THE BOOKS WE WRITE · CRAFT ACROSS GENRES
Show, Don't Tell: Examples, Exceptions, and When Telling Works Better
Showing lets a reader encounter evidence through a scene, action, detail, or voice. Telling gives the reader information directly. Good writing chooses between them according to what the moment needs.
By Dr. Robert Urban · 6 minute read
Writer’s Notes / The Books We Write
A label and the evidence for it do different jobs · Showing is not the same as adding adjectives · The familiar emotion gesture can become another label · Let summary control distance and time · Do not explain a detail until it has had a chance to work · Dialogue can show and tell at the same time · Different forms need different balances · A practical revision exercise
“Show, don’t tell” is useful advice until it becomes an expensive construction project. Somebody writes, “He was tired,” and a well-meaning editor demands a paragraph about eyelids, shoulders, the angle of a coffee cup, and the tragic geography of a sofa. Sometimes the man simply needs to be tired so we can get to what happens next.
The question is where the reader should spend attention. Show the moments whose experience matters. Tell what helps the reader travel between them. Neither method receives a prize for appearing more frequently.
A label and the evidence for it do different jobs
Consider this invented sentence: “The receptionist was impatient.” It names an interpretation and moves quickly. If impatience is incidental, that may be enough.
Now try: “Before I finished spelling my name, she slid the clipboard across the counter.” The reader encounters behavior and can infer impatience. The sentence also creates a small social event. Someone has been cut short.
But evidence remains open to interpretation. Perhaps the receptionist already knows the name. Perhaps a line of people is waiting. Showing does not remove the writer’s responsibility to provide context. It changes how the reader participates in making meaning.
The best detail may reveal more than one thing. A clipboard with the same question crossed out three times might suggest a broken process, a previous argument, or the narrator’s uncertainty. Choose what matters to this scene rather than collecting gestures that can stand in for any emotion.
Showing is not the same as adding adjectives
“The magnificent, enormous, intimidating house” still tells the reader what to think. More modifiers have not made it a scene.
An invented alternative: “He rang the bell. Somewhere beyond the door, another bell answered, far enough away that he wondered if he had called the wrong building.” Scale becomes part of the visitor’s experience. We also learn something about his uncertainty.
You could instead write that the house had forty rooms. That is useful information, but its effect differs. Numerical size does not tell us what entering the house feels like to this person.
Select details through a point of view. A housekeeper, a child, a building inspector, and a guest hoping to impress the owner will not notice the same threshold. Showing becomes character work when perception has an owner.
The familiar emotion gesture can become another label
Clenched fists, racing hearts, and tears are sometimes exactly right. They also become interchangeable if they appear every time a character feels strongly.
Look for behavior specific to the person and situation. A meticulous man leaves a cabinet open. A habitual interrupter lets someone finish. A daughter answers the telephone using the formal name she never uses with her father. Those changes carry meaning because a pattern has been established.
Without that pattern, the open cabinet is just an open cabinet. You cannot make a small deviation important by insisting that it is subtle. The reader needs something to compare it with.
This is why revision across a whole manuscript matters. The strongest detail in chapter twelve may depend on an ordinary behavior in chapter two.
Let summary control distance and time
A novel may cover years. A memoir may cross decades. Treating every interval as a fully dramatized scene would create an object nobody could comfortably lift.
“For the next three weeks, we spoke only about the dog” moves time and establishes a pattern. Then a scene can show the conversation that breaks that pattern. The summary prepares the change; the scene lets us experience it.
Summary can also widen perspective. A narrator can explain the history of a neighborhood before entering one kitchen. An essay can identify a recurring habit before examining a particular instance. The movement between overview and encounter gives prose its range.
Watch for the opposite failure: summarizing the very moment the book has taught us to anticipate. If the entire chapter builds toward a reunion, “We talked and finally understood each other” may skip the scene the reader has earned.
Do not explain a detail until it has had a chance to work
“He put her favorite mug at the other end of the table. This showed that he still hoped she would return.” The second sentence narrows the reader’s experience and may repeat an implication already clear.
It might be more interesting if the narrator misinterprets the mug, or if the mug belongs there for another reason. But if the intended meaning is straightforward and supported, trust it.
After a scene, ask what the reflection adds. It can complicate the event, connect it to later knowledge, or admit something the narrator could not then see. Merely translating every action into an emotion can make the prose feel supervised.
In memoir, reflection is not a failure to show. It is often central to the form. The useful distinction is between thinking further and repeating what just happened in abstract language.
Dialogue can show and tell at the same time
“I paid the bill” conveys a fact. In the right context, it may also be a boast, accusation, reassurance, or refusal to discuss who should have paid it.
An exchange shows relationships through timing, omissions, and response. It becomes disguised exposition when characters explain facts they both know without a believable reason. For a fuller treatment, read How to Write Dialogue.
Silence is not automatically meaningful either. A pause matters because of what is being withheld, expected, or reconsidered. Describe every silence as heavy and eventually the room will need structural reinforcement.
Different forms need different balances
In a thriller, a brief sensory detail can make danger immediate; a long description may delay an urgent action. In literary fiction, sustained attention to an ordinary object may be the event itself. Neither is a universal rule about pace.
In a business book, a clear explanation can be more useful than a cinematic opening to every chapter. A worked example then demonstrates what the explanation means in practice. Readers should not have to reverse-engineer the instruction from an anecdote.
In humor, a blunt sentence can be the funniest possible choice. Elaborate demonstration may destroy the timing. In poetry, a direct statement may gain force from placement, sound, and what surrounds it. Do not make every form obey a workshop slogan written for another task.
A practical revision exercise
Choose a passage that feels flat. Underline its conclusions: angry, kind, dangerous, beautiful, unfair. For each, ask whether the reader needs the label, the experience behind it, or both.
Rewrite one important conclusion as an action or encounter. Then cut enough surrounding explanation to let it breathe. You are redistributing attention, not automatically expanding the word count.
Now choose a scene that feels slow. Summarize its routine portion in two sentences and begin the dramatized action at the first meaningful change. Often the most useful response to “show, don’t tell” is learning where to tell efficiently.
Compare the versions for clarity, emotional effect, pace, and the narrator’s voice. Keep the version that serves the passage. If the rule loses the argument, the rule will survive.
For broader principles behind these decisions, visit The Five C’s of Writing. For the different expectations of particular books, explore The Books We Write.