Tell, Don’t Show: Why Your Writing Should Tell More and Show Less

I know, I know. Hot take, right?

“Show, don’t tell” is practically an axiom for fiction writers, true for the same reason that reading a Wikipedia summary of a book is NOT the same as reading the book itself. The summary tells you the bare facts of the story, but the book gives you the full experience—an experience you literally cannot have without being shown all the sensory details that make up a real, fleshed-out, human story.

Don’t get me wrong. “Show, don’t tell” is probably the most important rule of fiction, and it’s a skill that every writer has to learn. But sometimes writers (even experienced writers!) implement “show, don’t tell” in a way that actively makes their writing worse.

Here’s what I mean. In fiction, the writer can almost always break a detail down to a deeper layer of showing. For example, maybe you’re writing a scene in which Jane is angry at Mark, but you want to show that instead of telling it. Easy—you write:

Jane gave Mark an irritated look. “Shut up,” she said.

But wait, now you’ve told us that Jane’s look was irritated. You delete your original sentence and instead you write:

Jane raised her eyebrows slightly as her eyes narrowed. The corners of her mouth curved downward. “Shut up,” she said.

At this point, you’ve done the equivalent of pausing the movie so you can describe Jane’s microexpression: the tiny movements of her eyebrows, eyes, and mouth that, when put together, form an angry expression. But there are a few problems with this approach, even though it technically “shows” Jane’s irritation on a more granular level than the first sentence.

First, the average person doesn’t actually notice all of those concrete details, and certainly not in an expression that lasts maybe half a second. So now you’re giving the reader the impression either that Mark is incredibly observant or that he is paying unusually close attention to Jane’s face. That might be useful in some cases—for example, if Mark actually is unusually observant, or if he has a good reason to be watching Jane’s face closely in this specific scene. But not every POV character is going to be quite that perceptive, and even if they are, certain situations will still reduce their perceptiveness. (No one is tracking their enemy’s microexpressions during a knife fight.)

Second, Jane’s microexpression is actually less specific than the original sentence. Paradoxically, because the details are so nuanced (slight eyebrow raise, narrowed eyes, etc.), they paint a less vivid picture than simply stating that Jane gave Mark an irritated look. After all, everyone has seen an irritated look before. The moment I write the words “irritated look,” you’re already imagining how that might appear on Jane’s face. The reader can fill in the gaps without you micromanaging them.

Another accidental consequence of writers trying to implement “show, don’t tell” is over-emoting.

Jane grimaced. “Shut up,” she said, gritting her teeth.

This kind of intense reaction might be appropriate under the circumstances, or Jane might just be a very emotional person. But if every character reacts this way every time, then suddenly each character is a carbon copy of all the other characters. They all react the same way—melodramatically—to anything and everything that happens. That’s how you end up with a story in which every other line shows someone grimacing, or gritting their teeth, or widening their eyes, or biting their lip, or gasping—you get the picture. But most people don’t wear their feelings on their sleeves like that. They don’t “show” those kinds of emotions (at least not in ways that are convenient for fiction writers).

But obviously we can’t throw the advice out the window. You can’t just tell us that Mark is in love with Jane, or that Todd is stubborn and impulsive, or that the villain is super evil. We need to undergo the experience of the story, which means the writer has to show us those things. So when exactly should writers show, and when should they tell?

I would argue that the fundamental principle is experience. You want a reader to experience the narrative as fully as possible. Showing is only helpful insofar as it serves the overarching goal of giving the reader the experience of your story rather than the mere knowledge of what happens.

Because writing is an art and not a science, there isn’t one set of “show or tell?” rules that you can plug into your story like an algorithm. That being said, here is a list of five principles to guide you in deciding whether to show or tell certain details in your narrative.

1. Show character traits.

Don’t tell us that Jane is funny; write dialogue where Jane makes us laugh. Don’t tell us that Mark is thoughtful; write a scene where Mark waxes philosophical about the moral dilemma he’s found himself in. Don’t tell us that Todd is impulsive; write a key plot point where Todd ruins everything his friends have been working toward because he blabbed the whole plan to a complete stranger.

Pierce Brown’s Red Rising trilogy includes a secondary character named Roque whose main character trait is that he is a poet. There’s no way you could miss this character trait because Brown bludgeons you over the head with it. At every possible opportunity, Brown loves to remind us that Roque is a poet. The problem is that Roque’s identity as a poet is more or less limited to Brown insisting “really, guys, he’s a poet, I swear!” Brown doesn’t provide much evidence for the claim that Roque is a poet, and if he did, he wouldn’t have to tell us over and over. We would already know. 

Let the reader, not the writer, interpret your character. If the character is a poet, your reader will pick up on it and describe him that way. If the character isn’t a poet and you want him to be, maybe you should incorporate some scenes that would result in the reader describing him as a poet. But maybe he isn’t a poet—maybe he’s something more interesting and nuanced that cannot be summarized in a single word. And that’s okay too.

2. Show relationships.

Since I just used a negative Pierce Brown example, it’s only fair that we look at a positive example from one of his more recent books. In Brown’s novel Iron Gold, one of the POV characters is a twenty-year-old man named Lysander who travels the stars in a spaceship (Star Trek style) with his friend and guardian Cassius, who saved Lysander’s life ten years ago when Cassius was twenty-three and Lysander was ten.

Here’s a short paragraph that tells you about Lysander and Cassius’s relationship:

Over ten years of traveling together, Cassius and Lysander have developed a close and brotherly relationship. Cassius cares deeply about Lysander and is used to taking care of him in the way that an older brother or even a father might. When Lysander was younger, he was more willing to talk to Cassius about his lingering trauma from the war that almost killed him, but now that he is older, Lysander tries to hide his ongoing emotional struggles. He is well aware that Cassius still sees him as the little boy he saved ten years ago, and he wants Cassius both to acknowledge that he has grown up and to treat him like an equal.

Now take a look at how Brown actually introduces us to their relationship. Lysander wakes from a nightmare and lies there for a minute before Cassius appears in the doorway:

“The night terrors again?” The voice of my teacher startles me. He stands looking into my room, Golden eyes dark pools in the starship’s night-cycle lighting. His powerful shoulders fill the doorway and he bends at the neck, wary of the low doorframe. The engines hum soothingly beyond my small metal room. The place had space enough when I was a boy. But twenty now, I feel like a potted plant spilling root and limb from a cracking clay bowl….

“Just a dream,” I say, wary of showing vulnerability in his eyes because I know just how young the Martian still thinks I am.

This brief passage packs in a lot of information about their relationship—the same information that I told you earlier, but with far more color and intimacy. The familiarity of Cassius’s entrance (entering Lysander’s room and asking about the night terrors without preamble) shows a well-established bond between them. Cassius asks whether Lysander had night terrors “again,” showing that he’s accustomed to talking with Lysander about his nightmares (in the way that a parent might comfort a child who has bad dreams). Lysander lies and claims the nightmare was “just a dream,” showing that he doesn’t want Cassius to see him as young, vulnerable, and in need of a guardian’s comfort.

On top of all that, the smallness of the room and the potted plant metaphor both show Lysander’s discomfort with being trapped in the same dynamic he and Cassius had when he was a child. He’s outgrown it, and he’s ready for the dynamic to catch up.

(Note that Brown still does a bit of telling here. Lysander explicitly tells us that he is “wary of showing vulnerability” and that he knows “just how young” Cassius thinks he is. But the telling is in service to the showing. It’s a brush stroke that helps to paint a bigger picture.)

You might be able to get away with telling the reader about an unimportant side relationship, but when it comes to the main cast, you should always, always show relationships.

3.  Tell context.

In an effort to show context rather than tell, writers will sometimes hide clunky exposition in dialogue. This trope is often called “as you know, Bob” because it almost always involves a character telling “Bob” something he already knows. We might also be reminded of the scene in Spaceballs where the henchman tells Dark Helmet every detail of the evil plan (which of course he already knows), after which Dark Helmet turns to the camera and asks, “Everybody got that?”

In fiction, “as you know, Bob” dialogue often looks something like this:

“Jane, are you ready for school?” Mark asked.

“I’m going to walk today,” Jane said.

“Wait, what? Why?”

“Look, Mark, I really appreciate how you’ve driven me to school every day for the past two years just like Mom used to do before she died, but I really want to walk today.”

Aside from all the other issues with this admittedly pretty stilted exchange, Jane is telling Mark context that he already knows for no reason. It’s okay to “tell” this context to the reader directly: Their mother died two years ago, and Mark has been driving Jane to school ever since. If you try to show absolutely everything, you’ll end up with 300,000 words and a lot of cringeworthy dialogue. Just tell the context.

4. Show the main purpose(s) of a scene or plot beat.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the conflict between Jane and Mark has been growing naturally over time. This is the scene where that conflict finally boils over from unspoken resentment into explicit anger. It marks a turning point in their relationship where both characters say things they can’t unsay.

Engaging with the experience of Jane’s anger is one of the main purposes of the scene. At no point should the writer tell the reader explicitly that “Jane is angry.” The fact that Jane is steadily growing angrier and angrier should be baked into the structure and rhythm of the scene. It should be apparent in the escalation of the argument, especially in the actual words that are being spoken.

That being said, you do not need to break down every piece of that puzzle into the most concrete detail possible. Which brings us to our last principle…

5. Tell details that fill in gaps, as long you use concrete language and sprinkle in realistic showing details.

The original sentence (the one that our imaginary writer friend decided wasn’t “showy” enough) went like this:

Jane gave Mark an irritated look. “Shut up,” she said.

Is the writer telling us that Jane’s look is irritated? Yes. Could they break that fact down into more granular details? Also yes. Is it perfectly fine (and often preferable) to tell us that Jane’s look is irritated without jumping through awkward hoops to “show” it? Absolutely.

The point of the scene is what matters. The irritated look is just a piece of a bigger puzzle. What is really bothering Jane here? More specifically, why is Jane upset by what Mark just said? That’s the part you shouldn’t tell us. Let the reader put together the clues. Let the subtext explain. 

I know I said I don’t have any hard-and-fast rules about when to show and when to tell, but if I did, it would be this: Always show the big stuff. At the same time, showing character traits, relationships, and themes involves putting a lot of puzzle pieces together, and every now and then, those puzzle pieces will tell some of the little stuff. That doesn’t mean you’ve violated the sacred law of writing. As long as you’re giving your reader the full experience of the story, you’re doing it right.

What are your favorite passages where a writer really showed the heck out of something (or the opposite)? Let me know in the comments!