Show Don’t Tell

The first and most frequently repeated tip a wannabe fiction writer is given is show, don’t tell.

You’re writing a story. Therefore, you are telling a story. You are a storyteller. No one has ever heard of a story-shower.

Show, don’t tell? What exactly does that mean, and how do you accomplish it?

Simply put, showing allows a reader to follow your story into a scene or setting as if they were there. There, they can feel and experience the story unfolding with the characters. Showing draws readers into the story using all their senses. Working a healthy balance of showing and telling into your story can engage your reader.

Here are five suggestions for ways you can show:

Dialogue

This is a heavyweight in your toolbox for showing readers something. Consider this example. You can tell: “Dad was really angry.”

Or your reader can hear it for themselves as you invite them in:

“Darin!” Dad shouted. “Darin Michael! Get over here right now! What were you thinking?”

He was red in the face. Fire burned in his eyes. You could see the veins in his forehead. “Listen, I brought you into this world, Son, and I’ll take you out!” (Wow. Flashback!)

And in that example, I’m reminded of a time I’ve seen, heard, or otherwise experienced something like this before. Now I’m able to connect with the characters in the story in a more personal way.

Dialogue is a great way to convey emotion and attitude and give insight into a particular character’s persona. You don’t need to say, “Bobby was a jerk.” Show us by letting Bobby reveal what a jerk he is through dialogue. Your readers will appreciate it all the more.

Sensory Descriptives

When you want to show a scene, thinking about your reader’s senses and appealing to them can help. Warning, though—this can easily be overdone. So, proceed in moderation.

Consider the mega-hit from the rock band Journey for a moment, otherwise known as Tony Soprano’s swan song, Don’t Stop Believin.’ “A singer in a smoky room, the smell of wine and cheap perfume.” It paints a picture, doesn’t it? Brings you there much more than if Steve Perry had simply sung, “There was a singer in a bar.”

Sensory descriptives appeal because we’ve all got a sense of what a smoky room would feel like to us. An asthmatic, I start to wheeze when I hear Steve Perry sing those words! Most of us have some sense of what a booze-saturated room smells like, or how overwhelming cheap perfume—especially in excess—can be. So, we can put ourselves in the scene.

The key here is moderation—no booze and perfume pun intended. You don’t want to become too verbose here, or readers can become fatigued. They were with you a page ago, and now they’re just getting annoyed, wondering where the story arc has gone.

Adjectives and Adverbs

Okay, back to grammar class. You remember what adjectives and adverbs are used for in language. Adjectives describe or modify nouns—people, places, things. Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs, often telling us how, when, where, or to what degree something happens. In simpler terms, adjectives add detail to what something is; adverbs add detail to what something does. Again, a caution: don’t overdo it.

This is another one that can easily identify sophomoric writing. Here’s a hint: Can you use adjectives and adverbs to speak into the sensory descriptions mentioned above? If you can, that would be far better than loading up on gag-reflex redundant adjectives:

She was very meticulously dressed in a deep ocean-blue sequined blouse, with a thick wool scarf of fuchsia, and wore a cute little raspberry beret, tilted… {closed the book}

Figurative Language

This is another good tool to be applied in moderation. Are you sensing a theme?

This one is easy to overdo. You can tell: “The virtuoso played his cello.” Or you can show by using some figurative language: “He and his instrument were one, making beautiful music together.”

Or, as mentioned, you can go way overboard: “Like lovers, they melted into one another…”

Yeah … awkward.

Specifics

When you’re finished with a story, or you’re through with a section and ready to do some revising, go back through and find every place where you’ve been vague and get specific. For instance, if you wrote, “She had never felt like this before,” spend a few minutes imagining the specific feeling, and revise.

Show us what that feeling felt like to the character, and let us determine how absolutely amazing it was—something she’d never felt before.

Now, a disclaimer. I don’t share all this with you because I think I’ve mastered this art form myself. I’m very much an artist—trying. I do hope these suggestions provide some thought provocation for you as you work on your craft, much as they do for me.

So, let’s get to work—showing.

How might we encourage one another? Do you have suggestions for showing that have worked well for you—either as a writer or as a reader?

The Write Process

People often ask about my writing process.

They want to know where I write, when I write, whether I outline before I begin, what software I use, or how many cups of coffee it takes to finish a chapter.

Those are fair questions. We’ll get to some of them in this series. But before any of that matters, I think there’s a more important question every writer needs to answer:

Who are you writing for?

I’ve found that once you answer that question, the where, when, how, and even the software begin to matter a whole lot less. Let me explain.

I Have Two Writing Offices

One has bookshelves.

The other has baristas.

My favorite place to write is a room in our home. It wasn’t always there. My wife, Shari, and our daughter Emily—with a lot of help from her partner, Lu, my brother-in-law Mike, and my sister Diann—transformed what had once been a closed-in patio into what has become my writing laboratory.

Most days, that’s where books are written. Theology gets wrestled with. Sentences get crossed out. Coffee gets brewed… and reheated.

But a few times every week, I pack up my laptop and drive two minutes down the road to Starbucks.

Not because I love Starbucks coffee. (I don’t.)

And certainly not because I love Starbucks prices. (I really don’t.)

If Panera ever opens within thirty minutes of my house, Starbucks may never see me again. Until then…

The truth is, I don’t go there because it’s quieter than home. I go there because it isn’t.

There’s something about sitting in the middle of ordinary life that reminds me who I’m writing for. Stories don’t begin on my laptop. They begin across the room—in conversations, in laughter, in tired faces, in quiet acts of kindness, and in people simply trying to make it through another Tuesday.

I write for the retired couple who never miss their weekly coffee date.

The college student cramming for tomorrow’s exam.

The exhausted young mom hoping for twenty uninterrupted minutes before heading back into the beautiful chaos of family life.

The DoorDash driver grabbing one more order before lunch.

The business professional whose phone never seems to stop buzzing.

The baristas who somehow remember everyone’s order—and still manage to smile while making it.

They’re the reason I write.

The staff knows me now. They’re mostly young adults just beginning to build their lives. They’ve always been kind and encouraging toward me and my work. In some strange way, I feel like their local writer in residence.

Every book I’ve written has started in my writing room. But every book has been shaped somewhere else.

In coffee shops.

Hospital rooms.

Church foyers.

Restaurant booths.

Long talks with friends.

Conversations with people carrying burdens they never expected to bear.

Because writing, at its best, isn’t just about finding the right words. It’s about paying attention to people. It’s about loving them enough to listen.

The keyboard is simply where the listening becomes words.

So You Want To Write Your Story?

One of the greatest perks of the writing life for me is sharing with and learning from other writers. I soak up all I can. I also love to share suggestions. Truly, when anyone writes, I get jazzed about it.

You there! Pick up a pencil! Write your story down!

A friend recently took on an adventure—writing memoir. He asked me for advice. I shot him what would be my top ten list for getting memoir from mind to media.

1) Words on page above all else at this point.

Don’t worry about editing or perfecting thoughts, sentences, or paragraphs at this juncture. It can become so time consuming and discouraging. No one is reading this yet. Worry not, there will be time to come back and fine tune later.

2) Show don’t tell.

The more you can keep this in mind from the start, the better it will serve your writing. We have such a tendency to say things like “I was nervous.” That’s horrible to read. Show your reader. Describe what you felt, thought, worried about—whatever is rolled up in the words “I was nervous.”

Same advice when describing scenes or settings. When you say “we were poor” or “our house was small” you miss a golden opportunity to paint the picture for the reader. Invite them into the small house, the poverty.

3) Kill the word that whenever and wherever you can.

Worthless word. It really is. One of the last things I try to do with every piece of writing I send to a client is to execute a word search and see where I can remove or replace it. Trust me on this. You will thank me later.

4) Kill the future tense verb form to be wherever you can.

This one will come to you as you write more so than in my admonition here. It’s the difference between “It is Mike’s intention to write his memoir” and “Mike intends to write his memoir.” I know it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it will be on the whole. This is the second thing I search my writing for before I press send.

5) Swap passive voice for active where you can.

Active and passive voice are grammatical constructions. Active voice offers the clearest sentence structure: a character (subject) does something (verb) to a person, place or thing (noun/recipient). Example: Mom hugged me. The passive voice reverses the structure: person, place or thing (noun/recipient), had something happen to them (verb), by a character (subject). Example: I was hugged by Mom.

Using the passive voice almost always makes your writing more distant and your message less clear. Do you doubt me? Try these on for size—

(1) The passive voice almost always makes your message less clear.

(2) Your message is almost always made less clear by using the passive voice.

I rest my case.

6) Read while you write. Choose books and authors who will help your writing.

For memoir, I have three recommendations for you. Not as much for content, as for style, voice and storytelling. (1) Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charlie”—he chronicles his travels around the country with his dog in a pick-up truck/camper. It’s a marvelous example of all I wrote above. (2) Kerouac’s “On The Road”—he was the first beat-generation writer, which is “stream of consciousness” writing style. I LOVE IT where memoir is concerned. And (3) Anything Garrison Keillor wrote—he’s a master at show don’t tell. You read his stuff and you feel like you’re walking into every scene with him. The best thing about these three: they’re short, fast and engaging reads.

7) Let the story shift your timeline.

Don’t attempt to tell your story in linear fashion. Write it like you’d tell it, sitting with a friend or family member, over coffee … or better still, wine.

8) Let concerns like formatting, style, layout wait.

Words on page at this juncture. And more words on page. For now, go with a simple doc file, line spacing, fonts—whatever makes your reading eye most comfortable. Utilize divisions and markings that make it most convenient for you to navigate and find your way around. All else can easily be adjusted later.

9) Make your writing accessible wherever you are and whenever opportunity to read/write arises.

Laptop, iPad, phone, notebook (I even have a small digital voice recorder I speak into sometimes in the car as ideas arise) whatever. You might store your document in a cloud service like iCloud, Google Drive, or DropBox so you can access it from anywhere.

10) Schedule times and places to play with your writing.

Life gets in the way. Set appointed times when you can sneak an hour or so away. You might even budget a retreat—a weekend getaway so you can spend more significant time writing. I have coffee shops and even a couple of bars where I can sneak off to get away from it all. The staff there know me, what I’m doing, and they even help buffer me from distractions. Where can you go? How often? Put it on your calendar. Make it a date.

Are you actively writing memoir? Some other genre? What tips might you offer? What helps you get words on page?

Improving Our Craft

Mark Twain once said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I’ve written a long one instead.”

What he meant was that it takes work to write succinctly. Or as I’ve always encouraged writers: Write it; then trim it. Nothing can improve our writing like the delete key!

I’ll offer a few words here you could (read: should) target as you edit:

Literally ~ When something is true in a literal sense, you don’t need to add the word literally. It clutters. The only time you should use the word literally in your writing is when you need to clarify that you’re serious when it is entirely possible that you are joking.

Suppose a well-trained athlete wrote, “I literally ran five miles today.” Literally is a wasted word. It should read, “I ran five miles today.” He’s a great athlete. We take him at his word.

Now if I wrote, “I ran five miles today” you wouldn’t believe it. (Nor should you!) If by some miracle I actually did run five miles, that would be a place where literally would bring clarity—Darin’s not kidding, he literally did it. Are you okay, Darin? Do you need oxygen?

Very ~ Let’s be honest: very is a very weak word. The rock isvery hard. How much harder than hard is very hard? Have you ever met a soft rock? When we use very in a sentence we’re attempting to intensify the description. But the description doesn’t need intensifying. Your reader gets it. Rocks are hard. Really.

That brings us to another …

Really ~ Just like very, really is another oft wasted word. “It’s really important that you sign up.” Try this: “Sign up! It’s important!” Do you see what I mean? Really really adds nothing. In fact, it takes away from the aim—which is “sign up!” Sort of like the word literally mentioned above, unless your reader has some reason to doubt the point you’re making, the word really should be chopped.

Totally ~ I think this one is a holdover from the 80s, Jeff Spiccoli vocabulary from Ridgemont High (or perhaps the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), “That’s totally awesome, Dude!” But, Ridgemont High grads, imagine this in Mr. Hand’s voice: “Let’s consider the meaning of the word totally, shall we? It means … wait for it … in totality. Consider this sentence: ‘I was totally shocked.’ Can you be partially shocked? You’re either shocked or you’re not. So, which it is, Mr. Spiccoli? Hmm?”

Back to my voice: just write, I was shocked. That says all you need to say.

I get that we all go kicking and screaming through the trim phase. But try me on this one. Cut those words out and see for yourself, your writing will be better for it. Nothing screams literary novice quite as loudly as frequent appearances of literally, very, really and totally in your writing.

Finding Your Writing Voice

Years ago, someone complimented a book I’d written for a client. “I loved it,” they said. “It sounded exactly like him.”

I smiled and thanked them. What they didn’t know was that I’d written every word. To this day, I consider that one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received.

Let’s talk about your voice for a moment.

Not the voice you speak with. The voice you write with.

Every writer has one. It’s the rhythm of your sentences. The words you naturally reach for. Your sense of humor. The way you describe people and places. It’s the personality that quietly emerges on the page until readers begin to think, Yep… that’s unmistakably them.

Some writers intentionally create a written voice that’s different from their conversational voice. That’s certainly a legitimate approach. Personally, at least where nonfiction is concerned—and especially memoir or anything rooted in personal experience—I prefer the two to be nearly identical. I want to hear the author speaking to me. I don’t want to feel like they slipped into a different personality the moment they sat down at a keyboard.

That philosophy shaped my work for years as a collaborative and ghostwriter. My goal was never for readers to admire my writing. It was for them to hear my client’s voice. Their tone. Their personality. Their cadence. 

To me, that’s ghost/collaborative writing success.

Over the next several Writers Write articles, we’ll spend some time talking about your writing voice, tone, and style.They’re related, but they’re not the same thing. And one of the quickest ways to strengthen your own voice is to recognize the habits that quietly weaken it.

One of those habits is an overreliance on passive voice.

I’ve noticed that many beginning writers instinctively gravitate toward passive construction. My guess is that it feels more literary. More polished. More “author-like.” Ironically, it usually has the opposite effect. Passive voice tends to place the action at arm’s length, draining a sentence of energy and momentum.

Compare these two sentences:

Jack opened the door.

The door was opened by Jack.

Both are grammatically correct. Both communicate exactly the same information. But only one sounds like someone telling you a story.

Or consider these:

Jill folded the letter and slipped it into the drawer.

The letter was folded by Jill before it was placed in the drawer.

Again, nothing is technically wrong with the second sentence. It simply feels slower. More distant. Less conversational.

That’s an important clue.

Think about how you naturally tell stories over coffee. You don’t say, “The restaurant was entered by us, and dinner was ordered.” You say, “We walked into the restaurant and ordered dinner.” Conversation naturally leans toward active voice because active voice keeps the action moving.

The same is true on the page.

That’s not to say passive voice is bad. Every accomplished writer uses it occasionally and intentionally. Sometimes you want to emphasize the object rather than the person performing the action. Sometimes it simply fits the rhythm of the paragraph. But if passive voice becomes your default, don’t be surprised if readers begin to feel like they’re watching your story through a window instead of standing inside it.As your writing develops, you’ll discover that strong voice isn’t built by following hundreds of little rules. It’s built by making thousands of small choices that sound more like you. Choosing active voice more often than passive is one of the simplest—and most effective—places to begin.

Writing Exercise: A Quick Write Challenge

Several years ago, I participated in a writing class. Among our assignments each week was a ‘Quick Write’ practice, which is to be completed in ten minutes or less, in response to a prompt. One prompt was, ‘Tell the story of running into someone who you didn’t really want to run into.’ Here’s my QW response: 

Fancy Meeting You Here

It was a Monday like every other. I dragged myself out of bed and stumbled past the family at the breakfast table, tanking up for a day at school. Routine. I rounded the table as I passed them, greeting each with a good morning kiss on the top of the head.

Practically sleepwalking, I was into the bathroom, disrobed and in the shower without thinking about it. Like a million times before, I grabbed the shower curtain to pull it closed. A thud at my feet and sudden movement jarred me from any remaining slumber. An eastern rattlesnake had dropped between my feet. The wake-up efficiency was espresso, squared.

If only a video existed. 

I somehow went up and out, taking the shower curtain, rod and a pound or so of wall plaster with me as I exited the tub. I screamed something. I don’t remember what, though my wife recalled that it included “Jesus!” and a string of expletives we should expect to hear repeated by the kids.

The serpent and I engaged in a brief stare down. He won.

Naked! I have to tell you, the first thought that crossed my mind was that I was buck-naked and should this snake bite me, paramedics would arrive, and … Underwear! I reached for the briefs. What a relief! Amazing how the thought of dying in your underwear as opposed to out of them makes a difference. 

Now, what to do?

The serpent was turning circles, rattling his tail, and cussing little snake words no doubt, because he couldn’t scale the sides of the antique tub. Because she bathed our babies in it, my wife kept the tub squeaky clean. It was slick, slick, slick. Never again would I complain about how slippery that old tub could get! That snake had probably worked for an hour to get up into the shower curtain, moments from escape, when my morning ritual foiled his plan. 

All I had at my disposal was a wastebasket and a decorative long handled back scrubbing brush. And my underwear. What more does a man need to protect his family? 

‘It’s you and me, serpent! Let’s dance!’

So there you have it. Hope you enjoyed. Have you ever written a short/quick to a prompt like this before? It’s very good practice. Give it a shot. DON’T CHEAT! 10 MINUTES OR LESS. Here’s a handful of prompts to challenge you:

Quick-Write Challenge

1. Tell the story of finding a note with no name attached.
2. Tell the story of receiving a phone call you weren’t expecting.
3. Tell the story of seeing someone from your past you never expected to see again.
4. Tell the story of making a decision in ten seconds.
5. Tell the story of opening a door and finding something surprising on the other side.