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If you’ve ever taken a class in creative writing, you’ve no doubt heard the teacher repeat the phrase, “Show, don’t tell” over and over again.  While there are few hardest rules in creative writing, this persistent little mantra might be the ultimate.  Teachers and writers who write about writing spout it out all the time, but what does it mean anyway?  After, isn’t all writing really “telling” on some level?

It’s best to view “showing” not as a single technique, but a summation of the most effective writing techniques.  If we know anything about poetry, it’s that the best poetry usually conjures specific and concrete images.  Beyond language itself, images are the meat and bones of poetry.  So goes most of prose as well.  The prose writer has the added duty of creating situations and characters that seem real and believable.

Showing invites the reader into the world of out poem and story.  If the reader can see, smell, taste, and feel the world through our writing, the reader is more likely to believe in the world we’ve created.  Telling distances the reader from your world, as it tends to be vague and distanced.  Showing is not unlike a persuasive conversation in which a set of proofs is presented.  Instead of proofs, we have images and actions.  In Writing Fiction, Janet Burroway takes this approach a step further when she compares fiction to a good lie:

Details (as every good liar knows) are the stuff of persuasiveness.  Mary is sure that Ed forgot to pay the gas bill last Tuesday, but Ed says, “I know I went, because this old guy in a knit vest was in front of me in the line, and went on and on about his twin granddaughters”—it is hard to refute a knit vest and twins even if the furnace doesn’t work. ( page 54)

The important thing to note in this example is the importance specific and concrete detail plays in the believability.  When Mary hears Ed tell the story, she no doubt gets a clear image of the old guy in the vest.  Perhaps she can imagine herself in Ed’s position.  The believability of the lie is aided by the specificity of the detail.  A poem or a story is not essentially different in this regard.

Now that we understand the importance of showing over telling, let’s discuss how to show, with this deceptively simple sentence:

Cindy is beautiful.

If the reader has no foreknowledge of Cindy, he/she may connect the word “beautiful” to some archetypal idea of beauty.  While archetypes have their place, they aren’t real people with complexity and depth.  Does this sentence show us specifically what Cindy looks like or who she is?  While “beautiful” is certainly an adjective and descriptive of something, it tends to be general and vague.  We don’t have a concrete idea about Cindy’s beauty.

How can we show Cindy’s beauty to the reader without telling?

The easiest and most direct way to show Cindy is through concrete images and more specifically descriptive adjectives:

Cindy has milky white skin and soft, abundant hair that flows down her smooth shoulders.

The new sentence is somewhat overdone, but it’s concrete.  We know exactly what Cindy looks like; her beauty is implied within the description.

We could also show Cindy’s beauty through a metaphor, simile, or allusion:

Cindy is like an alabaster statue of Venus.

Assuming the reader knows what an alabaster statue of Venus looks like, he/she has an immediate picture of what Cindy look like.  Metaphors, similes, and allusion are also great because they can do the double duty of implying character or tone.  Words like “alabaster,” “statues,” and “Venus” carry a set of implications that say a lot about who Cindy is.  Again, we are shown who Cindy is, not merely being told that she is beautiful.

Another way we can show Cindy’s beauty to the reader is by the way she interacts with her environment, or the way the environment interacts with her:

When Cindy walks across the boardwalk, every man turns his head in her direction.

The implication of Cindy’s beauty is in the reaction of the men to her.  Rather than telling, we are showing how Cindy exists within her environment.  The way Cindy herself reacts could also convey a good deal of who she is.

In all three examples, we’re doing more than just telling the reader Cindy is beautiful.  We’re showing what she looks like and also saying more about who she is.  In all examples, Cindy becomes a real person, not an archetypal idea of a person.  The reader will develop an idea of Cindy based on how she looks, acts, and interacts, not simply through what you tell them to think.

As an additional note, the first and last examples use active, as opposed to passive, voice.  Passive voice tends to distance the reader from the action, and pushes the writer’s presence forward.  Rather than drawing the reader directly into the scene, passive voice creates a filter between the reader and the story.  Of course, in some situations, we may not have another choice, especially if we’re writing a character’s reminiscence.  It’s good to avoid passive voice overall and to be aware of how it works in our story or poem.

(We should also exclude dialogue from our discussion of showing.  Dialogue by nature shows rather than tells, therefore is exempt from such concerns.)

At this point, we’ve got some basic tools and techniques to help us show.  In this part of the article, we’ll do an exercise in revising a problematic paragraph, keeping these issues in mind, and introducing some more ideas.

Lucy was walking down the street.  The wind was blowing.  It was a nice day and she was happy.

Obviously this paragraph could use a lot of work.  Passive voice is used throughout, distancing us from the action.  The adjectives and nouns are vague and general, “nice” and “happy” in particular.

First, let’s change the voice to active throughout:

Lucy walked down the street.  The wind blew.

What about the last sentence?  Both of our independent clauses use finite verbs, so we can’t easily switch to an active voice.  What we can do is think specifically about what’s happening in the sentence.  How was the day nice?  Was it sunny?  Was it warm or cool?  How was Lucy happy?  Was she smiling?  Was she giggling?  Let’s try filling in these details:

Lucy walked down the street.  The wind blew.  The sun glowed brightly above, but the weather was cool.  She smiled.

This paragraph is clunky, but stronger overall.  We’re still using passive voice on that weather, but now we have a more specific adjective to describe it.  Lucy is actively smiling, so we can assume she’s happy.  We can see this scene and “cool” invites us to actually feel the scene.

One thing we may want to consider now is significant detail.  A significant detail is one that aids the theme, plot, or overall tone of the story.  For instance, how important is the street in our story?  It’s a different story if the street is full of trash and runs along a block of abandoned buildings, than if the street is clean and borders a neatly clipped lawn.  These details can foreshadow the rest of the action and hint at the meaning behind the story.

Word choice is also important, as suggested earlier.  There’s quite a difference between a gust and a light breeze.  Lucy’s mood might change if she is grinning or beaming.

We should also consider the relationship images and actions have to each other.  Did the wind blow on Lucy?  Is she smiling because of the weather or something else?  Why is she walking down the street, and where is she going?

Significant detail encourages us to highlight what is important to the story or poem.  We should not place detail there merely for the sake of it, but to convey a picture to the reader.  Ideally, that picture is important to the whole of our story or poem.

Taking these issues into account, let’s revise the sentence again:

Lucy walked down the blacktop road, making her way to the gas station.  A cool wind pricked at the hairs on her arm, and she grinned in delight.

This revision is loaded with more details, implication, and even action.  We know what kind of street Lucy is walking down and where she is going.  The wind is more actively interacting with Lucy and Lucy is responding.  This sentence draws us into the world Lucy inhabits more clearly than before.  A reader reading this paragraph no doubt wants to know more about where Lucy is going and who Lucy is.

We should keep in mind that this process of addition and subtraction is entirely subjective.  There is no formula for deciding what to emphasize.  Different stories and poems call for different details.

Style is something else to take into account in the process.  Showing shouldn’t encourage us to only write what’s called “purple prose.”  This kind of prose is extraneously descriptive, with every detail becoming our focus, down to the irrelevant and microscopic.  The idea is to show what is necessary to the piece or to the writer, accounting for personal style.

Some writers prefer to focus on actions, character interaction, or situations.    Kafka may not be one for detail and description, but he shows the situations clearly, and even when his stories are absurd, they seem believable.

Likewise, other writers prefer to focus on atmosphere and character detail.  A writer like Edgar Allen Poe creates very detailed atmospheres, adding to the overall effect of the story.

No style is correct or incorrect.  What matters is that each writer chooses to depict what is necessary to the story or interests him/her.  “Show, don’t tell” should never be an indication of style, rather an indication of technique.

By now, you should have an idea of how to apply showing to your own work, along with its importance within writing.  In the 2nd part, we’ll discuss the idea of filters and the viability of telling within writing.