For Writers: Show, Don’t Tell

Technique #1: Create mental images for the reader

E.g.: It rained last Tuesday. Few people showed up to the baseball game – this sounds like a report or newspaper column, doesn’t it?

Instead, create a mental image:  The baseball stadium was sparsely filled last Tuesday. The handful that showed up huddled under their umbrellas.

Technique #2: Share the camera lens with the reader

E.g.: Instead of telling the reader “The sun had set,” allow them to look through your lens; A tangerine moon had risen, spinning a golden web across the dark blue waters of Silver Lake.

Technique #3: Include sensory detail

E.g.:Instead of telling the reader, “He was a big man,”include sensory details (in this case, visual and olfactory); He looks like the kind of guy who tips tractor tires for fun. Dark smudges stain his large hands and his T-shirt is streaked with black splotches. He smells of engine oil.

Technique #4: Personify inanimate objects

Rather than saying, “The rooster sits on Dad’s old tractor,” let’s give that tractor some character;

The rooster watches from his perch atop the carcass of Dad’s rusty red tractor. I remember watching Dad as a child, astride the metal beast, sitting tall and straight as he headed out to the fields each morning, a thin ribbon of crimson barely visible on the eastern horizon. Like a fierce bull, the mechanical brute snorted and bucked, kicking up clouds of dust as my hero in denim overalls coaxed it onward once more.

Technique #5: Evoke emotions in your readers

I can tell my reader, “She was happy” or I can evoke emotion within my readers through actions that clue them in on those emotions; She ran to the gate and threw her arms around her daughter; she hadn’t seen her in three years.

          Tip: This is especially important if you are writing in first person, limited view. As the protagonist, you cannot know what other characters are thinking or feeling, you can only interpret their feelings through their actions.

Technique #6: Make readers participants rather than spectators

I can tell you “The disciples were in a boat when the storm hit. They were scared.” Or, I can take you from the shore into the boat with them and show the fear in their eyes, show their white knuckles as they grip the sides of the boat, help you feel the swell of the waves; The rain lashed at their faces and backs like a stinging whip brandished by some evil force. The wind, brutal and fierce, tossed the little fishing boat back and forth, rendering all their efforts futile. As the fishermen clutched the sides of the boat, giant waves snatched them up to heights they’d never been before, only to let go at the peak of their fear and send them crashing back into the churning waves below. Peter’s stomach clenched as another giant wave hurled the boat sideways.

          Tip: Many non-fiction writers falsely think that show, don’t tell applies to fiction. Yet even devotionals, Sunday School lessons, non-fiction books, can benefit from this technique.

Technique #7: Show when introducing the reader to a new setting (whether at the beginning or during the course of the story:

• Telling: They went to visit a castle
• Showing: They drove to the Loire Valley, the ancient playground of those blessed by noble birth. Crumbling walls and hollow turrets, once the substance of storybooks, suggested a fairytale gone wrong.

Technique #8: Show when introducing new characters

• Telling: She was a forceful woman
• Showing: Though barely five-foot three, Mrs. Lawson was built like an icebreaker. She had a lean yet strong torso and the biceps of an athlete. She walked with purpose, head and shoulders thrust forward as she navigated the house like a frozen lake.

Technique #9: Show when shifting scenes (whether at the beginning of a chapter or in the course of a chapter)

• Telling: She woke up. It was sunny.
• Showing: She yawned, then stretched in the warm rays of sunshine pouring into the room.
• Telling:     The rain woke her up
• Showing:  She awoke to rain pelting her window

Tip: Unless the narrative flows from one chapter into the next, provide setting at the beginning of a new chapter – this grounds the reader as to time, location, mood, and what is happening in this new scene.

Tip: weather is often used to foreshadow moods or events, like music in a movie.

Technique #10: Show when the dynamics within a scene change:

• Telling: She walked out of the room, angry
• Showing: She stomped out, slamming the door behind her
• Telling: The butler came in with a letter
• Showing: The butler entered carrying a silver tray containing a black-edged envelope.

Tip: Don’t show everything. Sometimes you need to tell for brevity’s sake. Show where it matters most.

E.g.: If the point of the story is what you bought at Walmart for Father’s Day, then tell your readers, “I drove to Walmart” then show them how you searched and found just the right gift for your precious father.

Part 2 will be available in October 2021