What ”Show, Don’t Tell” Really Means, by Agent Mary Kole

Just a quick note: As of summer 2013, Mary Kole
has stopped agenting. Do not query her. That said,
her writing advice below is still great. Enjoy it!

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It’s the old adage you hear in every writing class, workshop, critique group and probably on some things you’ve had edited, rejected or submitted in your lifetime. “Show, don’t tell,” says the editor or agent or well-meaning crit partner. “You know, this really is an issue of showing versus telling,” says the writing teacher. Well, we all know that showing is good and telling is bad. But do we really know what that means?

Showing v. telling really is an evergreen writing topic that comes up for a lot of people at a lot of times. But that’s the problem. I feel that the common rhetoric is too general. Here’s what it means and, more importantly, why it’s important.

"TELLING" LOOKS LIKE THIS:

Let me give you an illustrative example of showing v. telling. I’m not saying this is the end-all and be-all, or even that well-written, but I’m hoping you’ll see the difference. Here’s telling:

Katie was so hungry she could eat a horse. She bellied up
to the diner counter, her stomach rumbling. If she didn’t eat
now, she’d die. It felt like an empty pit had opened up inside
her. “A burger, please!” she shouted.

Karl, working behind the counter, looked at the newcomer
with disdain. He really hated people who came up and bossed
him around, even if they were supposed to always be right. He
procrastinated as much as possible with restocking the silverware
caddy. Then he wasted some more time wiping down the counter.
Finally, he came over to the girl who he didn’t like very much.
“Would you like fries with that?” he asked, ironically, a fake
smile on his face.

"SHOWING" LOOKS LIKE THIS:

Now let’s try showing on for size:

Katie ran up to the counter and gripped the edge hard. It felt like
a pit had opened up inside her. “A burger, please!” she shouted.

Karl barely registered her from behind the counter. Screw “the
customer is always right,” he thought, glancing at Benny, the
fat manager. He opened the dishwasher and pulled steaming
hot forks out one by one. Then he noticed a coffee stain on the
counter that had to be rubbed twice, three times, four. The new
girl wove in her seat like she was about to pass out. Victory.
Finally, he met her eyes. “Would you like fries with that?”

What about this second example? Did we still get that same information as in the first? Now what about it is different, then? There are a few things. First, we were able to get “hungry” without anybody saying the word. The rush on Katie’s part to get to the counter combined with a little bit of interiority about what she’s feeling and then matched to her shouting out an order. We’re pretty sure she’s hungry or, at the very least, that something urgent is going on.

We get more into Karl’s head here. We get his tension with the manager and his attitude about a common customer service adage right away. He won’t even look at the customer. Instead, he busies himself with painstakingly removing forks “one by one” or the tally of how many times he wipes the counter. These drag out the scene without once using the word “procrastination.” We also get more of Katie’s hunger from his perspective, and how it makes Karl feel. That way, his rehashed “Would you like fries with that?” still comes across ironically, though, this time, it’s because we know what’s been going on in his head much more intimately.

This brings me to why showing v. telling is so crucial, why so many writing teachers and agents and editors and crit partners harp on it: there are many kinds of knowing. One kind of knowing, you get by reading facts in the newspaper. You are a passive recipient of information. Another kind of knowing, the kind you practice every day in your life, is the detective work kind. You have to do some reasoning, some sleuthing, you have to actively pay attention to what’s going on around you — what the world is showing you — in order to figure people out, judge a situation, make your own assumptions and decisions about things.

This is the exact kind of “knowing” that you’re interested in giving your reader. By showing them a scene, showing them what’s going on in a person’s head, giving them information but embedding it below the surface, you’re inviting your reader to put their thinking cap on, to dive into your story and go deeper. The reader had to work in the second example to figure out what’s going on with both Katie and Karl. Guess what? That made them feel like they knew the characters better, it made them more engaged in the story and it gave them a sense of ownership of these people and their scene. Since the reader did some work to figure out what was going on, they now feel included, emotionally invested. Cool, right? And every author should pick creating that experience for their reader over just telling them stuff with every sentence they write.

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