So “show don’t tell” is one of those cliches of the writing world that gets repeated often and explained rarely — and yeah. it can be kinda hard to articulate what that advice actually means, so I see a lot of people who get kinda stressed about it
But here’s the core of it: if your story is basically just a List of Things that Happen, your readers are gonna have a hard time imagining stuff
Like... okay. Storytelling is a collaborative thing, right? I’m drawing a picture with my words, and you’re coloring it in with your brain. That’s what reading IS
So “Showing” is like me giving you a nice detailed piece of lineart with all the fun fiddley squiggles that make a picture interesting to color — and maybe I’m also picking out a handful of nice pencils for you to use if you’d like
While “Telling” is the equivalent of me handing you a blank sheet of paper labled ‘apple goes here’ and then if you wanna color anything you’ve first gotta do all the drawing-work yourself and also I hope you brought your own pen
Which is fine, sometimes (actually it’s kind of important to leave some blank space for doodling here and there) but if you specifically wanted a Coloring Book, then it kinda defeats the purpose when you first gotta draw all the pictures yourself and also the instructions are in the way so you can’t even draw the pictures you want
And that’s the biggest thing with the showing and the telling
Writing “he narrowed his eyes and dug his nails into his palm, lip curling into a sneer as he fought to keep from shouting” is more effort on my end, but it gives readers something to work with — there’s a neat little picture all laid out for them to color
But writing “he was angry” forces the reader to do all the work themselves — and if you’re always asking the reader to do All The Work...
Well, imagining stuff takes effort — and eventually they’re gonna wonder why they’re drawing all your pictures for You when they could spend the same amount of energy just... drawing their own
So what it all boils down to:
“Show don’t tell” isn’t really about describing stuff vs. not describing stuff
It’s more about just making sure you’re not forcing the reader to do your work without you, ‘cause yeah. drawing the fiddley bits can be a pretty hard job
ellievsbear
