âShow, donât tell,â was what I was taught at school.
Hereâs a simple example of âshow, donât tellâ:
Show: The skin resists the blunt knife, dimpling slightly before bursting open in a splatter of red liquid. All over my hands. All over the kitchen counter. Whatâs inside is worse: a viscous mess of seeds and soggy flesh that oozes across my plate, and turns to a fragrant mush in my mouth. It isnât the taste, but the texture that makes me long to spit it out.
Tell: I hate raw tomatoes.
In my example above, the difference between the two approaches is marked. However, in practice, it isnât always so easy to distinguish between showing and telling.
In this article, Iâd like to explore the techniques used by 3 famous authors to blend showing and telling in order to unfold the plot, the characters, and the world.
Here is a general comparison of showing and telling:
How vs. What â showing is more likely to explain and describe how something occurs, whereas telling can simply state what happened.
Detail vs. Overview â showing focuses on providing details in an effort to imitate the characterâs experience, while telling is more useful for providing a broad overview or generalisation of the situation.
Verbose vs. Succinct â since showing requires more detail, itâs usually wordier than telling.
Slow vs. Fast â another consequence of providing more details is that the pace of the narration slows down. Telling, in contrast, usually speeds up the story.
Character vs. Narrator â because showing often relies on the way the action of the story is perceived, the character becomes more dominant. However, this character may be the narrator themselves.
Perception vs. Context â even if the perceptions are shown from the point of view of a disembodied narrator, theyâre usually more focused. Telling, in contrast, is better suited to provide context.
Personal vs. Impersonal â because it foregrounds perceptions, showing can feel more personal, whereas telling can impart a universal quality as exemplified by the fairytale formula: âonce upon a time, in a kingdom far away, there lived aâŠâ
Writer vs. Reader â showing requires a writer to expend skill, time, and words. Although it can help to draw the reader in, I think it can be argued that telling a story demands more of the reader, who has to fill in the details through the work of their own imagination.
The aim of the âshow, donât tell,â rule is to encourage writers to describe the action of the story in a way that draws the reader to experience it alongside the character.
Itâs a useful reminder to think about how you convey information.
However, as I think the examples in this article will demonstrate, showing and telling are more effective when used together.
The techniques of showing and telling are essential to fleshing out your plot structure.
â Telling can impart a lot of information very quickly, which is why itâs often a good choice for setting the scene.
â Showing, on the other hand, conveys story information slowly, but more in-depth. Itâs more entertaining, so I recommend you use it in abundance for scenes that you want to linger in.
One of Ernest Hemingwayâs writing tenets is to pare down story information as much as possible. His aim is to erase the narrator, and thereby the filter between the reader and the characters, but this doesnât mean he shies away from telling. Quite the contrary!
For example, here is the very first sentence of THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA:
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
This telling sentence brings the reader up to speed, introducing the character, the location, and the situation.
You might argue that the rest of the novella is Hemingway showing the first sentence and its consequences.
A writer can often give away a surprising amount of information about the plot, because the reader can still enjoy the pleasure of the details unfolded through showing the characterâs journey.
After his first telling sentence, Hemingway continues to weave showing and telling throughout the novella, creating the oceanic rhythm of the old manâs monologue.
âBad news for you, fish,â he said and shifted the line over the sacks that covered his shoulders. [showing]
He was comfortable but suffering, although he did not admit the suffering at all. [telling]
You can use this technique of alternating lines of showing and telling as a way to break up long sections of introspection.
Hemingway has another interesting trick that combines the functions of telling and showing.
Glossing over boring passages of time is one of the chief advantages of telling.
Throughout The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway repeatedly tells how much time has passed, but simultaneously shows its effect on the character through the perceptions of the old manâŠ
The sun was two hours higher now and it did not hurt his eyes so much to look into the east. There were only three boats in sight now and they showed very low and far inshore.
He rested for what he believed to be two hours. The moon did not rise now until late and he had no way of judging the time. Nor was he really resting except comparatively. He was still bearing the pull of the fish across his shoulders but he placed his left hand on the gunwale of the bow and confided more and more of the resistance to the fish to the skiff itself.
For an hour the old man had been seeing black spots before his eyes and the sweat salted his eyes and salted the cut over his eye and on his forehead. He was not afraid of the black spots. They were normal at the tension that he was pulling on the line. Twice, though, he had felt faint and dizzy and that had worried him.
He had sailed for two hours, resting in the stern and sometimes chewing a bit of the meat from the marlin, trying to rest and to be strong, when he saw the first of the two sharks.
To use this trick, look for descriptions in your story when your character is fairly still for a long period of time. Instead of mentioning the passage of time, and what your character does before and after, describe their sensations during that time period, and how they perceive time passing.
Notice how this technique doesnât take up much space in the narrative. It seems to create contrast by speeding up the time it takes to tell the story, while slowing down time for the character.
