Every writer I know has heard “show, don’t tell” approximately four million times.
We hear it from professors, from critique partners, from agents at conferences, from the back covers of craft books, from blog posts, and writers’ Facebook groups.
But how many times do you sit down to draft a scene, and then do it anyway?
We tell. We tell constantly. We hand ouy reader a tidy little paragraph that explains exactly who a character is and where they came from and why they matter, and we move right along like we’ve done my job. And every single time we come back through on a revision pass, there it is — that paragraph, sitting in the middle of the chapter. We grimace when we re-read it. We know it doesn’t work. But, it sounded good in the moment!
So I thought I’d walk you through one I caught in my own current manuscript. Because if I’m going to keep relearning this lesson, I might as well drag you along with me.
The Scene
I’m working on the first book in my new cozy mystery series, Wiregrass Roots — book one is Kin, Lies, and Alibis. In Chapter 1, my protagonist Maggie Kate is at her desk doing genealogy work, and her assistant Bertie Oglesby is reorganizing the brochure rack. Even though she’s supposed to be a supporting character, Bertie just might be the best character in the book. She’s sixty-seven, she’s a retired mail carrier, she’s never walked out the door in clothes that haven’t been ironed, and she calls her 2009 Buick LeSabre “Gerald” because she believes that the car runs as well as he does because she talks to him kindly.
Bertie is gold. The problem was that, in my first draft, I told the reader all about Bertie like this:
Bertie Oglesby had been at Wiregrass Roots since eight forty-five this morning, even though she wasn’t scheduled until ten. At sixty-seven years old, she could no longer walk the mail route she had walked for thirty-one years, especially in the South Alabama weather. She was wearing her version of casual, which consisted of an ironed blouse and slacks with a crease down the front. Anyone who knew her knew that Bertie Oglesby didn’t walk out of the house with anything that was not pressed. Bertie also came early because she said you never know when Gerald may refuse to bring her. Gerald is what she calls her 2009 Buick LeSabre. He’s still running perfectly after 112,000 miles, and Bertie says it’s because she talks to him.
Read that and tell me honestly. Did you meet Bertie? Or did you meet a Wikipedia entry about Bertie?
Here’s what I did in that paragraph: I told you her age. I told you her work history. I told you her dress code. I told you her car has a name. I told you why. Every single thing the reader knows about Bertie after that paragraph, the narrator told them. Bertie didn’t do a thing. Bertie didn’t even get to be in the room.
And the worst part is I liked the paragraph. It’s a perfectly fine paragraph. The information is interesting. The voice is warm. If I weren’t paying attention, I’d let it stand. That is exactly why telling is so dangerous. It doesn’t always read as bad. Sometimes it reads as fine. And fine is the enemy.
How Telling Actually Benefits
When I tell you Bertie is a meticulous person who irons her clothes, you nod and keep reading.
When I show you Bertie smoothing the crease on her slacks before she sits down, you see her. You start to like her a little. You file her away somewhere deeper than working memory. And you start to trust her, which means I can betray that trust later if I need to, or I can use it against another character, or I can let Bertie notice something nobody else would notice and you’ll believe she actually would.
Telling gives you information. Showing gives you a person.
The other thing telling does is it puts the narrator between the reader and the story. When I write “Anyone who knew her knew that Bertie Oglesby didn’t walk out of the house with anything that was not pressed,” the reader is suddenly aware that there’s a writer at a desk somewhere telling them about Bertie. That’s a wall. Showing tears the wall down. The reader is just there, in the shop, watching her work.
When I was around 7 or 8 years old, I started reading all of the Little House on the Prarie books. I remember looking up from one of those books to tell my mom, “When you read it’s like you are standing outside their house and watching everything they do through their windows.”
Perhaps some might only see the stalker inside those words. *chuckles*
But, in reality, this is how all readers should feel. By showing, you give the reader that effect. They are actually watching the story unfold. By telling, you remind the reader that they are reading text in a book.
The Revision
Here’s the same Bertie, doing the same things, in roughly the same number of words. But this time I’m going to let her show me who she is instead of telling you about her.
The clock on the wall said nine-fifteen. Bertie wasn’t due until ten, but Bertie hadn’t shown up at ten in the four years she’d been working at Wiregrass Roots, and Maggie Kate had stopped pretending to expect it.
Bertie reached up to give a sharp tug on the chain of the ceiling fan, then ran one hand down the front of her slacks, just in case she had left one wrinkle that needed smoothing. Her blouse was ironed. The slacks were ironed. Maggie Kate was reasonably sure the dish towel hanging on the back of the door was ironed too.
“Gerald nearly didn’t bring me this morning,” Bertie said, jamming a Boll Weevil Monument brochure into its slot with more force than the situation strictly required. “I had to remind him that we had things to do today and he was not about to embarrass me in front of the Lord and the neighbors. Thirty-one years walking that mail route, and now I cannot get a 2009 Buick to start without a sermon.”
“How many miles is Gerald up to?” Maggie Kate asked, not looking up.
“A hundred and twelve thousand. He just needs to be talked to right.” Bertie picked up the next brochure. “Some folks don’t believe in talking to a vehicle. Some folks also have to call for a ride three times a week, so, there’s that.”
Look at what’s still in there. Bertie’s age is implied through “thirty-one years walking that mail route” plus the four years at the shop. Her retirement from the postal service is shown, not announced. Her dress code is shown by the crease she’s smoothing on already-ironed slacks. Bertie introduces Gerald the Buick herself, in dialogue, while complaining about him, which is so much more in-character than the narrator stepping in to explain. The hundred and twelve thousand miles is still there. Even the line about her talking to him is still there. But now Bertie is delivering it as a quietly devastating little jab at people who don’t, which tells you ten times more about Bertie than the original paragraph did.
I didn’t lose information. I just stopped announcing it.
A Good Test to Use
When you catch yourself drafting a paragraph that explains a character to the reader, ask yourself one question:
Could this character do this instead of the narrator saying it?
Almost always, the answer is yes. Bertie can smooth her crease. Bertie can talk to her car. Bertie can trash-talk people who don’t talk to their cars. Maggie Kate can stop pretending to expect her at ten.
The narrator’s job is to put a camera in the room. It is not the narrator’s job to lean over the reader’s shoulder and explain what the camera is seeing.
That’s the thing I keep having to relearn.
If you can hear yourself in the prose more than you can hear them, that’s the tell.
