SHOW, DON’T TELL. If you are someone who writes stories, you are going to get this advice all the time. However, those who offer such advice don’t always care to explain what it really means. Does it mean that we narrate a story as is done in a play or movie-script? Not necessarily. Let’s see what it means then.
When you write a story, presumably in prose, you are supposed to describe it in your own style. However, sometimes it so happens that we get lost in our own descriptions, and we forget that the characters need to speak for themselves. Consider the sentence below.
Riya laughed uncontrollably.
Nothing wrong with it as such. But you can also write ha-ha-ha-ha-ho-ho-ho-ho-oo and let her laugh herself. That way an additional layer of your description goes away and the reader can connect with that character more directly.
An important lesson to consider here is that people like to visualise what they read on a page. They might imagine events you have described and hear characters speak. That is where the hallmark of great writing comes in: a story must show rather than tell. And how do you do this? You do this by writing a scene in such a way that it plays out in the reader’s mind as if they were watching a visual.
In the above example (Riya’s laughter), we allowed the character to laugh for herself. This may not always be possible and we have to work with the descriptions (especially in prose). Consider Riya’s anger this time.
Riya was angry.
The sentence gives us the primary information about Riya’s mood but it is devoid of sensory information, and hence, it does not paint a nice visual in front of our eyes. We can achieve that by altering our description.
Riya bit her lip and slammed the book shut.
The sight of Riya biting her lip and the sound of her slamming the book shut add more depth to the sensory information. These images enable us to actually see her anger and, more importantly, feel it. Interestingly, nowhere in the second sentence does the word ‘anger’ appear. This is something you will find in the writings of all good writers. If a character is happy, they don’t just write she is happy. If a character falls in love, they don’t just write she fell in love. And so on.
Showing means revealing a person’s emotions through their own actions and not only with your words. It means, allowing your reader to see the events in the same way as they are being played out in your head. It means letting your story come alive. That’s why, it matters.
Kalampedia 