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Tips for the "show don't tell" rule

Use all of the sense. Not just sight and sound.

Try to give the reader the information to make the conclusion of what you’re trying to show rather than just outright telling them what it is.


Eg: “She looked upset.” vs “Her make-up had gone thin around the eyes where she had wiped away tears.”


Make the reader feel what your character feels so that they understand it rather than simply knowing how they feel.

Eg: “He was devastated when he didn’t get on them team.” vs “His eyes scanned all the way from the top of the team list all the way down to the very last name. Then he went up again. He read every word on that sheet of paper to make sure he hadn’t missed some detail to indicate a mistake or that would give him hope of a second chance. But the feeling of acid pouring down his throat had started after the first read through. His new soccer cleats would stay nice and clean this season.”


Use details, don’t be vague.


Eg: “By the way she acted I could tell she was a snob.” vs “The woman held her head up high above the rest, equal parts confidence and an apparent wish to keep her expensive hairstyle away from anyone else’s peasant-do’s. I also couldn’t decide if she was holding on to her purse with such desperation because she feared it would be snatched at any moment, or because it gave her a clean place to keep her hands.”


Make words work for their spot on the page. If you mean “massive” don’t say “really big”. Sometimes one specific, powerful word is better than many.


Use unique dialogue. You can tell a lot about a character by the way they speak and everyone has different patterns, tones, phrases and such when they speak. So by having the characters have their own unique way of speaking that fits with who they are you can show readers their characterization.


Be wary (but not too wary) of adverbs and adjectives. They great parts of speech that help us out in our everyday lives to get to the point but in descriptive writing they can make us lazy. But don’t go irradiating every last -ly word you can find. They still serve a purpose in your manuscript, just make sure that they actually belong.


Which leads to my last tip. DON’T OVER DO IT. Showing is great, really, but we don’t need to know every last detail about every last detail in the story. Sometimes you do need to just tell the reader something. Sometimes it’s perfectly fitting to be blunt. When all you do is tell it ends up sounding like a kid’s picture book that teaches them about animals (The pig is pink. The duck is yellow…) But when you over show it sounds like a bigot trying to out do their art snob friend at a gallery opening. It’s a balance that requires you to think hard about what it is that you’re trying to say and to decide what is the best way to get it across to the reader.