*the entire class groans*

Okay, maybe not everyone, but I think we're tired of hearing this cliché. It's such a common piece of writing advice that the simple phrase "show, don't tell" has lost most (if not all) of its meaning. People who follow this advice end up showing everything, even irrelevant details that don't impact the plot, and people who don't end up having flat and emotionless stories.

So what do we mean by "show, don't tell"?

When writers say "show, don't tell", they usually mean one specific thing. When you write, you need to make the reader feel as though they're a part of the action. People don't open a book just looking for a story. They open it looking for an experience. If you don't give them that experience, they'll get bored and stop reading.

You don't want to tell readers that a woman's hair is soft; you want them to feel the lovely raven locks gliding against their lover's fingers. You don't want to tell readers that someone's getting beaten; you want them to see their body curl beneath the weight of the batons, hear their cries of agony. Your goal is to use showing as a highlight for the most important details in a story.

Showing involves taking all five senses into account. If you need to, open your journal and make lists. (Lists are an amazing way to brainstorm, by the way.) List all the five senses, plus emotions, that you feel when you kiss someone on the lips. When you fly a kite with your best friend. When you share a picnic with your family. When you sit on a porch and watch the sunrise. Then think about ways you can convey this information in a way that will seem poetic and interesting to your readers, thinking about the tone you want to communicate. Don't worry if it sounds weird at first; just keep practicing, and you'll get better. 

Another time you should show rather than tell is when expressing emotions. Don't say "she was sad". Tell about the gnawing pain in her gut, the way tears stream down her face, the way sobbing chokes her throat and makes it hard to breathe. Don't say "he was angry". Show the raging feeling that's like ants in his gut, the way his fists clench and his veins bulge, how his face twists into a scowl. This is another place where lists come in handy; describing how emotions affect the five senses is very important to creating that powerful experience.

A final place you should show instead of tell is character traits. Don't say that Michelle was a kind and caring girl. Show how she befriends children who have special needs at school. Don't say that Nell was very smart. Show how he's smart by how he completed his degree in Medicancy at twice the normal rate. Showing character traits becomes instinctive once you understand how characterization works, which we'll discuss in a little while.

Now let's talk about some places where you should tell instead of show, because if you show all the time, your story will be hopelessly boring to read. The first place where you should kind of straddle the line is when you show where characters are in their arcs. In the journey a character makes, you should be explicit about where they are mentally and in their worldview. For example, I needed to be clear about how Muriel throwing Light Spinner against a wall in Alura affected her, because otherwise that point of her arc may be unclear or missing from the text. The best way to tell this is through internal monologue, or in her case, her journal entries.

Another thing you should tell is character actions. This one requires some discretion because some actions require more emphasis than others and thus need to be shown. But I don't want to read paragraphs upon paragraphs of someone's morning routine if it isn't important. Just tell me they got ready for the day, and leave it up to the reader to imagine the details.

There's discretion needed when you tell things, too. Don't tell things that aren't relevant to the plot. I once read a book for an event where the author included three paragraphs about the music preferences of the main character in the middle of an apocalyptic crisis. This could be relevant to the plot, but unless it's supposed to be symbolic of something in her inner self, it just reads as useless rambling that the reader won't care about.

Some simple ways to speak clearly when telling:

- Use specific, strong nouns.

- Use strong adverbs.

- Limit the use of adjectives and adverbs, except when you absolutely need them.

Telling is underlining. Showing is highlighting. Highlight the details that the reader needs to immerse themselves in to get that juicy story experience. Underline things that the reader needs to know to follow the story. The rest can be left up to your personal headcanons, or maybe you can write the useless details down and use them as deep compost for your next big project.

In the next chapter, I'll talk about some rookie mistakes people often make when writing emotion in their stories. Then I'll talk about the proper way to go about inserting emotion in a work.