The Worst Advice I’m Positive You’ve Been Given

There’s one bit of advice that I hear all the time, and it’s my biggest pet peeve!

“Show, Don’t Tell”

You’ve probably been hearing this phrase since you were in grade school, but it’s terrible advice. It doesn’t actually make any sense and for all the times I’ve heard it, I’ve never actually heard it explained.

There’s a valid concept buried here, but simply saying you should always show instead of tell in your writing isn’t reasonable. So let’s talk about what you actually need to know about showing and telling to make your writing better.

Telling is a Necessary Part of Writing a Novel

You can’t possibly show everything. The trick is finding the balance, which does generally entail showing more than telling, but the telling is still going to be there. Showing too much can be just as bad as telling too much!

The first thing to know is that there is no standard ratio of showing vs telling that is going to make your novel successful. How much you show vs how much you tell is going to depend on you, your story, your characters, and your genre.

The more information you tell your readers, the less they have to wonder about. While you might be thinking, “well, I want my reader to ‘get’ what’s going on, remember that half the fun of reading is wondering what’s going to happen and figuring it out as you go along. You don’t want to deprive your reader of this experience by telling them everything upfront.

Sometimes, Telling is Better Than Showing

Occasionally, there’s no avoiding telling, and it can be better for our novel than showing. For instance, when we need to catch one character up on something we already saw another character do. Sometimes a quick, telling line can be more dramatic or impactful. Sometimes, you just really need to tell the reader something important.

Give yourself permission to tell, but make sure you’re not missing opportunities to show your reader the action.

Start by Just Filling Your Bucket

Have you ever heard that expression, “Your first draft is just piling sand in the bucket so you can make a sand castle later?” Your first draft is where you tell yourself the story. Inevitably, in your first draft, there will be a lot of telling. You’re going to info dump, be vague, and maybe even miss scenes altogether because you just need to get the story out of your head.

Once you’ve got it down on paper, you can go back through and find those areas where you slipped into full-on explanation mode and flesh them out into exciting, shown scenes for your reader to enjoy. But there will still be things in your story that work better as told prose, and that’s okay! At the end of the day, it’s your decision what you show vs. what you tell.

If you’re not sure where to start looking for places that might be more told than shown, the beginning of your story and the introduction to each new character are good places to start. These are typically the times when we do a lot of automatic info dumping.

Another good indication that you’re telling the reader something is if you’ve stopped the story to insert information. This will feel more like you, the author, talking to the reader instead of your narrator or character.

Better Advice: Show More Than Tell

Personally, I think better advice for your writing is to try to show more than you tell. Just remember that the action is what really engages your reader. When you're thinking about what to show vs. what to tell, look through your draft and find opportunities for that engagement.