How to Show, Not Tell – 7 Creative Writing Dos and Don’ts

Surely, you’ve heard your teachers go on about ‘show, not tell’. But what do they really mean? And, how do you do it? In this article, we will show you the essential seven creative writing dos and don’ts for showing and not telling.

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How to ‘Show, not tell’ – Creative writing dos and don’ts

• What does Show, Not Tell mean?
• Why is Show, Not Telling important?
• Dos:
  • Rely on the five senses
  • Use dialogue
  • Describe actions, body language, and reactions
  • Use active voice
• Don’ts:
  • Use adverbs
  • Write emotions-words or abstract words
  • Over-explain

What does Show, Not Tell mean?

‘Show, not tell’ (also known as ‘show, don’t tell’) is helpful writing advice that encourages students to show actions, emotions, and experiences, as opposed to simply telling your readers what is happening.

For example, don’t simply tell your readers ‘the weather is hot’, describe how it feels and what it looks like this:

The shade under the post office’s awning was somewhat bearable, but stepping out into the midday sun was a whole other story. My poorly-chosen cardigan came off faster than you could say “it’s unbearable!”.

See how much more meaningful and engaging this sounds? We can visualise the extent of the sun’s heat, instead of simply thinking that it’s hot. We also get a peek of who and where our character is.

Remember, ‘showing’ is all about uncovering what is happening and letting the audience piece things together. ‘Telling’ is simply recounting exactly what is happening without much description.

We know that distinguishing between the two can seem frustrating at first. However, once you get the hang of it, using ‘show, not tell’ will be second nature to you! That’s why we’re going to show you the seven dos and don’ts to ‘show, not tell’.

Why is showing, not telling so important?

‘Show, not tell’ relies on sensory descriptions, emotions, and actions to paint a picture in the reader’s mind, instead of quickly stating the facts of what is happening.

This storytelling process creates a more engaging read for the audience and allows them to build a deeper connection with the text.

Remembering to ‘show, not tell’ draws your readers into the story and lets them experience things in your character’s shoes.

This process also leaves room for interpretation and allows your readers to think for themselves! They can pick up clues from your writing and piece together the descriptions of emotions or senses.

Telling doesn’t allow this to happen. Telling simply tells your audience what they should think. It is much less engaging because minimal visualisation is required.

How to show, not tell – Dos:

Now that you know what ‘show, not tell’ means and why it’s important, let’s go through the four things you need to do to ‘show, not tell’.

1. Rely on the five senses

One of the easiest ways to ‘show, not tell’ is to rely on the five senses to describe what is happening in the story. This will help your readers use their imagination to visualise the world.

The five senses include:

• Seeing: What can be seen?
  • E.g. It was the most intense swell of the season. Following the relentless downpour that battered Sydney’s streets and turned the beaches to slush, the tide coming in was so brown it could have been mistaken for the Brisbane River.
• Hearing: What can be heard? Is there music? Are there sounds?
  • E.g. The oldest competitor sat at the ripe old age of twelve. In anticipation for the next competitive pianist to grace us with the dulcet sounds of Mozart, the conservatorium’s concert hall was so quiet you could have heard every parent’s suppressed cough or sniffle.
• Smelling: What does it smell like?
  • E.g. It was the kind of Parisian street that was close enough to the Eiffel Tower to warrant a night-time clean up crew. Until about 2am in the morning, the sour remains of apple cores and bin juices mixed with the ripe stench of sewer.
• Touching: What is the physical sensation? What does it feel like? Is it warm or cold? What is the texture like?
  • E.g. Sarah always preferred a simple calico tote. Whenever she went second-hand book shopping at Elizabeth’s, she would pinch the crude cotton fabric between her index finger and thumb. Rubbing the unrefined fabric between her fingers brought her a sense of calm amongst the overwhelming book choices.
• Tasting: What does it taste like? How does it feel on the tongue?
  • E.g. She had a thing for croissants. They were her fixation food, and she went to the bakery opposite her school for her daily fix. She didn’t know why exactly, only that the buttered layers of flaky pastry melted on her tongue. Unsurprisingly, they also melted away her worries.

To do this replace basic nouns, verbs and phrases with these sensory descriptions! Reflect on the world and think about what you see, hear, taste, feel or smell. It can help to close your eyes and imagine yourself in the situations your characters can find themselves in.

Also, try to rely on more than one sense when you are writing to create a three-dimensional world.

Now, let’s change this sentence from telling to showing:

• Telling: David picked up the bottle.
• Showing: David finished up Tuesday night soccer training by taking his muddy spikes off, wiping them down and popping them in his duffel. Coincidentally, he had caught the spiky end of Coach’s mood and was forced to jog an extra two miles of punishment laps. Even splashing his face with the water from his gatorade bottle wasn’t making his cheeks any less red.

See how the description uses different senses to paint a vivid picture of how a character does the simplest action in your mind? This is what you will need to do to show, not tell!

2. Use dialogue

Dialogue is another great way to show, not tell, because it shows your character’s personality whilst allowing the story to unfold naturally! It is much more interesting than simply recounting what the characters say.

1. Use dialogue to show how the characters are feeling 

By manipulating the tone, voice, and word choices, you can show the character’s feelings and emotions.

For example, you don’t need to tell your audience that your character is nervous and having doubts about something, you can use dialogue to show this:

“Do you really think this is gonna work?”

2. Use dialogue to show the characters personalities and traits

All characters should have a distinct way of talking.

For example, a character who didn’t get the opportunity to go to school might speak with lots of slang and truncated sentences, a mysterious magician might speak in cryptic riddles, and a pompous professor might speak in long-winded sentences with academic vocabulary.

However, just because characters have a distinct way of talking, doesn’t mean you should force an accent to make a character “different” and “distinguishable”. You need to ensure that the character’s way of talking is natural and reflects their personality.

3. Ensure that all dialogue serves a purpose (aka, not too chunky)

This is an example of chunky dialogue that ‘tells’ what happened:

“How was lunch?”

“Not great. We ordered prawns because forgot Shelley was allergic to them! She was so mad, she stormed out of the restaurant. I feel so bad now. What should I do?”

Instead, break it up into smaller sentences to show what happened and what the characters are feeling:

“How was lunch?”

“Well… Shelley stormed out of the restaurant because we ordered prawns.”

“Oh no! She’s allergic to them.”

“I know. It slipped my mind! Should I call her to apologise?”

See how much more engaging that sounds? There isn’t a large chunk of a recount. Instead, the information is given in a natural and realistic way.

3. Describe actions, body language, and reactions

Another way you can show, not tell, is to describe actions, body language, and your character’s reactions!

Body language is a great indicator of what somebody is feeling.

Think about films! You can immediately infer a character’s feelings without them saying anything. That’s because they are using body language to show this!

For example, if a character is angry, they might furrow their brows or turn their shoulders away from who they’re angry at (to quite literally give someone the cold shoulder!).

So, when you are writing, you want to replace simple emotional words with strong descriptions about your character’s body language, like this:

• Telling: Jacob was suspicious of Felicity.
• Showing: Every time Felicity suggested another way to complete the assignment, Jacob gave a non-committal “mmhmm”, as if she couldn’t be trusted to organise something as simple as a 2 o’clock meeting.

Another example is:

• Telling: She was shocked.
• Showing: Complete syllables seemed to escape her. When John asked for the third time, she couldn’t stop her jaw from opening, closing, and then opening again, as if spelling out ‘SOS’ in morse code.

4. Use active voice

Active voice creates powerful imagery, whereas passive voice tells us what is happening. Here is the difference between the two.

Active voice is where the subject comes before the verb in the sentence. Here, the subjects tend to “do something” to the object.

For example “Kallum ate an apple” or Jessy picked up the pen.”

Passive voice is where the object comes before the verb in the sentence. This focuses on the object more than the subject. Often, you will find “to be” verbs in these sentences like “was”, “going to”, “were”, “are”, and “is”.

For example, “An apple was what Kallum ate” or “The pen was picked up by Jessy”.

So, when you want to show, not tell, you should aim to use active voice because it conveys a clear and strong tone. When something is written in passive voice, it sounds as though we’re listening to the story through a third-party.

To do this, place your subjects before your verbs, and ensure your usage of “to be” verbs are minimal.

Example #1:

• Passive voice: “The party was something Rachel planned to go to.”
• Active voice: “Rachel planned to go to the party”

Example #2: 

• Passive voice: “The car was washed by Chris.”
• Active voice: “Chris washed the car.”

Note: If you want to learn more about active and passive voice, check out our English Grammar Toolkit under Voice. We discuss the difference between active and passive voice in more detail.

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Don’ts:

Now that you know what you should do to ‘show, not tell’, let’s look at what you should not do.

5. Use adverbs

Using adverbs is not the best way to ‘show, not tell’. Adverbs are words that modify verbs, verb groups or adjectives to show a manner, degree, place or time. These are words that tend to end in -ly, like quickly, gently, badly, warmly, sadly, softly, and greedily.

Stephen King, a best-selling author, said that adverbs are not your friend:

“With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/she isn’t expressing himself/herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or the picture across.” – Stephen King, ‘On Writing, a Memoir of the Craft’

What he means is that using adverbs is a way of telling what is happening, instead of showing it. As Stephen King says, using adverbs makes it seem like you’re afraid of not being able to paint the picture, and we all know that ‘show, not tell’ is all about painting a vivid picture in your reader’s mind.

So, instead of using adverbs, you should find stronger verbs or adjectives that can capture the essence of what you want to say (similar to the above tip). Here are some examples:

• Telling #1: “Henry placed the box firmly on the table.”
• Showing #1: “Henry slammed the box onto the table.”
• Telling #2: “Kate quickly walked to the kitchen.”
• Showing #2: “Kate scurried to the kitchen.”
• Telling #3: “She menacingly looked at Jake.”
• Showing #3: “She glared at Jake.”

Can you see the difference between the ‘telling’ and ‘showing’ sentences? The ‘showing’ sentences are much more powerful at painting an image in the reader’s mind. This is because they replaced the adverbs with powerful verbs!

6. Write emotions-words or other abstract words

Abstract words are words that refer to concepts or emotions; in other terms, they are terms that aren’t normally sensed with your five senses that we mentioned above. For instance, happiness, sadness, love, hope, faith, and beauty are all emotions or abstract words. Different people might visualise these in different ways.

When you use emotions or abstract words, you are ‘telling’ your readers what to think; they aren’t given a chance to visualise the character’s body language or actions and feel the character’s emotions.

Remember, showing is all about painting a picture in your reader’s mind. So, instead of using emotions or abstract words, you should think about what it looks like and describe it.

For example:

• Tell: “Ursula hid behind the boxes because she was scared of the intruder.”
• Show: Ursula always hated closing shift. She was the last one to leave, and locking up the shop fell to her. Now she was crouched down behind the stocktake boxes, hoping the intruder wouldn’t hear her fumbling behind the new season inventory of strappy platform sandals and open-toed kitten heels. From behind the flimsy stack of cardboard boxes, Ursula could hear the intruder rattling around the cash register. Too bad she had already deposited the cash sales for the day.

Do you notice the difference between the two examples?

In the first example, we used ‘scared’ to tell us how Ursula is feeling. This is much more unengaging because it doesn’t build up the fear, suspension, and urgency that is created in the second example. The second example shows us what Ursula is feeling through the visual, auditory, and tactile descriptions. By doing that, we also feel her fear as well which makes it much more engaging.

7. Over-explain

Over-explaining is something you should avoid at all costs. Remember, less is more!

Your readers are intelligent beings. They are capable of piecing hints and inferring information themselves.

So, you don’t have to explain why everything is happening! Here, take a look at this example of over-explaining:

“Sandra drove to the grocery store because she was nervous about tonight’s party. She really wanted to impress the in-laws but they’re so difficult to impress. She knew she had to buy something delicious and impressive but she was still unsure of what to buy. There are so many options.”

Notice how the whole paragraph is telling us exactly what Sandra is feeling and thinking, and why she is feeling and thinking that way. There isn’t much room for interpretation and it isn’t a very engaging read.

So, let’s rewrite the paragraph to remove the over-explaining.

“Sandra drove to the grocery store, her hands gripping the steering wheel a little tighter than usual. A roast chicken? A bottle of wine? A hamper basket? She sighed. A sudden tightness grew in her chest as memories of her last dinner with the in-laws attacked what was left of her self-esteem.”

Which one is a more engaging read? The second example didn’t over-explain everything. It left some room for interpretation which engages the readers and keeps them wanting more.

It’s important to not over-explain yourself in your writing to show, and not tell.