Show and Tell
What does it mean to show or tell when you’re writing? Is one better than the other? How do you know which technique will serve you best when?
🔆 SHOWING can have a couple of different meanings, but here I’m referring to scenes. Action. Dialogue. In-detail description of a moment. To compare it to film, the camera is zoomed in and the viewer is watching each moment play out.
🔆 TELLING is a summarization. The reader is told that something happened. The amount of time summarized can be brief or long, but the camera has zoomed out. The viewer understands that time is passing.
Showing is where the heart of the story is…but can you imagine if every moment was a scene? The book would never end. The reader would lose interest, bogged down in all the minute details that don’t really matter.
Telling keeps the pace hopping…but who wants to read a story that feels like it was handed to them secondhand? The reader wants to SEE the characters in action, hear the dialogue, feel the tension and heartache and relief.
🔆 Each chapter should have a balance of BOTH ELEMENTS.
So…how do you know when to use scenes and when to summarize?
💡 It seems simplistic, but scenes should be doing something vital. Scenes are necessary when the reader COULD NOT get the same experience by summarizing this moment with a line or two. They must see it play out.
▪️Emotional moments are rarely summarized effectively. I don’t want to be told the main character is falling in love–I want to SEE it and come to that conclusion myself.
💡 But not everything should be a scene. If there’s a fight, does the reader gain anything with a play-by-play? Wouldn’t two pages of attack and counter-attack slow down the pace of a tense moment? Does the reader need to hear an entire conversation if its only purpose is to deliver one line of information?
▪️Telling does NOT mean that you stop pulling the reader in with atmosphere and emotion, either. Be specific and intentional about how you describe what’s happening. A sharp, well-crafted summary can sometimes serve a one-two punch of direct insight.
🔆 Good stories show AND tell. 🔆
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