by Anne R. Allen
It’s been said that if writing advice were classic rock, “Show Don’t Tell” would be “Stairway to Heaven.” But is it always good advice?
Of course nobody wants to read a novel that tells a series of incidents. That can sound like a four-year-old recapping his day. “I had Froot Loops and then Dad took me to preschool and I played with blocks and ate a bologna sandwich and then I went to the bathroom and did number two…”
You want to show us the action in a series of scenes not tell us what happened. (Well, maybe we really don’t need the author to show the bathroom scene. 🙂 )
We know a “telling” sentence like “Veronica was beautiful,” is bland. It’s better to say something more like “Veronica’s flowing auburn hair and voluptuous figure had a powerful effect on Nigel and Clive.” That way we can show what she looks like and let the reader in on the emotional reactions of the other characters.
But a whole lot of writers, especially newbies (and the dreaded “writing rules police” ) take the “Show Don’t Tell” thing way too far and turn it into an unbreakable rule. That can make for some murky, slow, and downright boring fiction.
Here are some ways that following the Show Don’t Tell rule to the letter can interfere with good storytelling.
Too Much “Show Don’t Tell” Slows the Pace.
If you spend ten pages describing the shabby apartment of the murder witness, and we hear the screaming children and the blaring TV and smell the unemptied cat litter box and overflowing garbage can, you have a vivid description, but no story.
A writer should only dwell on the key scenes where important action is occurring. It’s perfectly okay to tell the reader your detective can see the witness is a harried single mom who is barely able to cope so her testimony may be useless. Then he can move on with the investigation and the story the reader cares about.
Some newbie writers confuse descriptions of violence with conflict. If you describe every blow and scream of pain in a fight scene, your story is not moving forward. The story stops until we know how the characters react to what’s going on and how the fight alters the trajectory of the plot. The carnage needs to do something to the characters and contribute to the plot, or it’s no more interesting than a description of the sofa cushions.
“Camera’s Eye” Showing Skimps on Information
When we write as if we’re a camera simply recording the physical events of the story, we are showing, but we’re also cheating the reader. This is when we simply say, ‘She winced’, ‘He smiled’, or ‘He took her hand,’ but we don’t say how the characters feel about this action.
When we fall into this pattern, we ignore the fact that the reader has no idea what the wincing, smiling, or handholding means. Writers who use this style may refuse to tell the reader what the actions mean, because they are convinced it will violate “Show Don’t Tell.”
This happens partly because most of us have been brought up on television. We have the conventions of the screenplay hardwired to our brains, because we saw TV shows before we could read. But what we see on the screen isn’t a screenplay. It’s the interpretation of the script by actors, directors, cinematographers, composers, and a whole host of other creative people.
When a screenwriter says a character clenches his fist, this clench will be interpreted by a director and actor to show a whole spectrum of emotion. Lighting and music and camera angle will enhance them.
But when a novelist tells us a character clenches his fist, he is not letting us in on much.
Is the character angry and about to punch somebody? Trying to keep from crying? Suffering from a painful intestinal ailment? We’ll never know if the author won’t tell us.
You’re not a camera. You’re a novelist. And it’s your job to give us as much information as possible to tell your story.
“Show Don’t Tell” Can Distance the Reader from the Character.
An author’s job is to create a connection between the reader and the character. Readers want to get inside the character’s head.
But when we meet that guy with the clenched fist, we are just looking at him from the outside. We’re shut out of the story.
When you say, “Veronica bit her fingernail,” we don’t have access to her feelings. She may be apprehensive, but she may simply have an annoying hangnail or be desperate for a cigarette.
“Veronica was so terrified of meeting the man from Interpol, she’d chomped off three fingernails and was working on a fourth,” gives us a much better idea of her internal state even though the author is — gasp — telling us Veronica is terrified.
Withholding Information Annoys the Reader.
Withholding information is not plotting. I’ve read a lot of amateur fiction (especially literary fiction) where the plot seems to be a secret the author is withholding from the reader. A character is shown moving inexplicably through a bizarre landscape having cryptic conversations with random people. But the author won’t tell the reader why. They may use the phrase “story question” to explain this game of “that’s for me to know and you to find out.”
But readers aren’t there to play games. They want a story. A “story question” should not be, “WTF is this story about?”
Withholding information is not a smart way to create tension. One story question should be answered before another one is asked. Piling on the confusion is only going to annoy your reader.
Let us know where we are, who the protagonist is and what he wants, or you’ve lost your reader before chapter two. If you have to tell rather than show to keep the reader from leaving, go ahead and do it. Seriously. It’s okay.
It’s Hard to Say Anything Original about Body Language.
How many times have you hit the thesaurus looking for a new way to say your character is afraid or angry or elated?
A thesaurus is helpful, but beware thesaurus-itis. Beginning writers are likely to stray into purple prose territory while trying to avoid telling us this stuff outright.
- “He shook an ireful fist at the uncaring firmament.”
- “The contents of his stomach had turned into rabid ferrets.”
- “Her angora-mittened hands clenched into fuzzy pink balls of rage.”
- “Her heart felt as if it had taken wing and landed in Narnia — but not the winter Narnia with that awful queen — Narnia on a summer day when Peter was High King and the talking animals were all getting along.”
Writers want to be original. We want to Show-Don’t-Tell. But we need to be careful it doesn’t involve stepping out of the story and taking our readers with us.
Too Much “Showing” Can be a Sign of Over-Workshopping
We want to avoid the off-putting “writerly” tone that comes from following too many “writing rules” instead of developing our own voice.
I’m a fan of workshops and critique groups because they can be a free and helpful way for a new writer to learn basic writing skills. But I also warn about the dangers. See my post on Why You Should Ignore Most Advice from your Critique Group.
And there’s such a thing as over-workshopping. I know writers who have workshopped the same novel for decades in everything from college classes to writers’ conferences to online critique groups. They often try to follow the advice of every person who gives feedback.
What they’re doing is giving away creative control of their own book. They are letting their book be written by committee. They’re also following a recipe for bland, boring writing. Don’t do it. If a book isn’t working, or it’s had hundreds of rejections and you don’t know what to do to fix it, put it in a drawer.
Then go read at least five popular contemporary books in that genre by five different authors. Do these authors break the “rules”?
How often do they tell, rather than show?
Right.
Learning to write compelling prose takes time. It does take feedback, but it also takes a lot of READING. Your time might be better spent learning from the pros. Workshops and writing rules have their place, but nothing can substitute for knowing your genre inside and out. Each genre breaks “the rules” in a different way and each has a way of “telling” when “showing” is simply slowing the story down.
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) March 17, 2024 ☘️
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What about you, scriveners? Are you annoyed by the Show Don’t Tell rule? Have you tried to follow it to the letter? Have you run into an over-workshopped manuscript? Do you have examples where Show Don’t Tell drives you bonkers?
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Another excellent post, Anne. I agree that “show don’t tell” should be viewed as a guideline. I’m always suspicious of rules that include words such as “always,” “never,” etc.
You mentioned relying on less “show” during a fight scene. You’re so right. I recently read a book that described every blow and recoil. Yes, I envisioned what was happening, but it was like watching something in slo-mo. The author had obviously spent a lot of time on many similar scenes in the book, but the reader in me wanted to get to the end of the fight and find out what happened next.
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to you and Ruth!
Kathy–Those long fight scenes can be so boring, can’t they? And you know the author has worked really hard getting the choreography right. But you’re so right it’s like looking at something in slow motion. I skip them too.
Great post, Anne…again. I write mostly fantasy, and fight scenes featuring swords and/or knives and clubs is a staple. But I find myself bored with my own telling after a short time of battle. Like the reader, I want to get to what happens next. In my current WIP I had the two protagonists against six antagonists, swords as weapons. I detailed the first encounter by each of the protagonists, showing contact, reaction, and results. A sufficient amount of pain and blood-letting. Then I summarized the remainder and allowed the protagonists to escape as they had planned. We must grant the readers the opportunity to allow their imaginations to fill in the details if they wish. Thanks for all you and Ruth give us.
Fred–Yes, we need to allow readers to use their imaginations. “Summarizing” can be very helpful, even though it’s “telling.”
Sage advise as always, and a Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you and Ruth.
Like most everything, show vs tell is a balance. Too much show can slow the pace to a crawl. Too much tell can distance the reader from the characters.
Sometimes it’s fine to just tell that John walked into the room. It’s also fine to use tell for a time jump. The train trip took three days. A reader doesn’t care what happened for those three days unless something important occurred.
As for fight or chase scenes, even when watching a movie or TV show, I often fast forward through most of them if they go on for too long. I’m more interested in what caused the fight or chase and the aftermath than the scene itself. An extended fight scene whether in a book or on the screen can become boring and are pretty much all the same. Yes, it’s fine to go into some detail from a character’s point of view, using the senses, and preferably in short, punchy sentences but just write the darned thing and move on.
It’s also fine to tell during some descriptions. It shouldn’t take two or three pages to describe a room or a tree. An author should avoid skimmable material and no reader wants to simply flip pages to get back to the meat of the story.
Basically, if a scene affects a character in some profound way, then show. If not, then tell.
Brenda–Thanks for bringing up chase scenes. Those are a whole lot more interesting in a movie than on the page. And even in a movie, I often want them to end it sooner. People are there for a story. If they want to see cars going fast, they’d go to a NASCAR race.
You make a good point that we should only show a scene that affects a character, and otherwise, just tell.
Anne, this is perfect! “But readers aren’t there to play games. They want a story. A “story question” should not be, “WTF is this story about?” I’ve read so much beginning work where we’re “just supposed to watch and see what happens” – but until one cares for the character, why would they bother? Great post, as usual.
Melodie–Anybody who has taught beginning writers has met way too many “WTF” stories the way you have. They think they’re being clever and arty, but they don’t realize that the reader doesn’t know what isn’t on the page. You can’t tell a story by ESP. 🙂
Yes, yes, & yes. “Show don’t tell” is one of those fabulous bits of advice that some writers have turned into some sort of ill-informed exclusive religion, bowing to show-don’t-tell and trampling over the myriad other elements we depend on in a good story. Thanks for this post.
CS–“Ill-informed exclusive religion” about covers it.
Those examples for the body language are like, wow. A bunch of those would be so hard to read.
Like you said, telling is sometimes faster and gets us to the important things to show.
Alex–I had fun with those! They are all so terrible. I want to weep for writers who work so hard for bad metaphors.
Love this post. I’m writing a novel for the first time, and I’ve found it frustrating to have my characters gurning away (how many physical reactions are possible, anyway!) – so from now on I’ll start a little more telling at salient points.
I also totally agree about plot – as a reader I skip the slow bits. Get me to the next important bit!
Jac–It sounds as if more telling will move your book along. Elmore Leonard told us not to write the bits that readers tend to skip.
Regarding fight scenes: I often feel shorter is better. The majority of the fight/flight scenes that I write often last a maximum of two and a half paragraphs. This philosophy came in handy writing my final chapter of one of my books. I had 5 confrontations going on at the same time and in order for it to all make sense in the overall structure, I had to write a ton of jump cuts.
Overall though, I really do make an effort to keep things short and sweet, simply because that’s what I like to read.
GB–Writing what we actually want to read–instead of what we think will impress a creative writing teacher–is always a good idea. If you don’t like to be confused, your reader probably doesn’t either. 🙂
Thank you Anne. That’s really interesting. As an aspiring writer, it’s a total balance between paying attention and respect to established rules and breaking them. I’m by inclination a rule follower – so an extra challenge for me.
The other rule that it brings to mind is ‘don’t repeat words’. In some sense true – but if I obliterate all duplicates then, once again, it reads like I’ve swallowed the thesaurus and it’s all coming out again on the page. And not in a good way.
And I was also told not to start a sentence with ‘and’.
Tim–It sounds as if you could benefit from my post on “stupid writing rules“. There are so many of them. No repetitions is one. And never start a sentence with “and” is another. Rules for college term papers aren’t the same as rules for fiction.
“Your time might be better spent learning from the pros. Workshops and writing rules have their place, but nothing can substitute for knowing your genre inside and out.”
Such great advice.
I’ve been re-reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain’s handling of the action scenes interspersed with Huck’s first-person account of feelings is masterful.
Kay–What a great idea to reread Mark Twain. Most of us read those books when we were younger, and not paying attention to the writing as much as the story. I might have a copy on my bookshelf…
I’m so over this stinky old show vs tell carp. As Stephen King says, “Just tell the GD story.” And that’s not a typo. It’s carp, as in the fish. Happy Sunday, and top o’ the day to you two 🙂
Garry–I agree. Fork that Carp! 🙂 Stephen King says a lot of very wise things writers should pay attention to.
Writing blow by blow fight scenes is not a good idea.
I read a couple of books in a series in which the author went into great detail of several hockey matches, and a fantasy team game. I found this part especially boring and skipped it. (The author is a keen hockey player, so probably enjoyed writing these scenes.)
Give a brief account, but not nearly every irrelevant pass of the ball. Just the important parts.
VM–You’re so right! The only thing worse than fight scenes is sports games. Bo-ring. I have to skip so many scenes in sports books that now I avoid the genre altogether.
Great post! I agree that too much of a ‘Good thing’ can ruin the pace. Linda 🙂
Linda–Pace is more important to readers than ever in the contemporary world. Slow it at your peril. 🙂
Once again love your post. Ironically, my second chapter has a sofa; however, its frame is charred on the front lawn after an explosion. Hope that passes the boring sofa cushion “rule”.
Also, I didn’t discover who my protagonist was until the forth chapter. I may have to find him sooner.
Are you free for coffee??
Swinging for the fences.
Lp
Londie–It sounds as if the sofa is important. A smoking sofa can be as much of a clue as a smoking gun. Readers generally like it better if they meet the protagonist in the opening chapter. Here’s my post on opening chapters. https://selfpublishingsites.com/2022/10/write-great-opening-chapter/. You may have to move those chapters around.
This is a great post. “You’re not a camera. You’re a novelist!” I used to be very guilty of holding my reader at a distance. Years ago an editor chided me for not using more “interiority”. I was like, duh? What’s that mean? Even today, I have to remind myself to let the reader inside the character’s head. I recently read an interview with Tommy Orange talking about the difference about movies and books. “Movies can’t show you what a person is thinking. It seems to me,” he said, “that this is what fiction can and should do.” I think that’s why a movie is seldom as good as the book it is based on.
Sorry, I wanted to edit my comment to read- the difference ‘between’ movies and books. Duh again!
Yvonne–Speaking as a retired actor, I need to say that a good actor can show an awful lot about what a character is thinking. But a screenplay can’t. That’s why you don’t want your novel to read like a screenplay. Novels don’t usually make great films because there’s too much in them. Short stories make better movies.
Fantastic advice, Anne. In dance scenes, we want to “show” how the music emotionally affects the POV character while we “tell” for brevity sake. Showing every step, every sway of the hips, would become monotonous, boring, and dry as burnt toast.
Sue–Dancing is a good example. So exciting in a film like Dirty Dancing. But in a novel? Not so much…
Some people have taken the advice show don’t tell to the limit. I have started several books that I have had to put down because everything is described. Too much description is off putting. Describe where needed, a new setting, or character but I don’t need a play by play of every minuscule action.
Kate–I once read a story that took 3 pages to describe a firefighter. I figured by then, the building was in ashes and everybody was dead. No thanks. 🙂
Hahahaha! This actually had me laughing out loud.
This is exactly why I’m going back to make revisions on my already published novel. I definitely fell into the traps you mentioned, but I know better now. I want to put the best product out for others to read, so I why shouldn’t I make revisions even though its already published? I’m a better writer now than in 2018 and I want my work to reflect that.
TJ–The trouble with republishing a self-published novel is that Amazon hates change. You may be able to get the new version available, but they’ll always show the artwork for the first cover and confuse your readers. You can also lose all your reviews. Writers do get better with practice, but weigh the cons with the pros. If your story comes across okay and readers haven’t complained, I’d consider simply starting a new book. Going forward is always easier than going backward. If you have several versions of a book that aren’t updates, you can look amateurish. But I do understand that urge.