The Eternal Battle of Show vs Tell

Or: What Writing Advice is Failing to Say

When you start writing fiction, there’s a wealth of information and help to be found online. I would never suggest that new writers ignore the advice they read - some of it is very useful in terms of skill-building - but all advice needs to be held up to the light and examined for flaws.

One tip that gets thrown about online a lot is “show don’t tell”. Like most of these pithy little tips, I think it survives because it has an element of truth to it while being easily remembered. Plus anyone who wants to feel superior to other new writers can haul it out during critiques and toss it at the offending writer with a sense of smug satisfaction.

Writing is far more nuanced than ‘don’t do these things and you will be the best writer ever’ and anyone who presents these writing rules as black and white laws that must never be broken is not someone you want helping you develop your work.

Show and tell achieve different things, and both are necessary within a narrative.

I believe that when people throw this particular rule around, what they mean is that they’ve seen something like “Jane was scared of being found.” (telling) and would prefer the writer go a little deeper with something along the lines of “Jane’s breath went cold in her chest, and her heart raced as the man drew nearer to where she was hiding.” (showing).

What this is really about is narrative immersion and pacing. Show immerses, and it tends to slow the narrative down. Tell skips things along, and can pull the reader a bit out of the character’s PoV. You need to know what you want to do and why, and then you’ll know when to show and when to tell.

I rarely use ‘show don’t tell’ as a critique, but will ask the writer to go deeper if I feel they’re glossing things over instead of digging in. ‘You’ve pulled back out of the character here, get me deeper in their head’ This is where show becomes a powerful tool.

Sometimes writers get caught up in the idea that everything needs to be shown rather than told. It’s perfectly fine (and necessary) to simply write ‘Jane had breakfast and left for work’ than to spend 2 1/2 pages detailing Jane’s morning and her running to catch the bus (unless, of course, this is important to your narrative - in which case, describe away). Most of the time you can even skip that kind of thing altogether and simply start the scene without preamble.

The other thing that tell is good for is a certain narrative tone - usually an oral storytelling voice that works well for things like fairy tales and stories for younger children.

Show and Tell are tools of equal value, and one is not more important or better than the other. They simply need to be used for the right task.

Next time someone tells you to show don’t tell, look at what they’re really asking:

are they looking for deeper character/world immersion?

is the pacing off?

is the narrative voice not working?

This should help you make a decision on whether to use show or tell.