You’ve likely heard the advice that writers should show instead of tell. That advice comes from the screenwriting world. Sometimes, it’s good advice and can make your scenes better and your story more compelling. But it can also be terrible advice that will make your book unbelievably long and hard to get through.
If you show every single thing in the room where your scene takes place, if you show every single thing there is to be seen, then the plot, characters, and even the dialogue get crowded out.
I’ve been listening to The Hobbit with my five-year-old; and in that very old book, I have been surprised at how much Tolkien uses telling to move the plot forward and keep the story interesting.
There’s nothing wrong with telling. Telling is not bad. It is a useful tool to make your writing appealing, particularly when you are writing for men. Writers who think telling is always bad often struggle to attract attention from male readers who want to learn while reading. Those readers often choose nonfiction over fiction because there’s not enough telling in the stories.
So, how do you know when to tell and when to show?
I asked Angela Hunt to help us navigate this conundrum. She’s a frequent guest on the Christian Publishing Show and an award-winning novelist with over 5 million copies of her books sold worldwide.
What’s the difference between showing and telling in our writing?
Angela: Showing creates a visual picture in the reader’s mind, and it’s probably more important today than ever. We grew up in a video generation. People are used to seeing stories move in front of their eyes, so they expect a book to provide that type of experience. The problem is that writers have heard so many times, “Show, don’t tell,” that many don’t realize there is an appropriate time for telling; and it can really help move the story along.
We need to lay down some guidelines about when to do which.
Thomas: The screenwriting rule “Show, don’t tell” exists because there’s no effective way to simply tell something on screen; you have to show it. Much of what is shown isn’t conveyed through dialogue. The dialogue only reflects what the characters are saying to each other. By contrast, you can describe a dozen different elements in the scene, and the prop team will create and place those elements into the setting; and those visuals will help the plot move forward.
While showing is important, necessary, and often effective in a screenplay, it can be overused in written stories. Effective telling is unique to written stories and can make a story more engaging.
Rule #1: Show Emotional Impact
Angela: If a scene impacts the protagonist or main characters, show it with detail. But if it doesn’t, then don’t. If Aunt Bertha dies, and your protagonist hardly knew her, then just say, “Aunt Bertha died,” and move on.
Thomas: In Tolkien’s The Hobbit, he often uses telling to skip over long, boring parts of the journey.
For example, in an exciting scene where the dwarves face the trolls and Gandalf saves them, Tolkien slows the story and shows what’s happening on a minute-by-minute basis. But on the next page, he advances a month’s worth of the journey on horseback with a sentence telling that Frodo or Bilbo was hungry the whole time. His use of telling in that instance was strategic. We don’t need to be shown every single day of that journey to Rivendale.
If nothing of note is happening, you don’t have to make note of it.
A strategic use of telling increases the pace of the story without sacrificing the scenes you want to zoom in on.
Show, Tell, and Narrate
Angela: Another way to communicate what’s happening is narration. In a first-person story where the protagonist is telling the story of his or her life, it’s appropriate for her to narrate certain sections. Typically, she’ll narrate the times when nothing happened, and she’ll go into more detail about times that were important for her emotional or social development.
Showing, telling, and narrating all have their proper place in written storytelling.
How do you know when you need to show more?
Angela: When you’re writing very emotional scenes, use showing.
Let’s say our heroine is about to pick up the phone to call her boyfriend and break up with him. That’s a significant moment in her emotional life. If you simply write, “She called him,” that’s pure telling. But if you write, “She picked up the phone,” you’re starting to show a little, allowing the reader to visualize her action.
Now, if you say, “She picked up her phone and bit her lip,” you’re adding emotional depth and showing that she’s a bit nervous. Then, if you write, “She picked up her phone and chewed her thumbnail for a moment before dialing,” you’re fully showing her emotional state, conveying subtle nuances of hesitation and anxiety. The conversation would then unfold naturally, like, “He answered with a ‘Hello,’ and she launched into the conversation,” but you’d be showing everything rather than just stating, “She called him.”
When a scene carries emotional weight, show every important detail; but avoid relying on adverbs. Instead of writing, “She picked up the phone nervously,” or “‘Who’s there?'” she asked, confused,” let the character’s actions or expressions reveal their emotional state without overtly telling the reader how they feel.
Thomas: In nearly every instance, showing uses more words. It’s a powerful tool for capturing that emotional moment because it allows the author to draw out a quick action, like picking up the phone, into a whole paragraph. But if you do that for everything, the book will drag on.
Readers will get tired and bored. They’ll feel like you’re never getting to the point.
How do you know when you’re showing too much?
Angela: I posted on my Facebook page a scene I’d written, and I asked for feedback from readers.
And one lady said, “Oh, you’re telling.” And I thought, “Well, it’s darn good telling.” I was writing a book on Sarah. It covers more than 100 years of her life, so I can’t show every single scene; but this scene takes place after she sends Hagar into Abraham’s tent and then during the pregnancy. The following excerpt condenses nine months.
During the ensuing weeks, I gave Hagar more chores than necessary, envious that she had earned my husband’s affection and gratitude for doing what I had been unable to do.
I ignored her when she came into my tent, and I glared at her if a smile crossed her face. After her fifth month, when the child quickened within her, I often saw her with her hand on her belly, her eyes alight with wonder at the life within. In those moments, I wanted to scream.
I was not the only one watching her. Though Abram took pains to favor me when Hagar was serving our meals or otherwise in our presence, how did he treat her when I was not around? The question pestered me like a noisome fly. Did he watch her as she sashayed through the camp? Did he yearn for her to visit his tent again? At night, did he close his eyes and imagine her lying next to him? Did he study her growing belly with pride, knowing he had planted the seed growing within her?
Soon, the entire camp was watching Hagar. Everyone knew I was barren; and within weeks, everyone knew Abram had used my maidservant as a concubine. Though no one would have dared broach the subject in my presence, I knew tongues were wagging about Hagar’s fertility and my insufficiency.
I’ve condensed a lot of time, and Sarah is telling the reader everything she went through; but it’s very visual. You can see Hagar sashaying through the camp, her eyes lighting with wonder, patting her belly.
If you have to use telling, and it is appropriate if you’re condensing a lot of time into one scene, then supply us with a lot of particular visuals. That will help the telling feel like showing because it is.
Thomas: Show-versus-tell is often viewed by authors as a dichotomy, and they think they have to choose one or the other. But that’s not how it works. You’re not at the ballot box having to choose between President Show or President Tell.
If you only use one, your writing will lack musicality. It will be as if you’re playing all the music loudly. Good writing, like good music, uses dynamics, such as mezzo forte, piano forte, and fortissimo.
Sometimes, the music swells and gets loud; and other times, it becomes quiet. The loud segments earn the quiet ones and vice versa.
Think of showing as a dial you can turn up or down for thematic or narrative effect. You can even dial it up for characterization, but it also allows you to zoom out and give that bigger picture with broad telling.
Showing and telling go together like your right and left feet. You shift back and forth as you’re moving forward.
How does showing and telling relate to point of view?
Angela: In recent years, everyone is talking about close third point of view, where you go into a character’s head and stay there. But if you carry that out to its logical conclusion, it devolves into stream-of-consciousness writing.
But that’s unsustainable. If you were to write pages of every thought that enters a character’s head, it would sound like, Squirrel! Rabbits! Did I set the thermostat? Did I turn the oven off? You have to discern what thoughts or comments to record, and you have to do the same thing with showing and telling. Choose the parts that are present, pertinent, and applicable to the story.
What’s the difference between telling and narrating?
Angela: Narration could be done in the first or third person. In the scene I read, Sarah was narrating her story. The entire book is her story told in first person.
In preparation for this podcast, I looked through my copy of Gone with the Wind because Margaret Mitchell does this a lot. Most of the book is in third person. It’s in Scarlet’s point of view, but she has to convey information about the war; so she does it by opening certain scenes with an omniscient narrator. After that, she goes directly into Scarlet’s head.
For instance, in chapter 18, Mitchell writes:
For the first time since the war began, Atlanta could hear the sound of battle. In the early morning hours, before the noises of the town awoke, the cannon at Kennesaw Mountain could be heard faintly. Far away, a low, dim booming that might have passed for summer thunder.
She goes on to give us the mindset of the people in Atlanta because they’re nervous about the battle being so close.
By paragraph four, Mitchell writes, “Scarlet and Mabel Merriweather Picard had been given permission to leave the hospital and watch the men go out because Uncle Henry Hamilton …” By then, we’re firmly in Scarlet’s head.
So even if you’re writing a book in third person, you’ll usually need an omniscient narrator to set the scene.
There was another instance that said, “Scarlett woke in her bed.” Even that sentence is from an omniscient narrator. If you have her thinking something in the next sentence, you’re in her third-person point of view.
Thomas: I noticed this technique when I read the Left Behind series. Christian books are almost always written in third-person point of view. If you explore the secular section, you’ll find first-person omniscient and limited omniscient perspectives. But for some reason, Christian editors seem to enforce a strict rule, essentially following what Jerry Jenkins does. It feels like you’re expected to write like Jerry Jenkins.
In Left Behind, Jenkins wants to show what the Antichrist and the villains are doing, but he avoids writing scenes from their point of view because they are the “bad guys,” and he doesn’t want to dwell too much on evil. As a result, one of the Christian characters always has to observe what the villains are up to. To make this happen, he creates a hacker character who controls all the computers for the Antichrist.
I remember reading this as a teenager and thinking the hacker felt contrived. The character only seemed to exist to spy on the Antichrist so we, as readers, could know what the Antichrist was doing. This could have been easily solved with a bit of omniscient narration. Instead of inventing a character to observe everything, Jenkins could have simply told us directly. After all, it’s a book, not a movie; and a little omniscient narration would have been fine.
C. S. Lewis fiddled with this technique. When he used the limited point of view rather than omniscient, his books were weaker.
People prefer The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which has a lot of omniscient elements, over Prince Caspian, which is more limited.
How do you determine when to use showing, telling, and narrating?
Angela: As I mentioned, you should show emotional scenes; but to get into those scenes, you usually need at least an omniscient sentence to set the scene. When readers start each scene, they need to know whose head they’re in and where and when the scene takes place.
If you’re writing a first-person story, it’s very appropriate to open with a narrator saying, “This is the story of my life, and the I’ve learned lessons.” Sometimes, authors summarize what they learned at the end of the book.
Where are authors tempted to tell when they should be showing?
Angela: There are danger zones where writers are tempted to tell when they should show.
Danger Zone #1: Backstory
Often, authors want to tell the backstory in chapter two, and we call it the backstory dump. They know they must start the first chapter with excitement and an obvious problem, but then they feel the need to explain chapter one in chapter two. So, the author tells the whole backstory about how Sally inherited the farm from her grandpa, who came over to the United States from Norway in 1895; and she made him a deathbed promise that she would never sell the farm. They use a lot of telling to get the details out of the way, but all of that should be cut and put in a file folder named “cut materials.”
Later in the story, if it’s emotionally important, you can pull out an emotional part and give some backstory. For example, suppose Sally’s grandpa established that farm. When he passed away, Sally inherited it. So, she works the farm with all the complications of tornados and fires until a handsome farmhand comes along. They fall in love, but marrying him means she’ll have to leave the farm.
At that point, you can search your backstory dump, find the promise she made, and show the teary scene where grandpa’s on his deathbed and his gnarled hand clutches hers; and with his last breath, he says, “Promise me that you’ll never sell the farm.”
That’s where that scene is emotionally satisfying and where it really works. It doesn’t work in the beginning when you just tell it.
Danger Zone #2: Describing Other Characters
Authors often tell us about other characters by saying, “He was a tall man …”; and then they tell the readers what the character looks like. To show that character, you might say, “He had to duck to get through the doorframe of our house.”
Danger Zone #3: Feeling or Sensing
When a character “feels” or “senses” something, authors are prone to tell readers about it, rather than show it. I do it as much as anyone, but I’ve learned to look for what I call weasel words like “felt.” I use the find-and-replace function to find each occurrence of the word “felt” and then replace it with FELT. That way, I can see where I need to show rather than tell.
For instance, I was editing yesterday; and I had written, “I felt a breeze caress my cheek.” I found the word and rewrote it to say, “A breeze caressed my cheek.”
If I just delete “felt,” I am now showing rather than telling.
How does writing for different audiences affect how much you show or tell?
Thomas: Some of this depends on whether you’re writing for men or women. Women like to read about the breeze caressing a cheek because they like to decode the emotional state behind the physical details.
As a male reader, I don’t care for that approach.
I’m happy for you to say, “She picked up the phone nervously,” and skip all the other showing so I don’t have to decode it. This is where so much of the publishing industry, particularly female editors, assume all readers are like them. That assumption has led them down the wrong path with their edits on some books.
You often hear advice about avoiding info dumps because female readers typically don’t like info dumps and aren’t interested in pages of explanation about how a thing works. But that is not the case for male readers. Men love an info dump about something they are interested in.
For example, when I read Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears as a teenager, I thought the best part was the 30 pages of explanation about how to build a nuclear bomb.
I’m sure some women enjoyed that part, but Tom Clancy’s readership was predominantly male. Same with Jurassic Park. The movie is mostly about dinosaurs, but the book is mostly about chaos theory with big info dumps about it.
Generally speaking, male readers are more interested in things, whereas female readers are more interested in people.
A male reader will be very interested in an info dump about a thing they are interested in, such as World War II or the Civil War. If male readers are interested in the Civil War, they will be interested in the info dump you include in your book. That’s why it’s important to know your reader.
Of course, it’s true that some men read romance, but those readers aren’t paying your bills. The female readers who bought the book are paying your bills.
Some men like to read books written for women, and quite a few women like to read books written for men. If you create a men-only space, women are breaking down the door to get in. Whereas if you create a women-only space, men are not breaking down the door to go to the tea party.
Angela: No, they are not.
Even so, when Clancy wrote that nuclear-bomb chapter, he still showed a character walking past the elements and assembling the pipes. It was still visual to some extent.
Thomas: Correct. It wasn’t just a nonfiction chapter.
Female editors often recommend cutting the info dump, whereas a male editor might advise you to leave it in, especially if he is interested in that thing.
Angela: I’m part of a book club that is 99% women. We meet online; and occasionally, a guy will join in. One thing I’ve noticed and always point out to the women is that when a book is written by a woman, the male characters tend to be much more talkative than men are in real life. We read a romance last week that was cute and clever; but I told the group, “This male character is like no man I know.”
I once had a male editor who opened my eyes to how I was writing my male characters. I had written a scene where a brother and sister meet a man and a woman in a colonial setting. The sister was very pretty; and I wrote them exchanging simple pleasantries, like “Hi, how are you?” as they met in the woods. My editor pointed out that the conversation would never happen like that. I asked why; and he explained, “If the girl is attractive, the guy would be sizing up the other man, trying to figure out his relationship to her. He wouldn’t just be talking about the weather.”
That was a valuable lesson for me, and it made me realize how important it is to know your audience. Always understand the dynamics you’re writing about!
Thomas: That’s why having a Timothy, a specific reader, is so important. Ultimately, it’s not about thrilling your editor. It’s about thrilling your specific reader. A good editor will help you write a book that thrills your reader first and won’t make your book into something that thrills the editor first.
Editors are fairly homogeneous. Most of the editors I have interacted with went to college, have a background in English, and are really into words. That shrinks the population to a narrow subset that you don’t have with readers. Readers can be anyone who’s literate. As an editor changes the book into something they like, they exclude readers; and that can hurt the book.
Angela: If you do need to tell, then make your telling visual like Clancy did and like I did when Sarah was telling what she saw during that condensed nine-month period.
Danger Zone #4: “As you know, Bob …”
New writers are tempted to tell instead of show in their dialogue. They often insert information into the dialogue. For example, “As you know, Bob, we’re here on an island; and the ferry only comes once a day at four o’clock.” To avoid that, you can borrow a technique from the movies. You’ll often see TV shows or movies that have a newcomer arrive on the scene or at the company. The company’s old-timer will have to explain things to the newcomer and, therefore, to the viewer or reader. It’s an old technique, but it works.
Thomas: My wife and I have realized that our children listen to us more when we’re talking to each other about adult things. So, occasionally, I’ll say to my wife, “You know, Margaret, we were planning to go to the park later, but the house is too messy. And as you know, we can’t go to the park because there are too many toys on the floor.”
My wife knows that when I use the phrase, “As you know, Margaret,” I’m actually talking to the children.
How does genre dictate when you show and tell?
Thomas: Nonfiction tends to be focused on telling but can still benefit from narrative elements that show.
What kind of fiction uses showing the most?
Angela: I would vote for romance with fantasy/sci-fi as a close second because it’s a different world. The writer has to build a world beyond planet Earth and help the readers see all the new things.
Romance readers want every glorious detail.
My favorite scene in Gone with the Wind is when Scarlet is trying to choose a dress for the barbecue at the Wilkes’s plantation. She evaluates every dress she chooses through her competition’s, Melanie’s, eyes, saying that Melanie would say this one made her look like a spinster and another had a spot under the brooch. When I read it, I thought, “Only a woman could write that, and only a woman would appreciate it.” I’m sure most men would skip over that entire scene.
Thomas: That doesn’t sound very entertaining to me as a male reader, but one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and that’s more true with books than with films.
A film needs millions of viewers in order to be successful, so it must have a broad appeal. Hollywood often uses the concept of a “four-quadrant hit,” which refers to a film that appeals to four key demographic groups: young men, young women, and then men and women over the age of 25 or 30. A four-quadrant hit aims to attract all these groups, and that’s the goal for big summer blockbusters.
Authors, on the other hand, don’t need nearly as large an audience to make a living. For instance, an independently published author can sustain themselves with 10,000 to 50,000 readers, while a traditionally published author might need around 100,000 readers to support themselves and their family.
Because of this difference, authors can afford to focus on a more specific, niche audience. By doing so, they can better tailor their writing, using more showing or telling, depending on what their particular readers prefer.
I’ll push back a little bit about fantasy and sci-fi because those genres aren’t as visual as you might think. The older works are especially historical. Consider the history of Aragorn, where we’re told about his dad as well as his whole lineage and the history of his ancestors. Tolkien would even put parts of that history in an appendix, and fans of fantasy were eager to read the history of Rohan and Gondor.
Today, a lot more women are writing fantasy, and you see a lot more romance in fantasy, which is sometimes called “romanticy.”
Romanticy authors (female fantasy writers writing for women) now have the top fantasy books. The bestseller fantasy list looks much different than it did 20 or 40 years ago when it was primarily men writing fantasy stories for other men. It’s interesting to see how the stories are different. In the secular market, female authors are incorporating a lot more sexual content than the secular fantasy authors of 20 and 40 years ago.
Angela: I believe that. My book club read a book in that genre, and it wasn’t my cup of tea. There was romance, spells, and weird worlds; but I couldn’t get into people with purple hair and four legs. I prefer genres based on fact, such as science fiction.
Thomas: Again, that demonstrates why it’s important to know your reader. It also shows that if you’re not a fan of the genre, you won’t give the best critique. For example, I wouldn’t know if a romance novel was good or not because I’m not a fan of the genre. I don’t know what would appeal to a typical romance reader. Plus, there are hundreds of subgenres of romance that appeal to different types of readers.
The same reader may prefer different genres at different stages of life or even when they’re in different moods. The book that spoke to you when you were a teenager may not speak to you as a 40-year-old.
Cultural zeitgeist also influences how you feel about a book. Angela’s positive mention of Gone with the Wind may make you more uncomfortable today than it would have 30 years ago.
Does showing and telling affect which point-of-view character you choose?
Angela: My most recently published book was about two sisters. One is a Christian in first-century Corinth, which was like the Las Vegas of its day. She’s struggling to follow Yeshua in Corinth, and there’s not a lot to guide her. Her stepsister, Prima, is an unbelieving Corinthian. She visits the temple of Aphrodite and worships all the Roman gods.
When I wrote Prima, the nonbeliever, I had her do things that, to her, were completely ordinary, natural, and not evil but necessary to accomplish her goal.
However, the reviews I got said things like, “Oh, I hate her. She was so nasty. I couldn’t stand being in her head.” I was a little taken aback because I thought, She’s just doing what a person of that mindset would do.
One thing I learned from Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People was that everybody, from criminals to salt-of-the-earth people, believes that they are doing the right thing.
I have seen criminals say in an interview, “That guy deserved to have his car stolen. He was stupid enough to leave his keys in it. He was just asking me to take his car.” Somehow, humans find a way to justify their actions.
If you’re going to write a character like that, you have to show his mental manipulations. You just can’t have the villain do evil out of the blue, or the reader won’t understand.
Thomas: It may be that you don’t want to write from the perspective of evil characters because some readers, including me, don’t enjoy being inside their heads. I’ve read a book series I really like; but it delves into the mind of one of the villains, and I find it so uncomfortable that I almost want to skip those chapters.
To portray a villain accurately, though, you have to show how the world looks from their perspective, which can make readers uncomfortable. Nowadays, many people don’t want to feel empathy for the villain or understand how their actions might seem justified from their point of view.
Here’s an uncomfortable example: I used to do mission work in Russia, and we still have many missionary friends who are sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with Russian people. They really understand Russian culture.
I spoke with one missionary about how the Russians view themselves. From a military perspective, they buy into all the conspiracy theories you hear about, like the global elites and the New World Order. For that reason, they don’t really have banking in Russia. When I was there, I was shocked to find that almost everyone dealt in cash. You can’t really use credit cards unless you’re at a tourist attraction.
The Russian people don’t trust the banks, and they see themselves as the one beacon of freedom against the New World Order. That’s why they have to liberate Ukraine from the evil Western powers that are corrupting the good and virtuous Russian morals they are defending. They believe they’re defending all that is good and right in the world. I’m not saying they’re right; I’m just saying that’s their perspective. It explains why they’re fighting so hard.
Many people feel uncomfortable getting inside the head of another to see how they justify their actions.
When the Russians are blowing up an apartment building full of Ukrainian civilians, they’re doing so because they think that’s the right thing to do to help end the war sooner.
Angela: As an author, you have to understand the mindset of your antagonist or villain.
Thomas: I believe writing scenes from the antagonist’s point of view is important for understanding your villains. It helps develop the characters and make them more believable. However, you might not want to include those scenes in the book. While readers want the antagonist to be well-written and fully fleshed out, they don’t necessarily want to spend time inside the antagonist’s head, thinking their evil thoughts.
Is having empathy for evil a virtue or not? I don’t know. It’s definitely useful for combating evil.
Angela: There’s a difference between having empathy for and simply understanding.
My husband and I are of a certain political bent; and when we watch the news, we watch “our” channels. Then, we switch to the other channels to see how they’re reporting the story. I want to know what they’re saying so I know how we fight the distortions. You’ve got to know what’s happening on the other side.
Any final tips or encouragement on showing and telling?
Thomas: For someone writing their first novel and struggling to find the balance between showing and telling, wondering if they’re being too wordy or not descriptive enough, what advice or encouragement would you offer?
Angela: First, if a scene contains an event that’s going to create an emotional impact, then show as much of it as you can without it dragging. You don’t want to repeat yourself or show the color of the linens in a deathbed scene.
But you do want to include emotional gestures like touching, gripping a hand, or a hand on a cheek. Those are heavy with emotion, but you don’t necessarily want to describe everything in the room and on the walls.
When I first started writing fiction, I had some ladies over; and they asked me how it was going. I said, “I don’t know. When my characters walk into a room, do I have to describe everything in it?” The answer, of course, is no. You only describe the significant details, and that’s what you should focus on.
If there’s no emotional weight to a scene—like if a character goes to the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread—just write, “When he got back from the grocery store with his loaf of bread, he said, …”
You don’t need to elaborate on mundane moments that don’t advance the plot or deepen characterization. Focus on telling those parts that matter.
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J. A. Webb, author of Fragments
If your existence relied on uncovering the most profound mysteries of the universe, where would you turn? Father Curtis, priest of the Order, seeks solace in his secluded parish, sheltered from the oppressive regime. But then, unjustly branded a heretic, he embarks on a harrowing journey for survival. Amidst his escape, he learns the world he once trusted is a labyrinth of deception, orchestrated by the Order’s tyrannical forces. The fate of humanity hangs in the balance as he battles to find the truth about himself, the Order, and Creation, in a world where seeking truth is a capital offense.
