There is a piece of writing wisdom that you will most likely hear preached in every writing class you ever take. And well you should because it is a cornerstone of good creative writing. So let’s just get this wisdom out of the way right now. Here it is:
Show, don’t tell.
Here’s the difference. To tell means to relate something in a factual way that is somewhat detached. To show means to render the experience, to physically take the reader inside what’s being written about.
This is telling:
This is telling:
The bank was robbed by two men wearing masks. Both of them carried firearms, and it seemed as if they were willing to shoot if anyone caused trouble for them. Everyone there was absolutely terrified, none more so than the guard who had a gun pressed against him.
This is showing:
And then the tellers stopped what they were doing, and the customers slowly turned, and silence came over the bank. Two men wearing black ski masks and blue business suits were standing to the side of the door. One of them had a pistol pressed against the guard’s neck. The guard’s eyes were closed, and his lips were moving. The other man had a sawed-off shotgun. "Keep your big mouth shut!" the man with the pistol said, though no one had spoken a word.
See the difference?
The latter passage is from Tobias Wolff’s short story “Bullet in the Brain.” The first passage isn’t badly written, but it’s also not all that compelling. We get the facts, but little else. The second passage puts us right there, on the scene. In the scene. We see the bank tellers stop and we see everyone turn and we hear the silence descend. We see what the robbers are wearing and what kind of guns they carry. It’s one thing to be told the robbers mean business; it’s another to hear the threatening words spoken. It’s one thing to be told the guard was terrified; it’s another to see his closed eyes and moving lips. Showing makes your writing more vivid and immediate.
More alive.
And here’s the thing. When you press yourself to show rather than tell, it forces you to pull out and apply that precious OIL—observation, imagination, and language.
So, how do you do this? How do you show? By employing three key tactics, which we will now explore.
The latter passage is from Tobias Wolff’s short story “Bullet in the Brain.” The first passage isn’t badly written, but it’s also not all that compelling. We get the facts, but little else. The second passage puts us right there, on the scene. In the scene. We see the bank tellers stop and we see everyone turn and we hear the silence descend. We see what the robbers are wearing and what kind of guns they carry. It’s one thing to be told the robbers mean business; it’s another to hear the threatening words spoken. It’s one thing to be told the guard was terrified; it’s another to see his closed eyes and moving lips. Showing makes your writing more vivid and immediate.
More alive.
And here’s the thing. When you press yourself to show rather than tell, it forces you to pull out and apply that precious OIL—observation, imagination, and language.
So, how do you do this? How do you show? By employing three key tactics, which we will now explore.
One way to show—to take the reader physically inside the writing—is to get specific with what you’re saying. Specificity takes you from a roughly rendered sketch to a nicely detailed painting. You could, for example, write:
The man was tall.
We get the fact that the man is tall but we don’t have a real sense of his tallness. Now look at these variations:
The man towered over me.
The man was six foot seven.
The man seemed tall as a tree.
All of these do the job better. It’s just a matter of getting more specific with this fellow’s tallness, pushing beyond the mere facts, or even getting more specific with the facts. (Some of you may have noticed that the first example—the man was tall—is the only one that relies totally on a modifier. Remember, modifiers often aren’t the best way to get your point across.)
Sometimes you can show better simply by getting more specific with the names you give to things. For example, you could write:
Sometimes you can show better simply by getting more specific with the names you give to things. For example, you could write:
The car drove away.
But we’ll see it better if you get more specific with that car. Like so:
The Cadillac drove away
The cherry-red sports car drove away.
The rusty wreck of a car drove away.
Here it’s just a matter of choosing a more specific noun and, in the second two cases, adding a good modifier. It’s a matter of finding better words. While we’re at it, you could also get more specific with that verb drove. Like so:
The rusty wreck of a car sputtered away.
Isn’t that miles better than this?
The car drove away.
Specificity also means finding the specific details that best bring the painting to life. Let’s say you describe an apartment like so:
The place was decorated in a style that can only be described as tacky.
It’s a good start, but we really don’t know very much. We can’t see the place. Yes, we know it’s tacky but we don’t know what’s tacky about it. What we need are some specific details.
Now take a look at this apartment, described in Junot Diaz’s short story “Fiesta”:
Now take a look at this apartment, described in Junot Diaz’s short story “Fiesta”:
The place had been furnished in Contemporary Dominican Tacky. The less I saw, the better. I mean, I liked plastic sofa covers but damn, Tio and Tia had taken it to another level. They had a disco ball hanging in the living room and the type of stucco ceilings that looked like stalactite heaven. The sofas all had golden tassels dangling from their edges.
Now we see it. What’s tacky about the place? The plastic sofa covers, the golden tassels, the stucco ceilings that resemble stalactite, and let’s not leave out the disco ball. What kind of tacky is it? Contemporary Dominican!
Look at the specificity in this description of a person from Charles Frazier’s novel Cold Mountain:
Look at the specificity in this description of a person from Charles Frazier’s novel Cold Mountain:
Shortly the walker came around the bend. He went hatless and wore a long grey coat with flapping skirts and carried a lumpish leather knapsack and a walking staff as tall as he was. He strode along, head down, marking his pace with the staff like some mendicant friar from days of yore.
We see exactly what this fellow is wearing and we see exactly how he is walking. The specificity makes us see him, really see him.
Specificity doesn’t just apply to describing people, places, and objects. You can even get specific with describing things that are more abstract, such as emotions. For example, you could write:
Specificity doesn’t just apply to describing people, places, and objects. You can even get specific with describing things that are more abstract, such as emotions. For example, you could write:
I was afraid of death.
Or you could get more specific with that fear, as demonstrated in this passage from Lucy Grealy’s memoir Autobiography of a Face:
No one had any idea, not my parents or teachers or friends, because there was no way I could discuss it. If the word death was even mentioned in my presence, I would collapse. At night I dreamed of being carted off and left alone in a dark, cold room filled with bones, bones that would wake up once I was in there and dance around me.
Not only does specificity help show, but it can make just about anything seem interesting. Look at this hyper-specific description of a cap in John Steinbeck’s travel memoir Travels With Charley:
My cap was one I have worn for many years, a blue serge British naval cap with a short visor and on its peak the royal lion and unicorn, as always fighting for the crown of England. This cap is pretty ratty and salt-crusted, but it was given me by the skipper of a motor torpedo on which I sailed out of Dover during the war—a gentle gentleman and a murderer.
Through sheer specificity, this cap is turned into something that holds our attention.
- Go out and find an object that fascinates you. It can be something small as a pebble or large as a skyscraper. Describe it with great specificity. Convey everything about it.
- Think of favorite possession—a cap, car, quilt, ship in a bottle. Anything will do. Describe it with great specificity. Convey everything about it.
- Take this sentence: Everyone at the soiree looked incredibly elegant. Rewrite this sentence, getting much more specific, and it’s fine if you use more than one sentence.
Another way to show is to use sensory detail, meaning you describe things in such a way that appeals to the senses. We experience the world largely through our five senses—sight, sound, smell, touch, taste. And so it naturally follows that if you appeal to the reader’s senses this will help pull the reader into your writing in a physical way. This is what the novelist E.L. Doctorow means when he says, “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader; not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon."
Our eyes lead the way when experiencing the world so you will spend more time describing what is seen than you will with the other senses. Whenever you are describing something of a physical nature, do your best to let your reader see it. But keep a lookout for appropriate places to include the other senses, as well. Often those other senses will pull the reader even more deeply into the world you are creating.
Let’s look at some passages that do a good job appealing to the senses.
Sight, from Tim O’Brien’s short story “The Things They Carried”:
Our eyes lead the way when experiencing the world so you will spend more time describing what is seen than you will with the other senses. Whenever you are describing something of a physical nature, do your best to let your reader see it. But keep a lookout for appropriate places to include the other senses, as well. Often those other senses will pull the reader even more deeply into the world you are creating.
Let’s look at some passages that do a good job appealing to the senses.
Sight, from Tim O’Brien’s short story “The Things They Carried”:
Lieutenant Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of the foxhole and burned Martha’s letters. Then he burned the two photographs. There was a steady rain falling, which made it difficult, but he used heat tabs and Sterno to build a small fire, screening it with his body, holding the photographs over the tight blue flame with the tips of his fingers.
Sound, from Adam Gopnik’s essay, “Distant Errors”:
The next morning, at six forty-six, I was just awakened by the sound of the gentlest possible knocking on the front door—so butterfly quiet that at first I imagined that it must have been Luke stirring in bed. But then there it was again, quiet but insistent.
Smell, from Annie Proulx’s short story “Brokeback Mountain”:
The room stank of semen and smoke and sweat and whiskey, of old carpet and sour hay, saddle leather, shit and cheap soap.
Touch: from Jack Finney’s time travel novel Time and Again:
The wind was much stiffer now, the temperature sharply lower and still dropping, I thought. It was snowing again but now it was a hard pelletlike snow, nicking into my face with the wind, gritty underfoot.
Note that touch can also apply to the way something feels. For example, the low temperature in the above passage is felt, without being actually touched.
Taste, from Anthony Bourdain’s memoir Kitchen Confidential:
Taste, from Anthony Bourdain’s memoir Kitchen Confidential:
I took it in my hand, tilted the shell back into my mouth as instructed by the now beaming Monsieur Saint-Jour and with one bite and a slurp, wolfed it down. It tasted of seawater... of brine and flesh... and somehow... of the future.
Sensory details aren’t always conveyed in isolation, though. They can blend together, creating a dimensional sensory environment not unlike the “living” playroom in Ray Bradbury’s story “The Veldt.” See how several senses blend together in this passage from Azar Nafisi’s memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran:
It was not just the very loud noise—if one could call it a noise—of the explosion: more than the sound, we felt the explosion, like the fall of a massive weight on the house. The house shook, and the glass trembled in the window frames. After this last explosion, I got up and went upstairs to the terrace. The sky was blue and pink, the mountains capped with snow; at a distance the smoke curled upwards from the fire where the missile had launched.
And look at how various senses blend in this passage from Frances Mayes’s travel memoir Under the Tuscan Sun:
The trunk of his miniscule Fiat is filled with black grapes that have warmed all morning in the sun. I’m stopped by the winy, musty violet scents. He offers me one. The hot sweetness breaks open in my mouth. I have never tasted anything so essential in my life as this grape on this morning. They even smell purple.
You’ll notice that each of these passages is abetted by being specific about the sensory information given.
A great way to engage the senses is to use metaphors and similes. These two literary devices let you compare one thing to another. So, instead of writing:
The kid was skinny.
You can use a metaphor:
The kid was a toothpick.
Or a simile:
The kid was skinny as a toothpick.
Similes make their comparisons using like or as. Metaphors take a little poetic license, skipping the like or as.
The comparison to a toothpick isn’t all that groundbreaking, but it’s better than simply saying: The kid was skinny. The word toothpick gives us a strong visual to go with the kid. Whenever that kid appears, we will see a toothpick. That’s the magic of metaphors and similes.
Metaphors and similes are also a good way to get away from relying on modifiers. Let’s say you want to convey:
The comparison to a toothpick isn’t all that groundbreaking, but it’s better than simply saying: The kid was skinny. The word toothpick gives us a strong visual to go with the kid. Whenever that kid appears, we will see a toothpick. That’s the magic of metaphors and similes.
Metaphors and similes are also a good way to get away from relying on modifiers. Let’s say you want to convey:
The woman was beautiful.
Here you’re relying solely on that modifier beautiful, which is one of the most vague words in the language. You could improve the description by finding a better modifier, like so:
The woman was drop-dead gorgeous.
A little better. But still we don’t have that clear an image of this woman’s beauty. So we can bring in a comparison to paint a better picture.
The woman was a Botticelli painting.
The woman looked like a Botticelli painting.
The woman looked as if she had stepped out of a Botticelli painting.
Even if we don’t exactly know that Botticelli was a painter from the Italian Renaissance, we get the idea that this woman has a classical kind of beauty, perhaps porcelain skin and delicate features. The description is made both more sensory and more specific.
Comparisons can even link a sensory image to an emotion, making the emotion felt all the more strongly. Like so:
Comparisons can even link a sensory image to an emotion, making the emotion felt all the more strongly. Like so:
Her words carved something out of my insides, leaving me mutilated.
It was as if her words carved something out of my insides, leaving me mutilated.
How do you know which to use: metaphor or simile? There is no rule about this. The metaphor feels a bit more poetic and bold because it’s making such a leap. The simile eases you into the comparison a bit more. You should use both in your writing, but perhaps you should be a little more sparing with your metaphors.
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And you should have fun with your metaphors and similes. Be creative, go out on a limb and see what you come up with. You’ll probably know if you have gone too far, as Steve Martin does (intentionally) in this sentence from his short story “Drivel”:
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And you should have fun with your metaphors and similes. Be creative, go out on a limb and see what you come up with. You’ll probably know if you have gone too far, as Steve Martin does (intentionally) in this sentence from his short story “Drivel”:
The snap of the condom going on echoed through the apartment like Lawrence of Arabia’s spear landing on an Arab shield.
- Few things appeal to the senses more than food. Describe a memorable meal you have had capturing the sensory experience of it. Use at least three senses in the description.
- Describe a person moving through a pitch-black cave. Bring that cave to life so a reader would feel like he or she was really there. But...since the cave is pitch-black, you will not be able to rely on the sense of sight. Use some or all of the other senses.
- Come up with a metaphor or simile that describes each of the following: one of your parents, the town or city in which you live, how you felt this past Christmas.
Finally, there are scenes. When you create a “scene,” you move beyond just showing through the power of description. You show by letting readers experience events as if they were unfolding right before them, much like watching a scene in a movie or a play. Scenes let readers see people walk across the page, talk to each other, fight, seduce, cook, coax, whatever you want to show them doing. In short, a scene reveals action.
To make a scene, you simply slow things down and show what’s happening moment by moment.
In this scene from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, the millionaire Jay Gatsby is showing off his wardrobe to his long-lost lover Daisy:
To make a scene, you simply slow things down and show what’s happening moment by moment.
In this scene from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, the millionaire Jay Gatsby is showing off his wardrobe to his long-lost lover Daisy:
Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing gowns and ties, and his shirts piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.
"I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.”
He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them one by one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft, rich heap mounted higher—shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly with a strained sound Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.
"They’re such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. "It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before."
Notice that the descriptions are specific and sensory—you can see those stunning colors and almost feel the richness of the fabrics. But there’s something else here, too. We see the action unfold moment by moment, as if we are right there. That’s what makes it a scene. You’ll also notice that dialogue is included. Dialogue is a key component of most scenes. If there is conversation happening, a scene usually lets us hear the actual words that people say.
In fact, some scenes are composed mostly of dialogue. That’s the case in this scene that shows an awkward conversation between a father and his teenage son in Homer Hickham’s memoir Rocket Boys:
In fact, some scenes are composed mostly of dialogue. That’s the case in this scene that shows an awkward conversation between a father and his teenage son in Homer Hickham’s memoir Rocket Boys:
Dad flicked imaginary lint off my bed and looked up at the ceiling. He cleared his throat. “Sonny,” he said finally, “what do you know about life?”
I didn’t know what he meant. “Not much, I guess."”
“I’m talking about... girls.”
“Oh.”
“You haven’t ever...”
I flushed. “Oh, no, sir.”
Dad focused on one of my model airplanes on my dresser. “I wouldn’t tell anybody else about being in Geneva Eggers’s house. She has sort of a business going there. Some of the bachelor miners—she’s sort of their girlfriend.”
I didn’t understand. “Which one?”
Dad winced. “More than one... a lot of them. The occasional married man too.”
My eyes widened, and I’m sure my mouth dropped open. I understood now.
Here we get a few physical actions mixed in with the dialogue, to let us see what the characters are doing, but mostly we experience the scene by listening to what these people are saying. And we’re able to follow things perfectly well this way.
In real life, a conversation like this might cover twenty minutes or so, but the written version, though real-sounding, is much more condensed than that. That’s the trick with dialogue; you need to get to the point quickly, rendering conversation that feels natural while moving along at a good pace, revealing a lot of information in a short amount of space.
You also want to make it clear who is speaking when. The simplest way to do this is with tags—he said, she replied, etc. Don’t get too fancy with these, though. It’s fine if you nothing else but said as a tag. It becomes invisible, just a marker to indicate who is speaking. Instead of tags, you can also link a physical action to the dialogue to indicate who is speaking, a technique that’s used in the above example. And it’s even okay if some lines of dialogue just stand on their own. But right now don’t get too bogged down with these technical matters. Just know that dialogue is often a good way to bring your scenes to life.
But you don’t have to have dialogue to make a scene. People aren’t always talking. That’s true in this passage from Ian Frazier’s long feature article “Hog Wild,” in which the author spots a wild hog:
In real life, a conversation like this might cover twenty minutes or so, but the written version, though real-sounding, is much more condensed than that. That’s the trick with dialogue; you need to get to the point quickly, rendering conversation that feels natural while moving along at a good pace, revealing a lot of information in a short amount of space.
You also want to make it clear who is speaking when. The simplest way to do this is with tags—he said, she replied, etc. Don’t get too fancy with these, though. It’s fine if you nothing else but said as a tag. It becomes invisible, just a marker to indicate who is speaking. Instead of tags, you can also link a physical action to the dialogue to indicate who is speaking, a technique that’s used in the above example. And it’s even okay if some lines of dialogue just stand on their own. But right now don’t get too bogged down with these technical matters. Just know that dialogue is often a good way to bring your scenes to life.
But you don’t have to have dialogue to make a scene. People aren’t always talking. That’s true in this passage from Ian Frazier’s long feature article “Hog Wild,” in which the author spots a wild hog:
After we’d gone about a hundred steps beyond the spot where the deer had emerged, Robbie turned back to look again. Immediately, he went to one knee, and gestured to me to get down. I crouched, and saw what he’d seen. A hog, in dark silhouette, came out of the pines exactly where the deer had been. The spring green of the long grass behind him made his swamp-mud-black color stand out. Robbie brought the gun to his shoulder. A second ahead of him, the hog reversed ends balletically, his feet seeming not to touch the ground, and disappeared back into the pines.
Even though no words are spoken, we are still following the action moment by moment. We feel as if we are there. And that’s the key to writing a scene. Pretend you are right there and show us what’s going on, moment by moment.
There are times, however, when a scene is not called for. Times when, in fact, it may be more appropriate to actually tell something rather than show it.
For example, sometimes it’s better to summarize a situation, to give a general overview, rather than breaking the situation down into a scene. You’ll use this when you want to get from A to B in a quick and expedient manner, saving your scenes for the juicy parts. That’s what’s happening in this passage from James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues”:
For example, sometimes it’s better to summarize a situation, to give a general overview, rather than breaking the situation down into a scene. You’ll use this when you want to get from A to B in a quick and expedient manner, saving your scenes for the juicy parts. That’s what’s happening in this passage from James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues”:
At first, Isabel would write me, saying how nice it was that Sonny was so serious about his music and how, as soon as he came in from school, or wherever he had been when he was supposed to be at school, he went straight to that piano and stayed there until suppertime. And, after supper, he went back to that piano and stayed there until everybody went to bed. He was at the piano all day Saturday and all day Sunday. Then he brought a record player and started playing records. He’d play one record over and over again, all day long sometimes, and he’d improvised along with it on the piano.
And sometimes your main purpose is simply to relay information, in which case telling is fine. That’s what’s happening in this passage from John Berendt’s nonfiction book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil:
I suspected that in Savannah I had stumbled on a rare vestige of the Old South. It seemed to me that Savannah was in some respects as remote as Pitcairn Island, that tiny rock in the middle of the Pacific where the descendants of the mutineers of the H.M.S. Bounty had lived in inbred isolation since the eighteenth century. For about the same length of time, seven generations of Savannahians had been marooned in their hushed and secluded bower of a city on the Georgia coast.
On those occasions when you choose to tell rather than show, just try to do your telling with as much clarity and eloquence as possible. And even when you’re telling, you can still employ a degree of specificity and perhaps even sensory detail.
Also, don’t break into a cold sweat over whether you should be telling or showing. Often it’s a fine line between them and, besides, you shouldn’t break into a cold sweat over any of this. Not yet. This is supposed to be fun, remember? But whenever you’re going over a section of your writing you can always ask yourself: Should this be more specific? More sensory? More of a scene?
Also, don’t break into a cold sweat over whether you should be telling or showing. Often it’s a fine line between them and, besides, you shouldn’t break into a cold sweat over any of this. Not yet. This is supposed to be fun, remember? But whenever you’re going over a section of your writing you can always ask yourself: Should this be more specific? More sensory? More of a scene?
- Write a scene that shows an encounter you actually had today. Preferably there will be dialogue involved. If it’s still early in the day, feel free to use yesterday.
- Write a scene that illustrates this: Max and Janine made a terrible couple. Don’t ever tell us that they are a terrible couple, or anything like that. Show it through what they say and do.
- Write a scene about a person doing some household task—sharpening a pencil, cleaning the bathroom, mowing the lawn, etc. Don’t use any dialogue, but make it a scene. If you want to make it interesting, throw an obstacle or two in that person’s way.
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