We hear this from every corner of the writersphere.

“Show don’t tell”, or as one literary great succinctly put it…

While Anton Chekhov makes it sound easy with his moonlight and all, the truth is “showing” is not easy.

Because “showing” is the opposite of how we verbalize. We “tell” in conversation.

Think of a child coming up to you, all out of breath, filled with excitement, and telling you about their recent adventures.

And then…and then…and th-en…

Or, perhaps your partner wakes up from a dream and regales you with what they just experienced.

You are told about what happened in great detail, maybe way too much detail but you simply can’t relate to a single word of it.

You can tell they are reliving their experience as they tell you about it, but you are on the sidelines, left out. Bo-ring.

And. it. doesn’t. stop.

Why does “telling” end up in our writing?

It’s not our fault. It’s our natural tendency as social creatures to describe events as opposed to offering them up as an experience the listener can enjoy.

When in the flow of creativity, we don’t sit around pondering how to shift the narrative from describing / “telling” to experiencing / “showing”.

We just want to get the story out before it slips away.

And that’s okay.

But when it comes time to polish, those “tells” gotta go.

So what is “showing”?

“Showing” is the magic that awakens the experiences and emotions of our consciousness. It takes our feeling language beneath our spoken language and gives it words that touch our emotions, and bring the experience of the story to life.

In other words, “showing” is diving into our shadow language and spinning it into our stories to give them depth and resonance that triggers feelings in our readers that are normally difficult to describe.

“Showing” bonds our readers to our characters and their experiences.

That is the art of “showing”.

How to do it?

When we write, we need to be vigilant of how we are expressing our story, and how well we are engaging our potential reader in it.

Let’s go back to the five-year-old or the dream-telling partner. Does your story read like that? If it does, you’re veering into “telling” territory. You might even be chest-deep in it.

But don’t despair. The first (major) step of shifting to “showing” is knowing when you’re “telling”.

And that’s not always obvious to us. Many of us may think we are “showing” when we are actually “telling”.

Here’s an easy way to test:

Search for the usage of the word “was” followed by a verb in the past progressive tense (a verb that ends with -ing), for example, “He was writing a book.”

Search for the word “was” followed by an adjective. Ie. “It was gorgeous.”

That’s “telling”.

You can scan for these “tells” easily by using an online tool like Fictionary or Grammarly to identify them.

You might be surprised to see just how much your story is in “telling” form, even if you thought it wasn’t.

“Telling” is so much a part of our daily conversation that we aren’t fully aware of how much it creeps into our writing.

But by building an awareness of the difference in how we communicate in conversations and text, and crafting a story to avoid “telling”, we enjoy an enormous leap in our craft.

Once we understand that writing a story is a delicate combination of getting our readers situated in the story and then making it feel like it’s happening to them shifts the narrative naturally away from “telling” to “showing”.

With enough awareness of this, “showing” begins to come naturally, even in your first draft.

And it will come naturally once you know “telling” for what it is, so you are aware of it when it’s happening and catch it before it means a ton of edits later.

We all know writing is a skill that we learn, hone, and develop over time, and this one skill is critical to writing the kind of stories readers will love.

To paint a vivid picture in the reader's mind, we need to make them feel as if they're right there in the scene, experiencing it firsthand.

Think about the senses, and write through those. Imagine you are the character as you are writing, what are they experiencing through each of their senses?

Choose the ones that evoke the strongest connection with the narrative, but keep your touch light. No need to over-describe, just take the reader there and trust their imagination will do the rest.

Our job as writers is to evoke emotions, sensations, and imagery in our readers. The stories we tell are the canvas we paint those experiences on.

Let your words create a cinematic experience for your readers, where they can see, hear, touch, taste, and feel every moment.

Don’t just tell them your dream, take them deep into it, and make them feel it. Make them want to go there again.

And again. And again.

That’s the magic of “showing”.

“Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.”

— Ernest Hemingway