One of the hardest things to teach is how to Show not Tell in your writing. I thought I would demonstrate what everyone is talking about when they tell you to show not tell. I'm going to do this with short clips and ads as visual language is just as much story telling as writing and hopefully it will make it clearer.
First up let's look at some telling.
Pretty much if you feel like you are narrating your story you are telling. If you watch this without sound this scene doesn't make a lot of sense. When you look at your writing look for the bits that are like a narrator and take them out and ask yourself if what is left actually makes sense.
Let's look at another bad telling story.
The problem with this one is the story teller has a bigger script they are working from but only a little bit of the story gets to the page. It took me ages to figure this one out. First of all the woman is talking about the kid. His father died and because they didn't have insurance they lost the house and kid grew up thinking life pretty much sucked. He then meets a girl and because he doesn't want his family to end up like him he gets insurance so even if he is no longer the luckiest man at least his family would be lucky. A little dark TBH. I really think this was part of a longer ad as the tone changes in the narrators voice and what is left is a mess.
So when you are writing and you feel like you are rushing and a lot of things happen in a very short amount of time then you are most likely telling rather than showing. The sentence before and after should relate to what happened. If it doesn't start thinking why or putting in a paragraph break.
Okay, let's look at something that is all showing.
They tell you right at the start the story is about Kong getting out but this is done with dialogue that is embedded into the story. But then they go on to demonstrate all the times he gets out. As a viewer you start thinking, why keep the silly donkey if it keeps escaping? They throw in the kids saying something cute and your heart melts as you realise that he is doing all this for his kids. Then they get to the last part and you think he is going to build this Fort Knox and then they subvert expectations and another heart melt as you realise the reason he is wandering is because he is lonely.
You could watch this without sound and know exactly what was going on. They take the time to demonstrate the idea over and over again. They show the effect on the man rather than telling you he is exhausted and frustrated.
Telling often is condescending as it is explaining things when if you show you allow the reader to be part of your story.
But telling isn't always evil. There are times when you should tell as you want to jump time and get to the interesting stuff. Here is an example of how you can have telling and showing working together.
This is called imagine and I'm about to throw a curve ball. If the one who one is the one imagining all this how did she know about the nurse at the end? I actually think this is the nurse imagining the woman who she helped by plastering in her ticket. But it could be the other way. I like that the narrator is ambiguous. The woman adds in a little telling and then shows how it happened. Coming back to telling when she needs to jump time.
Look at your own writing and see if you can add more showing.
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