Writer’s Workshop: Showing Versus Telling
The most effective way to convey settings, emotions, and actions is rarely to simply and literally tell the audience what they should be seeing in their minds’ eyes or feeling or thinking. As one of the most enjoyable parts of reading is using the imagination, the writer must only show his or her audience a literary landscape and leave the readers to draw their own conclusions.
Audience-related concerns aside, the writer must be ever vigilant in using the most concise yet powerful language possible to convey a message or weave a story. Dry, overly literal words in poetry or prose are a waste of language and add no value to them. These words or phrases are best left for simple conversation or, better yet, avoided entirely.
Writers can begin to learn “showing, not telling” techniques in two major areas of narrative or poetic description: describing character emotion and describing settings or scenery.
Describing emotion is one of the easiest-avoided pitfalls for new writers. For example, consider the following sentence:
“Edgar was terrified at the prospect of meeting his decrepit and delusional aunt.”
In this specific case, the writer tells the audience that Edgar is terrified. While the reader can appreciate this as a factor in the larger narrative, he or she will probably not be struck or affected in any way by this information. In literary terms, the sentence is factual, dry, and disappointing.
To show Edgar’s emotion, the writer must give the critical details that demonstrate the emotion. Is he perspiring? Are his hands trembling? Is his mind racing haphazardly from one illogical, hysterical thought to the next?
Merely telling readers that Edgar is terrified will elicit a minimal emotional or intellectual response. The writer has a much better chance of appealing to an audience and creating a more detailed and accurate description of the character when she shows Edgar’s terror rather than simply referring to it.
Next, in describing settings and scenery, such as landscape, architecture, or weather, many novice writers make the grave mistake of glossing over the details.
“It was a hot, sunny day.”
“The house was falling apart.”
In the previous sentences, I told you about the scene. Putting aside issues of specificity, I described the most basic elements of the stage of my narrative. But I didn’t show you precisely why or how you should care or feel about that setting.
If your story or poem takes place on a hot, sunny day, make your audience feel the heat. Use brilliant, vivid language to describe the sun. Show the audience the lightness of the desert air or the thick, muggy atmosphere of a Southern cornfield. If the house in your scene is run-down, you must show the readers why they should agree with you. Is the roof caving in? Is the front door hanging by a solitary hinge? There are a great many hot, sunny days and ramshackle houses all over the world in any given year; but unless you show your readers the heat and sun and the precise decrepitude of the house rather than just stating their presence as fact, the information is practically useless.
Never assume that your audience will know what you mean when you tell rather than show. Don’t assume that they will have the same reaction to your writing that you have. When in doubt, market-test a chapter of a story or a stanza of a poem within a select sphere of writers and editors you respect; ask your test audience to help you find the most effective ways to show rather than tell a truly great tale.
