notice the strong verbs in this example? Verbs like to slam, to slop over, to swing, to spark and to glare inject power into the writing.
Example #4: Cheryl has started the Pacific Crest Trail but she fears she can’t do this
In her book Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found, Cheryl Strayed shows her fear as follows:
So then I tried to simply concentrate on what I heard—my feet thudding against the dry and rocky trail, the brittle leaves and branches of the low-lying bushes I passed clattering in the hot wind—but it could not be done.
The clamor of What have I gotten myself into? was a mighty shout. It could not be drowned out. The only possible distraction was my vigilant search for rattlesnakes. I expected one around every bend, ready to strike. The landscape was made for them, it seemed. And also for mountain lions and wilderness-savvy serial killers.
Note how many sensory words are used in the above paragraph, like screaming, humming, panting, thudding, clattering, clamor, drowning out. As a reader, you can almost hear Cheryl’s fight with her fears.
Emotions like fear, nervousness, and loneliness remain abstract unless we show readers how such emotions manifest themselves in body language, dialogues, or actions.
Instead of telling readers you’re happy, can readers see you’re grinning from ear to ear?
Show Don’t Tell Examples: How to show a person’s passion
You know I’m passionate about writing, don’t you?
But have I ever told you that?
Nope, I show my passion by sharing my best writing tips and tricks so you can tell better stories and share your ideas with gusto.
What are you passionate about? And which actions can prove your passion?
Get inspired by the 3 examples below …
Example #5: Frank, a music shop owner, is passionate about sharing music with people, even strangers
In her book The Music Shop, Rachel Joyce demonstrates Frank’s passion as follows:
‘What was it this time?’
‘Genesis. Invisible Touch.’
‘What did you do, Frank?’
(…) Frank had done the sort of thing he always did. He’d grabbed his old suede jacket and loped after the young man until he caught him at the bus stop. (What kind of thief waited for the number 11?)
He’d said, between deep breaths, that he would call the police unless the lad came back and tried something new in the listening booth. He could keep the Genesis record if he wanted the thing so much, though it broke Frank’s heart that he was nicking the wrong one – their early stuff was tons better.
He could have the album for nothing, and even the sleeve; ‘so long as you try “Fingal’s Cave”. If you like Genesis, trust me. You’ll love Mendelssohn.’
Isn’t it amazing how such a short story can characterize one person? It feels like you know Frank a little already.
Example #6: Young Araki loves dictionaries
In her book The Great Passage, Shion Miura describes Araki’s love for dictionaries as follows:
Little by little he collected a variety of dictionaries from different publishers and compared them. Some were tattered and worn. Others had annotations and underlining in red. Old dictionaries bore signs of the linguistic struggles of compiler and user alike.
Can you picture the dictionaries in Araki’s room?
Example #7: Sportcoat is a nature-lover
In his book Deacon King Kong, James McBride describes the protagonist as a nature-lover:
I like how this paragraph expresses that enjoyment of nature is not a passive state but an active act—of summoning an animal into action and of coaxing plants grow and seeds to sprout.
Example #8: Lars is passionate about good food
In his book Kitchens of the Great Midwest, J. Ryan Stradal demonstrates a passion for food as follows:
Week One NO TEETH, SO:
1. Homemade guacamole.
2. Puréed prunes (do infants like prunes?)
3. Puréed carrots (Sugarsnax 54, ideally, but more likely Autumn King).
4. Puréed beets (Lutz green leaf).
5. Homemade Honeycrisp applesauce (get apples from Dennis Wu).
6. Hummus (from canned chickpeas? Maybe wait for week 2.)
7. Olive tapenade (maybe with puréed Cerignola olives? Ask Sherry Dubcek about the best kind of olives for a newborn.)
8. What for protein and iron?
Can you picture Lars writing down the menu, while licking his lips?
And, thinking about your own passions, which actions describe them best?
Show Don’t Tell Examples: Turn weak action into a movie-like description
Don’t be fooled into thinking that action is always telling rather than showing.
Some action is so vague a reader can’t really imagine what’s happening.
As a writer it’s your task to help readers experience your story. So, give them enough vivid details to let a movie play in their mind.
Here’s how …
Example #9: Moody shows Pearl the town
In her book Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng paints a vivid image of the town tour:
At Horseshoe Lake, they climbed trees like children, throwing stale chunks of bread to the ducks bobbing below.
In Yours Truly, the local diner, they sat in a high-backed wooden booth and ate fries smothered in cheese and bacon and fed quarters into the jukebox to play “Great Balls of Fire” and “Hey Jude.”
Much more vivid than an abstract tour of the town, right?
Example #10: Jack Reacher fires his Barrett
In the thriller Die Trying, Lee Child slows down the action to heighten the drama:
That bubble of gas hurled the bullet down the barrel and forced ahead of it and around it to explode out into the atmosphere. Most of it was smashed sideways by the muzzle brake in a perfectly balanced radial pattern, like a donut, so that the recoil moved the barrel straight back against Reacher’s shoulder without deflecting it either sideways or up or down.
Meanwhile, behind it, the bullet was starting to spin inside the barrel as the rifling grooves grabbed at it.
Then the gas ahead of the bullet was heating the oxygen in the air to the point where the air caught fire. There was a brief flash of flame and the bullet burst out through the exact center of it, spearing through the burned air at nineteen hundred miles an hour.
A thousandth of a second later, it was a yard away, followed by a cone of gunpowder particles and a puff of soot. Another thousandth of a second later, it was six feet away, and its sound was bravely chasing after it, three times slower.
That’s 225 words to describe less than one-hundredth of a second.
Lee Child is a master in pacing his stories. He keeps us reading for pages and pages before he at last reveals whether the bullet hits someone or not.
Remember, slow down the action to heighten the drama.
Example #11: Harold and his brother Raymond didn’t know what to say to Maggie
Even when nothing seems to happen, you can still paint a vivid picture as Kent Haruf does in Plainsong:
Can you imagine how you’d film this scene?
“Show don’t tell” works for objects, too
A landscape is not a still life painting; you can detect subtle movements such as grass waving or with powerful activities like trees creaking in a storm.
Example #12: The ice surface is a chaos of crushing movement
In his book Endurance, Alfred Lansing describes the astonishing story of Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to cross Antarctica.
Here’s when their ship finds herself in a dangerous situation:
Can you picture the scene? Does it make you feel scared, too?
Example #13: The ship is crushed by the ice
Here’s how Lansing describes what happens to the ship:
Lansing describes the ship as if she is a person screaming, dying, and crying out in agony. This is called personification, and it adds an extra dimension to the principle of showing.
Showing helps place readers directly into a scene, experiencing what’s happening to a story’s character, even if that character is a ship.
Now, imagine your favorite reader …
She’s sitting at her desk, sipping a cup of coffee.
She switches on her laptop, wipes the sleep from her right eye, and briefly massages her temples. Then she opens your email and clicks to read your blog post.
A lightbulb goes off in her mind and she whizzes off a quick email to thank you. She’s excited to implement your advice.
Sound good?
When to show and when to tell
Telling is brief and factual.
Showing, in contrast, uses more words to direct a mental movie in your readers’ minds.
To show:
- Add sensory details to make the story more vivid—this is how you allow readers to experience your story.
- Slow down to describe action in more detail—this is how you increase the drama in your writing.
When you show rather than tell, your reader becomes an active participant in your story.
So, race through the less important parts of your story.
And dramatize the key parts, with detailed and vivid descriptions.
Happy storytelling.
Recommended reading on show, don’t tell:
“Show and tell” in business writing
The magic of sensory language
351+ strong verbs to make your writing pop, fizz, and sparkle
As always, your blogs/articles are a great resource for actionable steps towards better writing. Question: Do you have any other recommendations for books or exercises that will help improve descriptive writing?
My favorite is the book “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath.
Thank you for your interesting and useful post. I read it with my 5th and 6th-grade students. They are writing Realistic fiction stories about making ends meet after having studied world minimum wages and budgeting.
Since the students did a lot of planning beforehand and had a whole biography and back story created in their plans for their characters we have been having to go through and take planning language out (eg. “This story is about Sally a 21-year-old girl from Denmark, who works at McDonald’s, and wants to be a pop star.” => “Sally ran through the lyrics to her garage band’s newest song as she flipped burgers and waited for her shift to be over. From work, she’d ride her bike to rehearsal and the lyrics would still be shifting around in her head. She was still working on them. She wanted them to be perfect for their first Copenhagen coffee house show, and they just weren’t quite there yet.”).
Thank you for sharing this post with your students, and for sharing your example. I like it! I wish I had had a teacher like you. 🙂
It’s so much easier to tell, but so much better to show. Sometimes the perfect words are difficult to prise from my mind. I was listening to the radio a few weeks ago and a perfect example of what it’s all about grabbed my attention. The item was about a couple of women holidaying in Peru. One of the women was relating an experience from their time there.
They had been out for the day. They were both hot and tired. The one was relating the experience arrived back at their lodgings first. She described how she flopped onto her bed, picked up her travel guide and began flicking the pages. Wondering what adventures they would be getting up to tomorrow. At that moment, from the corner of her eye she spotted the bedside table moving, and she watched the table move all the way across the floor by itself until it reached the other side of the room. She said she wondered if there were ghosts in the room. That was when her friend darted into the room screaming at her to get up and out because there was an earthquake.
Great story!
I agree with you that telling is much easier. Showing takes a lot more effort but it’s well worth it!
This is an evergreen exercise that is so helpful and powerful. Thank you.
I’m glad you enjoyed this, Andrea. Happy writing!
I had to stop for a long time in this article. I read it over and over again about what I wrote on my blog. You have enlightened my mind. Thanks so much
I’m glad you found this one useful, Jacky. Happy writing! And thank you for stopping by.
Thank you.Your words spark my imaginary mind.
Regards,
Lubosi jr
That’s great! Thank you for letting me know 🙂
Wow! was absorbed in the scenes portrayed…
I love these scenes, too 🙂
It’s a pleasure to see a quote from my compatriot, Anton Chekhov, illustrated by Henneke 😉
It’s such a beautiful quote. One of my faves 🙂
Well !!! I am not so fond of reading fiction but when I read this article trust me it is making me curious to go for fiction and read more and more. You put words together in such a fashion that it connects with me and blends my mind into your story mode.
Great Work !!!
Happy reading, Rahul! I’ve been reading a lot more fiction in recent years, and really enjoy. I’m also pretty sure it helps make me a better writer 🙂
Henneke, you are a master of the show and not tell technique. You had me gripped right to the end of the post. The amazing part is that you educate so skillfully and inspire so effortlessly. Are you planning on doing any fiction in the future if you have not already done so? I’m sure it will be a masterpiece.
Maybe one day, I’ll try some fiction, and it’ll be thanks to you and others who encourage me to try. I appreciate your lovely comment, Poovanesh.
Your writing always leaves me with a warm and fuzzy feeling that inspires me to get cracking on that half-finished draft again. Thank you. Also: “jasmine tea with carrot cake” – glad to know I’m not the only jasmine tea addict around here!
I’m glad you feel inspired to get cracking on your draft again, Manasa! Happy writing 🙂
The world is so lucky to have such a passionate, creative force like you – so willing and caring to share and inspire us minions. Thank you for sharing your joy and expertise!
What a lovely comment. Thank you so much, Lori. Happy storytelling!
I love the way you have laid out this article. i’m glad you pointed out showing and telling as I am guilty of elaborating on telling when it should be to the point. I need to work more on my showing skills.
Thanks a bunch
I’m glad you liked it. Happy writing, Macky!
Thank you for this! Just the reminder I needed – show, don’t tell, and go for the kind of writing, both fiction and non-fiction, that allows me to do that.
LOVE the illustration! So glad you chose to keep doing them – they add just the most wondrous touch to your wondrous words.
-Birdy
The illustration was inspired by the Chekhov quote. Thank you for your compliment, Birdy. I’m also happy to know you found this blog post useful.
Happy storytelling!
Sigh.
I’m often guilty of making things too plain and to the point … sometimes the stories feel like extra padding to me, when in fact they are where the real learning happens – because they are what people remember.
I need to remember THAT ?
I love the way you show through examples, as well as your own excellent writing.
Thank you, Henneke!
Yes, that’s so true that the stories are what people remember. I also find those stories, especially when they’re personal, make connections between writer and reader so much stronger.
I also felt inspired when I put all these examples together.
Happy storytelling, Alison. And thank you, as always, for stopping by! 🙂
You never disappoint me with showing when I most need you dearest Henneke. I tried to understand how to express it descriptively, but that was sort of not quite right. The different ways of showing you have in this blog will be my guide for the next month. Still ending up telling more than showing, I couldn’t possibly imagine as I sit in front of the laptop chewing on my fingernails.
I’m reading your comment while sipping my green tea, and my brain hasn’t quite kicked into gear. Your comment put a smile on my face. Thank you so much, Annamarie.
As usual, Henneke, your blog today is magical. I took three pages of a novel I’ve just completed and scanned through them. It took only two, maybe three paragraphs to reveal I’ve done a peck of tellin’ and damn little showin’. Heck, what’s another edit…Thank you.
I’ve found that “showing” can sometimes feel like a hard job, but also very rewarding. Happy editing, Patricia. I’m glad this blog was useful to you.
I always love your posts, but this one is exactly what I needed. It had my story exploding through my mind: is this right, can I change this, should I do this instead? Thank you.
Your comment puts a smile on my face, Danae. Thank you. Happy storytelling!
Ooh! Your posts always make me want to read more fiction! So busy writing, I forget the joy of reading sometimes.
I love reading fiction! And I’d happily recommend any of the books I quoted here 🙂
Great post, Henneke! So many gems here on how and when to use showing and telling. Another fun variation … slipping in “telling” while something unusual is happening — such as two characters discussing something while watching dragons mating. ?I think Blake Snyder referred to it as the ‘pope in the pool’. I’m sure you can come up with a business writing application! LOL!
That sounds like quite a challenge! I’m not sure what we do in business writing with boring back stories. I think we either skip it or perhaps a short list of bullet points that are easy to scan?
I like your variation of the pope in the pool ?
Henneke, your joy for writing, and for reading is contagious! Thank you for your inspiring writing tips and helpful articles.
What a lovely comment. Thank you, Susan, and happy writing!
This one is a keeper!
Keep stroking that keyboard with more good stuff like this!
Do you provide PDF versions?
Thank you, Margie. I’m not providing PDF versions at the moment as I try to focus on writing. It’s a big enough task already!
I love writing, and “showing” is the part I love the most. People seldom listen to stories told with a lot of showing (a lot of words) because they are always too eager to talk, to listen. But readers seem to get it that they cannot write while they are reading. Haha! Or maybe it is the sure knowledge that they can put the book down if it gets to be too much?
Anyway, writing that shows is fun. I once wrote about a scuffle between two men in an office, that degraded to rolling around under the desk, fighting for life. The dust on the floor under the desk even came into play, plus the thudding of their shoes against the wooden floor. Such fun.
Another fun thing to show is how a child sees things. That point of view can say so much about a scene in such an engaging way, because it draws the reader in to try and interpret what is going on, with the innocent child clues.
The “showing” part of writing is what I love most, too. And I enjoyed gathering all the examples for this post here—they inspired me, too.
I like your idea of showing from a child’s point of view. It can also be a great way to add a splash of humor.
Thank you, as always, for stopping by!
Yes, your best yet, Henneke! A keeper. I’m a long-time fan and use some of your “show, don’t tell” style in my nonfiction magazine articles or they would be dull-as-dishwater boring and who would finish reading them, including editors? Without some human emotion in the mix, reading blocks of nonfiction is like slogging through cold oatmeal.
Brrrr. Cold oatmeal. That’s no fun.
The worst thing is when the telling is not short and factual but long and boring, as well ?
Oh my, sigh, yes.
I put my coffee cup down and sighed in resignation, a bit sorrier than usual to see this one come to an end.
And I was afraid it was too long!
Thank you, Catherine 🙂
Henneke, you did it again. Made me read to the last word. You know, this is not a blog post. It’s a mini-course. I could actually feel my heartbeat thrumming with excitement as I read on….and exclaimed an inevitable ‘yessssss’ at the end. I’m gonna save this post and re-read it many times.
I could picture you reading this post. Fab 🙂