Show, don’t tell advice helps us craft immersive fiction because showing involves readers, but this doesn’t mean there’s no place for telling.
Telling is necessary sometimes, and a story will be better for it. The real question is, when is it okay to tell, not show?
1. High Action or Fast Pace
When a lot is going on in a scene, like your hero is running pell-mell through the woods to evade an axe-wielding maniac, or you’re neck deep in a scene where a frantic flight attendant is trying to land a plane during a terrorist takeover, then pace is king. Slowing down to describe the soft melody of crickets and scent of pine needles won’t fit with scene A any more than a play-by-play description of a passenger helping by giving CPR to a pilot fits with scene B.
This is not to say high action scenes are all tell, no show, because they aren’t! Only that word economy is important, and doing more with less is key. We maintain the intensity by choosing what is important enough to show, and what can be told.
Fight scenes are an excellent example of this. Describing every blow, dodge, twist, kick and stab in micro-movements will cause readers to skim. Instead, we want to only show details that give the fight scope and intensity and tell the bits that need to be conveyed quickly for readers to keep up and “see” what’s happening.
Let’s say there’s a brawl going on between feuding brothers in the kitchen. If our hero Josh grabs a chair and smashes it over Tim’s head, readers really don’t need to know that it is a cheap wooden chair with one wobbly leg, or that Josh was actually aiming for Tim’s left shoulder, but because his brother shifted mid swing, it cracked him on the head instead. These details slow the scene down. Instead, show us one swift image that paints the action unfolding: Josh hooking the chair with his boot to drag it close, and then swinging it at Tim’s head. BAM.
2. Time, Location, or POV Leaps
Stories, by nature, jump around, because we need to chop out the boring stuff between meaningful scenes. If Betsy went to bed at the end of one scene, and nothing significant happens until the next afternoon, we don’t need all the details in between. A bit of telling can summarize her morning so we can pick up the story again in the afternoon when events around betsy will matter.
The same goes for shifting the POV (after a scene or chapter break) or if the story leaves one location for another. A transitional sentence explaining the change is all that is needed.
3. Revisiting a Static Setting
If your character returns to the same setting repeatedly, you do not need to describe the location each time. Consider a main character who works at a pharmacy. If nothing has changed since her last shift, don’t gob up the page with redundant setting descriptions. Instead, focus on the action.
4. High Emotion that Endures
Any scene packed with emotion can be a descriptive minefield. Too much showing may lead to melodrama, but too little and the moment can flatline.
Whenever emotional tension goes on for an extended period, make it a jagged climb. This means showing readers a range of emotions, not just one, and mixing showing with tiny bits of telling to give readers a chance to catch their breath. If an extended emotional scene is all show, show, show, readers might feel overwhelmed.
5. Details that Don’t Further the Story
With description, we want readers to imagine the scene but not be bogged down in an avalanche of detail. Show, don’t tell is all about identifying which details matter and which do not.
If something furthers the plot, provides needed characterization, or helps the reader feel more immersed in the scene, great. Those are all reasons to spend the word count to show it. But if a detail is more instructional or better served by telling, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of narrative to explain it so you can move on to what matters.
What other situations can you think of where telling might be better than showing? Let us know in the comments!
Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.
These are excellent reminders about finding and maintaining the proper balance while creating descriptive passages in a narrative, but IMO it misses the point about what “showing” and “telling” really are. Consider the following example:
“Who is there?” she stammered nervously.
versus
“Wh-who is t-there?” She gripped the door’s handle with whitening knuckles as she inched up toward the peephole.
The first “tells” the reader that the speaker is nervous, and stammering, but not much more. The second shows the stammer in dialogue, and reveals just how nervous (and yet brave, and perhaps short of stature) she is.
Food for thought. 🙂
Thank you! It’s so easy to get caught up trying to show (and for me, it can be really hard!), that I’ve often felt it’s not quite right. I think you’ve pointed out why some of my scenes aren’t sitting well with me – there’s so much showing going on that my readers would be dribbling as they fall asleep.
One of the hardest things to figure out is what is the most important things to show. I find it is helpful to try and plant myself into my POV character and think about their current emotion state: what would they notice and why? What stands out to them? And then in narrative, think about what will build a specific mood that heightens the POV character’s emotions? What information does the reader need to “feel part of the scene” and of that, what needs to be shown through sensory detail to make the world come alive, and what can simply be told to keep things moving?
The good news is, the more we write and practice, the better we get at finding the right balance! Good luck!
Thanks so much Angela, you are very generous with your knowledge. By the way, I recently bought The Emotion Thesaurus and loving it.
That’s great Lisa–I hope you find it helpful when your brain needs a nudge. 🙂 Thanks for taking it for a test drive!
Good reminders! It is definitely sometimes tough to know when to slow it down and when to tell instead of show. Thanks.
It can be really tough! I do think though that the more we practice, and the better we understand pacing, the easier this gets 🙂
Thank you for showing when it’s okay to tell. 🙂
Glad this helps Manju!
When to show and when to tell – we need know how to do both.
Wonderful post.
Thanks so much!
Funny, but I was just having this same conversation with an author I beta read for recently. Finding that delicate balance can be so difficult but so important. Thanks for putting together this informative piece. You ladies are amazing. Thanks for all you do.
Aw thanks Jenny! Glad this came at the right time! 🙂
Nothing else is coming to mind. Seems like you covered it! 😀 Thank you!
Whoo-hoo! LOL, thanks Donna! As long as I hit the biggies, I’m happy!
Great info, details should add not bore!!
Exactly! If we kill the pacing, readers skim or shut the book, so we have to get this right. 🙂
Thanks much for more info on this tricky balance!
Glad it helps Carleen!
Pacing is everything. Even a quiet story can’t drag or it will lose the reader’s interest. I’ve read action/adventures that didn’t give the reader time to breathe and like you said, the experience was overwhelming. Great advice. Thanks!
Yes, that time to breathe is important. Novels that move at a breakneck speed all the way through shortchange readers and keep them from really getting to know the characters on a deeper level…if they can even make it through to the end.
This really speaks to me:
“Only that word economy is important, and doing more with less is key. We maintain the intensity by choosing what is important enough to show, and what can be told.”
Thanks. I will share this gem with my writers’ guild.
Thanks so much Maureen. 🙂 The show & tell part of writing is something we really have to practice before finding the right balance. I think this is where reading authors we admire can be very instructive. Those with strong showing & telling skills can illustrate this balance, and we directly experience the impact of being drawn into scenes and pulled deeper into the story like a leaf directed by the wind. Happy writing!