Today’s guest post is by editor Tiffany Yates Martin. Join her on Wednesday, May 27, for the online class Showing & Telling.
Poor “tell,” always pushed offstage, forever relegated to the wings by what may be the most commonly (mis)understood advice in writing: “Show, don’t tell.”
I love to champion an underdog, but that’s not why I advocate giving tell its time in the spotlight. As with so many wrongly maligned elements of writing (adverbs and adjectives, the em dash, the much-put-upon semicolon), tell offers an author valuable tools for effectively putting their story on the page. (After all, it’s called storytelling.) It can strengthen momentum, effectively convey information, and keep readers engaged.
The trick lies in knowing which one takes the stage when. Show may be the leading lady, but good story isn’t a one-man show, and readers can quickly weary of her histrionics.
Before we talk about the various uses of each technique, let’s clearly define our terms:
- Show refers to dramatized, “real-time” action on the page: events, exchanges, and moments that play out before the reader’s eyes, as if we’re living the story along with the characters.
- Tell is pretty much what it sounds like: narrative exposition that conveys aspects of the story readers aren’t directly privy to—summary rather than scene.
Or as I like to say, “show” is the on-screen version of your story; “tell” is the voice-over narration.
Let’s consider it from three different perspectives: line level, scene level, and story level.
Line level
This is where you’ll hear the most advice about showing and telling: writers are supposed to use vivid, active, immediate show rather than the more removed mode of tell.
It’s good advice, at least in principle. Compare these two lines:
He left the room, and sadness swept through her.
His crisp retreating footsteps and the slam of the door bounced off the walls, as if the room were as empty as her chest.
The first one describes the characters’ action and reaction as if reporting on it, rendering the reader merely a removed observer. The second one plays out on the page for readers to experience firsthand, rather than you as the writer simply labeling it.
But the line-level determination of what to show versus tell is only a fraction of your decision making, and this can be where writers overwrite, faithfully following the “show, don’t tell” edict. Not everything needs to be painstakingly, granularly played out on the page. Tell, to borrow a phrase from Elmore Leonard, helps you leave out the parts people tend to skip.
Scene level
Even within a “real-time” dramatized scene, there are still moments where tell may be stronger than show, even where stakes are sky-high. Two scientists desperately racing against the clock to find a cure for the virus causing a pandemic would be agonizingly dull to play out as they conduct test after test on the page.
Instead you might show one or two briefly, but then sum those suckers up and skip to the good stuff: the one they bank all their hopes on that unexpectedly or spectacularly fails; the one that finally, against all odds, succeeds. In cases like this tell, perhaps counterintuitively, helps you build tension, suspense, and momentum rather than defusing it, as you would if you showed every single step, beat by tedious beat.
The same goes for any interchange between characters. It’s why good stories don’t waste ink on “filler” dialogue and action that happens in real life: the chitchat and niceties, the detours and digressions, the repetitions, and the pedestrian exchanges that pepper most real-life human interaction. Skip to the main event in deciding what to show; move the scene along with tell for the rest.
Readers don’t need to see every moment of a scene; cherry-pick the parts that are germane to moving the story forward in some way—that further a key dynamic, create a new level or facet to a character or relationship, reveal information that advances the plot, amplify the stakes—and dramatize them on the page for maximum impact.
Then you can tell the parts people tend to skip—for instance:
- Painstaking play-by-plays. We don’t need to see your character waking up, taking a shower, eating breakfast, getting dressed, driving to work, etc.
- Description. No matter how lovely your prose, endless exposition about the setting or a character’s appearance or any other element of a scene will drag momentum to a halt, especially if you stop the action to digress into description. Offer a few well-chosen representative details; readers can imagine the rest of the picture.
- Stage direction or logistics. Don’t bog down the pace by showing minutiae; just sum it up and move the scene forward: “He brewed a pot of coffee” works just fine; no need to show every step of the process. “He left work, shaken, and got home twenty minutes late because he’d missed his usual turn” expediently conveys the character’s state of mind and transitions us to the next scene without stalling it out by showing the drive.
- Repeated information. If one character is filling another in on events readers have already seen or learned, there’s no need to repeat; just tell us what’s happening: “She brought him up to speed on what she’d learned about Freya’s disappearance.”
- Small talk. “Hi, Mae.” “Hi, Rajid.” “How are you?” “I’m good—how are you?” “Can’t complain…” Eat up page space with this kind of empty, inert dialogue and readers will be ready to stick a grapefruit spoon in their eye. Sure, that’s what happens in real-life conversations, but it’s death on the page. You can see it vividly in movies and TV shows: Characters rarely offer greetings or farewells or chitchat; they just enter talking. No need to show every beat; sum up the minutiae (if needed) and then plunge into what the scene is about.
Story level
The judicious use of both show and tell is foundational to effective story structure. What scenes need to be on the page for readers to live directly with the characters, and which might be more effectively summarized in tell?
You want to make sure the meat of the story is on the page—which means anything essential to its “main course.” These decisions are subjective and variable—like everything in story or in any art. But there are a few main areas to consider that may help guide you in knowing what developments may be stronger and more effective shown in the page in a scene, rather than summarized in expositive tell.
- Key plot developments: movement toward the character’s goal or setbacks away from it; significant challenges they must face in pursuit of it and concrete triumphs along the path; etc. If the protagonist faces the antagonist in a conflict that shifts the course of the story, for instance, it needs to be shown (and if it doesn’t significantly affect the story, it likely doesn’t need to be in there at all).
- What the character has to gain or lose: Developments that increase urgency or meaning of what’s at stake for the character are usually most powerful for readers if we see them firsthand.
- Character arc development: This includes anything that moves the character along their arc: realizations and turning points, shifts in motivation or goal, questioning or loss of hope/faith, tests of character/determination, etc. The moment a character realizes that what they thought they wanted isn’t really what they want, for instance, or is pushed to some relevant decision that shifts the course of their arc are crucial developments readers want to live along with them in show. But a minor or repeated argument, or the annoyance of a fender-bender that temporarily derails them, etc., may be better positioned as tell just filling in the relevant details.
- Backstory: If the backstory isn’t central to the character’s main growth or change in the story—their journey, the arc—then most likely it would be stronger woven in amid the main action of the story as context; otherwise you risk pulling readers out of the story and muddying its focus.
Your decisions will depend on what the central story is about, as well as its genre.
If the story is a romance, for example, then anything germane to how the characters move toward or away from one another and how it affects each one is likely important to dramatize in the “show” of scene: their conflicts, betrayals, misunderstandings, connections, etc. In a thriller you might sum up more of the relationship dynamics and instead let us simply see their effect on the protagonist as they race to beat the clock toward their main goal.
The fractious relationship between a mother and child in a coming-of-age or book club story should play out on the page if it’s a major factor in the main character(s)’ journey, or a key obstacle toward their goal, or the relationship dynamics significantly affect the characters’ actions. But if it’s simply a part of the main character’s history that shaped them, it may be more effective to lace it in as contextual “tell.”
Events that offer vital clues in a murder mystery or thriller may be stronger if readers see them directly in dramatized scene, rather than hearing them summed up secondhand and after the fact—but if it’s not critical to the main storyline, then it might serve the story better to sum it up and move momentum along—e.g., if a detective interrogates a minor witness whose testimony offers little or only minor information relevant to the main plot.
Parting thoughts
Both show and tell are essential tools for powerful storytelling. As with most elements of story, there are no black-and-white, right-or-wrong answers in determining which is “better” when. But considering these guidelines can help you create more effective stories.
Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, join us on Wednesday, May 27 for the online class Showing & Telling.
Tiffany Yates Martin has spent her entire career as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling and award-winning authors as well as indie and newer writers. She is the founder of FoxPrint Editorial (named one of Writer’s Digest’s Best Websites for Authors) and author of Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing and her latest, The Intuitive Author: How to Grow & Sustain a Happier Writing Career.She is a regular contributor to writers’ outlets like Writer’s Digest, Jane Friedman, and Writer Unboxed, and a frequent presenter and keynote speaker for writers’ organizations around the world. Under her pen name, Phoebe Fox, she is the author of six novels.