"Show Don't Tell" is not the best advice. It's like noticing that kids tend to pick up hammers to fix everything, including screws, and then telling them "Use Screwdrivers Not Hammers". The better advice is, "Use screwdrivers for screws, and hammers for nails." I know the advice is supposed to help you guard against your natural inclination to tell things, but is that the right place to put a guard? If our student is ever looking at a nail and second-guessing their instinct to drive it into the wall with a hammer… haven’t we failed them?
What we need to understand better is when to show and when to tell. Admittedly, this is a harder thing to explain. And its solution is not so pithy that it can be summed up in three words. Then again, not everything should be summed up in three words. Kolmogorov complexity > 3 words for some ideas, to be sure.
Also, remember the goal of the words you're writing down: to get across tone, character, setting, concrete grounding in the scene. These can be achieved by both showing and telling, although differently.
To understand show versus tell, we must understand the differences in these tools, just as we might compare and contrast a screwdriver and hammer.
| Pace | Specificity | Understanding | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Telling | Quick* | Conceptual/Abstract | "A dog." |
| Showing | Slow* | Grounded/Concrete | "A mangy white dog with matted fur and a broken leg found whimpering in a puddle"** |
* usually, but depends on the idea
** This example is taken from Brandon Sanderson's
The most obvious difference is the pace. Often, but not always, it will be faster to simply tell the reader something rather than show it to them in action. There are cases where the idea you want to get across is quicker to show than to tell. In this case, you should always show. Anytime you can pull yourself down into the concrete while using fewer words, you almost always want to make that change.
Example of effective showing: At the beginning of The Breakfast Club, Allison’s parent’s car pulls into the driveway. She gets out and slams the door shut. She hesitates for a moment, then leans forward to peer into the car at her parent, who immediately drives away.
Since it is so quick to show the audience what needs to be understood about Allison’s character—that she feels unseen by her parents—it is best to do it this way. Having Allison’s dialogue or a narrator’s words say how she feels would be both longer and wouldn't drive the point home as directly. In other words, it would be less effective.
Demonstrate to your readers a mastery of the concrete by showing them the consequences of the abstract facts of your world (Allison’s parents driving away, someone’s hand cut off in a rough bar) instead of telling them, and then you can get away with the abstract worldbuilding lines when necessary.
Example of effective telling: In Emma by Jane Austen, Chapter XV, para. 25:
...but scarcely had she begun, scarcely had they passed the sweep-gate and joined the other carriage, than she found her subject cut up—her hand seized—her attention demanded, and Mr. Elton actually making violent love to her: availing himself of the precious opportunity, declaring sentiments which must be already well known, hoping—fearing—adoring—ready to die if she refused him; but flattering himself that his ardent attachment and unequalled love and unexampled passion could not fail of having some effect, and in short, very much resolved on being seriously accepted as soon as possible. It really was so. Without scruple—without apology—without much apparent diffidence, Mr. Elton, the lover of Harriet, was professing himself her lover.
There is certainly a mixture of showing and telling here—unless we were quoting a purely philosophical text it would be hard to find a text that is all telling—but this is no doubt telling to a significant degree. We do not read the actual words of Mr. Eltons confession to Emma. Some of the vague details are filtered through the narrator. Apparently at one point he says he’s ready to die if refused. But there is a degree of separation between the reader and the events depicted.
Conventional wisdom would hold that this is a time we ought to show instead of tell. It is a significant event in the story. It is wrought with emotion. "Show Don’t Tell", right?
No doubt this scene could have been written, even effectively, with more showing. But there’s a strength in Austen’s prose that would have been lost. His confession comes as a surprise to Emma, and that is reinforced through the choppy sentence structure and em dashes. The ideas being discussed are lofty and abstract. His hopes, his fears. The things he does not say are just as important and need emphasis. He says these things "without apology". That would be really hard to show.
We are treated to a whirlwind of ideas at breakneck speed. It would have taken many times this length to adequately explain Mr. Elton’s ideas. Despite this degree of separation and lack of grounding, the writing is still most effective at getting the key idea across to the reader: that this confession is a surprise to Emma (character, tone), it has tremendous gravity and far-reaching ideas behind it.
Old rule: "Show Don’t Tell" New rule: "If you can concretely show what you wish the reader to understand in fewer words, do that. Otherwise, you have a decision to make. To stay in the realm of abstract ideas, quick pace: tell. To pull down into the grounded consequences of an idea, and spend time/words in that space: show."