Show versus Tell

Okay, so you have a plot. You have some events and information to get across. You need to communicate these to the reader, write it down in some way. Then you have two options, broadly speaking.

You can tell it literally. Your hero defeated a monster? Just say “The hero defeated the monster!” and now the reader knows.

Or you can show it through more plot. You write a whole scene in which the hero approaches the monster, fights it, then defeats it. You’ve given the same plot, just in a different way and with more details.

This is a skill that takes many books to master, and even then there’s no definitive answer. When do you show? When do you tell? How do you convert a piece of information into a full scene that shows it?

This chapter gives more examples and practical tips on how to turn your plot ideas into scenes, chapters and paragraphs on the page.

Three Layers of Writing

In my opinion, there are actually three layers of writing.

• Tell: you literally state the information
• Show: you construct plot (a scene, an action, dialogue) that shows the information
• Feel: you use multiple steps (actions, paragraphs, scenes) to make the reader feel the emotion of the character

These are ranked based on how much space they need (and how hard they are to pull off). Telling is incredibly short and efficient. To truly make a reader feel needs time and setup.

Feeling needs both showing and telling, repeatedly, over a longer period of time. If your hero suffers a single injustice, the reader won’t care yet. If your hero suffers an injustice, but you explain it with a single sentence and then continue, the reader won’t care.

If the reader is shown injustice after injustice, in different ways, and constantly told extra information that makes these events even worse—that’s when the reader will really feel the emotions of our hero.

Some people call this “Explain” (Tell) vs “Experience” (Show). Use those terms, if they work better for you.

When to use which?

This is my rule.

The more important or emotional an event is, the more space it should take up in your story.

In other words, a minor bit of information can be told in one sentence. Important plot beats should be shown. The climax of the story should surely be felt by the reader.

Think about what I taught you in the Progress chapter, about the “points on a map” strategy. Those “major events” on a character’s route should surely be shown. You should write a whole scene in which the event plays out, instead of telling what happened directly to the reader.

In every scene, though, details exist that are important to know, but not important enough to be shown. Maybe the clothes people wear, or their surroundings. If those details are only mentioned so the reader can imagine the setting, just tell them: “He wore a brown jacket.” or “The room had grey walls covered in abstract paintings.” (If that jacket, for some reason, has huge value in your story, spend more time on it.)

Maybe somebody looks tired. You can show somebody is tired through their dialogue and actions, but that would take several paragraphs. Is it really that important? Probably not, so simply say “Sarah looked tired.”

In summary,

• Make the reader feel the biggest turning points of the story (such as the climax). This means you take enough time to setup and payoff this emotion, by showing (in detail) what led up to it, but also the consequences.
• Write a whole scene for every important development in the plot, every bit of Progress. (Each scene should have a purpose. Show that purpose.)
• Literally tell everything else.

Examples

Example: event

Events are easier to show. Even beginning writers naturally know they want a whole scene for the event, not just one line that states it happened. (Although events that aren’t crucial to the current plot, such as a bit of backstory or history, should just be told.)

Example: information

Information—such as feelings, character traits, details needed for a mystery—are harder to do. You will mainly tell these, but the most important ones should still be shown. You will have to design a scene that conveys this information without literally saying it.

Use the layers for hierarchy

Thinking about these layers is great for structuring your story. It gives you a hierarchy that tells you which events are most important to your story, and which are less crucial.

If you cannot clearly separate parts of your plot (into what should be felt, shown or told), the plot is probably too complicated or messy. Maybe you tried to do too much and made every event feel like the end of the world. Or maybe you did too little, and the story meanders endlessly between not-really-important events and breadcrumbs.

Stories, like most art, need contrast. Your climax will only feel impactful if everything that came before it was less impactful. You can’t have the highs without the lows. Stories need a variation between fast-paced action, and slower-paced scenes. An ebb and flow of crucial events and less important events.

Give readers a scene that takes their breath away—then give them some time to breathe!

How (not) to show

Given the advice “show, don’t tell”, many writers start to show everything. Instead of writing “Sarah was angry”, they invent all sorts of sentences that show she is angry. “Sarah clenched her fists” and “Sarah turned red” and “Sarah shouted at the top of her lungs”.

This isn’t wrong perse. If Sarah’s anger is important, yeah, show it. Reveal it through her body language, tone of voice, word choice.

The problem is that this isn’t really showing. This is just saying “Sarah is angry” in a very convoluted way. You require multiple sentences of body language just to state that simple fact.

When showing, make it specific and unique. Anger comes in many forms. How a person reveals this anger, says a lot about their character. When showing, find a way to reveal the precise anger that Sarah exudes.

If the specifics don’t matter, well, don’t show, just tell!

If the specifics do matter, that’s when you show, and you do it in the most fitting way possible.

An example

Let’s say Sarah just had a stressful day and it’s quite a logical consequence that she’s a bit angry. Then simply tell the reader Sarah is angry, one or two times, in simple ways. Confirm the story so far, confirm what the reader expects, but swiftly continue.

If her anger comes after a huge betrayal, and you want the reader to fear for what Sarah does next, show it. Find unique traits of Sarah that reveal just how angry she is. Maybe she never swears, in the whole story, but now she does. Maybe she cares a lot about fashion and clothes, but now she rips her shirt in two, adding to her anger even more!

Another example

Let’s say your story revolves a lot around mystery and figuring out clues. There are many ways to deliver this information to readers.

If it’s a minor clue, or a subtle hint, just tell it. Drop the information somewhere, like it’s nothing, and move on.

If it’s slightly more important, spend a little more time on it. Maybe the information comes through in a dialogue, after pressing. Maybe they find the clue in some old book. This takes some paragraphs to set up, but that’s not too bad.

If it’s a big reveal, however, write a whole chapter around it, maybe a whole storyline. Hide the information in some remote location, so the hero needs to travel there. Hide the information with a character who has a strong reason not to share it. Split the information into two pieces, and the hero needs to figure out how the two work together.

Make the hero work. Reveal this information through showing it.

A common mistake is to be inconsistent with this. Many mystery-type stories will spend a whole scene just for a minor clue, and then drop a huge clue in a single sentence somewhere. (Like, an adventurer travels a long way to visit a temple, fight enemies, extract some artefact … and it barely progresses the mystery. The next scene, their companion makes some offhanded comment and it’s THE clue that solves all!)

Or, they’ll never consider that you can show information. So they basically tell all the clues through description or very on-the-nose dialogue.

Every bit of plot can be told or shown. Pick the right one for how important it is. Be consistent with this, as it’s a clear signal that helps the reader understand your plot more easily.

Conclusion

Hopefully this gives a sense of how to execute the details of your plot.

• Pick the most important information you want to get across. Design a plot to show this information.
• Now that you have your most important plot pieces, turn those into your scenes or chapters.
• Weave less important events into those scenes, maybe by showing, maybe by telling the information directly.
• Reveal information about characters by the specifics of how they act and talk. Only do this if it’s important enough, and do it in a way that is specific and unique. Otherwise, just state the information literally.
• Tell the non-essential details, don’t spend whole paragraphs or scenes showing them.

Finally, pick one emotion or theme that is absolutely the core of your story, and make sure the reader feels it. That can only happen if you show it, multiple times, in different ways, throughout the whole story.