Show, Don't Tell: A Practical Guide

"Show, don't tell" is the most repeated advice in writing. It's also the most misunderstood.

New writers hear it and think it means "never tell." That's wrong. Good writing uses both showing and telling. The skill is knowing when to use each.

What "Telling" Actually Means

Telling states an emotion, quality, or fact directly:

Sarah was angry.

The house was old.

He was a kind man.

There's nothing grammatically wrong with these sentences. They communicate information. But they don't create experience. The reader is told what to think rather than shown evidence and allowed to draw their own conclusion.

What "Showing" Actually Means

Showing presents concrete, sensory evidence and lets the reader infer the emotion or quality:

Sarah's jaw tightened. She set her coffee mug down — carefully, precisely — the way you handle something when you're trying not to throw it.

Paint curled from the clapboards in long, brittle strips. The porch steps bowed under her weight, and the screen door hung from a single hinge.

He noticed the barista's hands were shaking and ordered a second coffee — "for a friend" — then left it on the counter where she could take it without having to ask.

In each case, the reader experiences the emotion or quality rather than being informed of it. That's the difference.

The Filter Word Problem

One of the most common forms of telling is filter words — verbs that place the narrator between the reader and the experience:

• She noticed the door was open.
• He felt a chill run down his spine.
• They realized something was wrong.
• She saw the car pull into the driveway.

These words tell the reader that the character is perceiving something instead of simply presenting the perception:

• The door was open.
• A chill ran down his spine.
• Something was wrong.
• A car pulled into the driveway.

Removing filter words doesn't always improve a sentence. But it's a useful editing pass — search for "felt," "saw," "noticed," "realized," "wondered," and "thought." For each one, ask: can I cut this and let the reader experience the perception directly?

When Telling Is Better

Here's the part most "show don't tell" advice leaves out: telling is sometimes the right choice.

Use telling for:

Transitions and compression. If your character drives from New York to Boston and nothing important happens during the drive, tell it: "The drive took four hours." Showing every mile would be exhausting.

Unimportant information. If a character's age matters for context but isn't emotionally significant, just tell it: "Marcus was forty-two." You don't need a mirror scene.

Pacing control. Fast-paced scenes often benefit from direct statements. In a chase sequence, "He was terrified" hits faster than a paragraph of physical description.

Established facts. Once you've shown a character trait through action and dialogue, you can tell it in subsequent scenes. The reader already has the evidence.

The Real Rule

The rule isn't "show, don't tell." The rule is:

Show when the moment matters emotionally. Tell when it doesn't.

Your climactic scene, your character's moment of crisis, the turning point of your plot — these need showing. The reader needs to be in the experience, not informed about it.

Everything else? Use your judgment. The goal is a story that moves, breathes, and keeps the reader turning pages — not a story that shows every single thing and takes 200,000 words to cover a weekend.

An Exercise

Take a paragraph from your current work-in-progress. Find every instance of telling — named emotions, filter words, stated qualities. Rewrite the paragraph using only concrete, sensory detail.

Then compare the two versions. Which one puts the reader inside the scene?

That's showing.

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