6 Tips to Show Instead of Tell

[Music] hi everyone I'm shaylen here with rincey today we're going to be talking about one of the most common pieces of reading base out there ever may be the most common piece of writing advice and that is show don't tell even though this is one of the most common pieces of writing advice that you will ever hear it's not necessarily one of the easiest to understand or implement just on its own so today we're gonna be taking a look at what that actually means and how to do it so the reason we want to show is because it creates much more immersive writing showing is the use of details actions and images to show us what's going on through description rather than just explaining it to us or telling it to us check off pretty famously said on the topic don't tell me the moon is shining show me the glint of light on broken glass so first of all let's take a look at some examples so here is some telling Sara was terrified of spiders whenever she saw one she wanted to scream it gets the point across we know what's going on she's scared of spiders but let's take a look at what this might look like through showing as the spider crawled down from the ceiling Sara pressed her back against the far wall even though it was across the room her skin scuttled as if its legs were scrambling all over her she breathed so quickly she felt like she wasn't breathing at all on the wall its shadow was ten times larger than the arachnid itself its legs looking sharp and demonic there's a very different effect between these two examples both of them illustrate the point that she's really darn scared of spiders but the second is a lot more visceral we actually see what that looks like for her rather than just being told that she's scared of spiders and it's described to us we actually get the feelings associated with it what's the showing were immersed in her fear we can actually see how it manifests and also because we're shown what this looks like it's a lot more convincing whereas the telling does a very different effect it's very straightforward and factual there's not much emotional effect there because of this showing can also make characters feel much more real developed and relatable since we're actually shown their experience rather than just being given a list of freights so for example if we were just told that Sara was funny we wouldn't necessarily buy that she was funny but if we can actually see her in the scenes and in the narratives making jokes and saying funny things that were actually shown and therefore convinced that she's a funny person so at the end of the video we're gonna talk about when to tell and when that might be useful for you but before that we're going to talk about how to since it is the technique you want to lean on most of the time so I'm going to cover six different techniques that you can use for better showing number one use strong details if you wanted to show that a character was kind of outdoorsy instead of just saying she was outdoorsy maybe there's a scene where we walk into her garage and we see all of the outdoorsy stuff that she has maybe she has some skis hyah can we see her hiking boot maybe her car is covered in mud from being up in the woods or up the mountain that's much stronger than just being told that she was outdoorsy because we're convinced and we actually see what it means for her and along with that that leads to number two create the setting if you want to show a study that is spooky and eerie in order to convey that tone instead of saying it's spooky and eerie you might describe the fog and the cobwebs and the crows shrieking in the distance and lots of really weird eerie creepy things and you never need to say it was eerie and you can also use this to show a character's impressions of a place which is also something you want to show rather than tell one possible if a character grew up in a small town and they've just arrived in a big city for the first time and they feel really claustrophobic and nervous you might describe you know the mass of people feeling like it's crushing them point number three is user dialog dialog is a way that you can show a characters traits rather than telling through their interactions with other characters dialog is also really useful for showing us the state of a character's relationship let's say you have a character who is arrogant and rude someone might ask them for a super small tiny easy to do favor and they might reply in a way that's completely unreasonable and the throw fit they make it all about them or something like that that's again stronger than having a line in the narrative that just says that this character is arrogant and rude and unreasonable or let's say you have one character who's really intimidated by another character within their relationship instead of just stating that we could show their interactions where this character who is really fearful is nervous and they don't say much when they do speak they're just trying to say exactly what they think this other character will want to hear number four show us with the theme so if you do want to learn more on the theme we have an entire video on theme but just to quickly touch on this in the context of Show Don't Tell for this video through the language and the smaller details that you choose you can show the theme and reinforce the theme and really subtle way that readers might not necessarily consciously pick up on when they're ridden but it just kind of creates that overall thread throughout your entire book so for example this is a passage from station eleven by Emily st. John Mandel that illustrates this she had never entirely let go of the notion that if she reached far enough with her thoughts she might find someone waiting that if two people were to cast their thoughts outward at the same moment they might somehow meet in the middle this passage is illustrating theme of loneliness and the craving for human connection that's really prevalent throughout the entire book but it's doing this through showing so if the author had done this you're telling it might have just read as simply as Kirsten wish she wasn't so lonely all she wanted was a friend that's quite overt it's quite obvious it's telling us exactly what her thoughts are but here it was shown in a way that's a lot more interesting to read number five be careful with your figurative language so we do have an entire video on descriptions as well as one on purple prose if you're struggling to strike that balance but to touch on it here because oftentimes showing does lead to using more rich and detailed language which is great but you want to make sure that you don't lose hold of that that it doesn't get too far and it doesn't get too tangled or to death you know you want to choose rich details and you choose your details wisely but don't let it get too convoluted sometimes when people are too obsessed with showing they try to show things that are already shown so for example instead of saying he got into the car people kind of described what a car is instead of just saying that it's a car he got into the car that doesn't need to be shown in a more elaborate way and a lot of people can fall into the trap where they take it to the next level where they don't even want to use nouns and they want to show an object instead of telling us that the object just exists don't convolute things too much there's nothing wrong with literary devices I really love literary devices myself but you just don't want them to get in the way of the clarity and the ease of reading and number six don't label emotion if you're not sure if you're showing or telling look for labeled emotions so look for actual emotion words like happy angry sad if you see the sentence he was sad then that would be an example of telling because you've actually used the emotion this is kind of an indicator that you're probably telling rather than describing the emotion and sometimes you end up kind of doing both people will say things like his sadness was like this and they kind of described sadness but still use the emotion word so you really want to avoid those emotion words and just try to ask yourself what that emotion feels like and what it looks like for the character rather than using the emotion now finally let's talk about when to tell because this is also important you're not gonna be able to write an entire novel with zero telling telling is also an important tool if used correctly you can kind of think of it as a narrative shortcut it's much less rich but it gets to the point much faster and sometimes for that reason it's necessary sometimes you want to tell something because the details just not worth the long description or because it's more factual than immersive a character's height for example we can just say you know he was tall rather than trying to show that by showing him I don't know bump his head into doorways or something sometimes it's okay to just tell something if it's just not a very immersive detail and it's clear to just use telling ultimately you want to use a more showing but it doesn't mean that telling doesn't have a place in narrative because it certainly does and it's pretty much impossible to write a whole book without any kind of telling so that's it for this video on show don't tell thank you so much for watching if you want to read more on this topic or see more examples you can check out the blog post linked in the description and remember to subscribe from your writing editing and publishing videos every Tuesday and Friday until next time bye [Music]

Channel: Reedsy

Views: 45,983

Rating: 4.9049196 out of 5

Keywords: show don't tell, showing, telling, how to use show don't tell, writing tip, writing advice, how to write a book, how to write a novel, authortube

Id: Lqk_a5LfR5Y

Length: 8min 25sec (505 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 09 2019