The Difference Between Showing And Telling In Writing

Gary Smailes | 5 December 2025

What Showing and Telling Really Mean

You hear the rule. Show, don't tell. Useful, but incomplete. You need both. Showing invites readers into a lived moment. Telling orients, compresses, and guides.

Showing puts cause and effect on the page. Action, dialogue, interior thought, and sensory specifics do the work. You skip labels. You let behavior and context carry meaning.

Telling states facts, sums up time, or offers commentary. It names emotion when needed. Done with intent, it keeps momentum and protects clarity.

Quick contrast

• Tell: She was angry.
• Show: The pencil snapped in her fist. Eraser grit salted the desk.

More pairs

• Tell: The bar was loud.
  Show: Bass shuddered the stools. Orders ricocheted off the tin ceiling.
• Tell: He felt nervous.
  Show: His thumb worried a torn cuticle. The laugh came half a note too high.
• Tell: The town loved a parade.
  Show: Lawns filled before sunrise. Folding chairs locked the curb. Kids slapped palms for toffee and missed every time.

Narrative distance shifts with your choice. Showing often narrows distance. You stand behind the eyes, inside the skin.

• Distant: He walked through the market and felt overwhelmed.
• Close: Cilantro and diesel shoved at him. A vendor slapped fish on wet metal. His throat closed.

Telling usually widens distance. You hover above the scene. Voice can pull it closer.

• Flat tell: The market overwhelmed him.
• Voicey tell: The market was a circus, all heat and hawkers, and he had left his patience at home.

Free indirect style blends summary with the character's thoughts. The line reads like their mind talking, not a report.

• He should not have hit send. Of course he did. Brilliant.

Pace lives in these choices. Showing slows time for impact. You track beats, micro-choices, shifts in breath. Telling speeds time for clarity and momentum. You move across hours or days in a line.

• Slow with purpose: She lined the pill bottles on the counter. Labels forward. Child caps clicked. One missing. She checked the drawer. Then the trash. Then the sink. Water ran though no cup sat inside it.
• Quick with purpose: By Friday, the rumor reached every inbox and two resignations hit HR.

Neither mode earns moral points. Scenes drown when every second sits on the page. Summaries bore when they replace drama. Pick the tool that serves the moment.

A few guideposts help.

• Stakes high, emotion fresh, choice on the table. Show.
• Routine, travel, recap, outcomes without heat. Tell.
• In first or close third, avoid telling things the POV cannot know. Show what they observe and let them infer.
• In omniscient, keep commentary tight and voice-driven. Bias belongs to the narrator, not a textbook.

One more set of quick flips to train the eye.

• Tell: The meeting was tense.
  Show: No one touched the pastries. The AC hummed. Chairs did not squeak.
• Tell: She missed him.
  Show: She left the second mug in the rack, upside down, where his would drip.
• Tell: The interview went well.
  Show: He walked out with the pen still in his pocket and noticed only at the elevator.

Watch for filter words. They push readers back from the moment.

• Before: She heard the door slam.
  After: The door slammed.
• Before: He noticed a diesel smell.
  After: Diesel thickened the air.

Use labels when they serve structure. A clean line of telling can set up a scene and save pages.

• Summary set-up: The next week passed in paperwork and hold music. On Tuesday, the call that mattered finally arrived.

You are building a rhythm, not obeying a slogan. The mix should feel like breathing. Long in, short out. Close in, then lift.

Action

• Print one chapter. Mark summaries in yellow and scenes in blue.
• Keep a yellow line if it clarifies stakes.
• Keep a blue line if it advances conflict.
• Cut any section doing neither.
• Where a yellow line hits a turning point, expand into a scene. Where a blue line replays info, compress into a sentence.

Use this pass to tune distance and pace. Readers feel the difference on the first page.

A Practical Framework: When to Show, When to Tell

You need a rule you can use while drafting at speed. Try this simple filter while moving from beat to beat. Stakes, Novelty, Tempo.

• Stakes high. Show. Put the moment on the page. If the wrong choice risks a job, a relationship, or a life, slow down and let readers feel the hinge.
• Novelty fresh. Show. First kiss, first clue, first betrayal. New information deserves a scene.
• Tempo slow. Show. When you want pressure to build, track micro beats.

Flip it when the moment sits low on the meter.

• Stakes low. Tell. Commutes, routine training, a normal school day. One line covers it.
• Novelty gone. Tell. The third practice, the fifth stakeout. Summarize the pattern and move.
• Tempo fast. Tell. You need to jump three days, or sweep past errands, so the next scene lands harder.

Quick examples

• High stakes: The surgeon scrubs in while the clock hits midnight. That gets a scene.
• Low stakes: The team spends two weeks on paperwork. One sentence.
• New info: She learns her brother lied. Show the conversation, the silence after, the choice that follows.
• Repeat info: Another hour at the gym. A line on soreness and progress handled it yesterday.

Scene vs. summary

Scenes carry conflict, choices, and consequences. A goal sits on the table. Opposition pushes back. Someone decides. Something changes.

• Scene clue: If you can point to a choice and its outcome, you are in scene territory.
• Example: She confronts her boss about the missing funds. He laughs. She records him anyway.

Summaries handle transitions, travel, routines, elapsed time, and recaps. They compress, orient, and set up the next live moment.

• Summary clue: If nothing turns, or the only purpose is to move the characters across space or time, use a line.
• Examples:
  • Three trains and two cheap coffees later, they reached Milan.
  • Over the next month, the clinic filled, the budget bled, and volunteers thinned to a stubborn five.
  • She told him what the reader already knows about the break-in. He didn’t blink.

If you feel tempted to replay a scene the reader has already seen, resist. Use a crisp recap from the character’s point of view. Keep it short, and let bias color the line.

POV constraints

Limited and first person pull us into one skull. Respect the boundary. Do not state what the character cannot know. Show observable behavior, then let the POV infer.

• Too far: Across town, his boss planned to fire him.
• In bounds: His boss lined up the stapler with the mouse, then the pen with the pad. The smile looked borrowed.

Cut filter verbs that push readers away. Heard, saw, felt, noticed. Replace with the raw event.

• Filtered: I noticed a shadow in the hall.
• Close: A shadow slid along the hall.

In omniscient, you have range. Use it with purpose. Keep commentary brief and voice-driven.

• Dry: The town was unfriendly to outsiders.
• Voicey: The town liked a stranger the way a dog likes fireworks.

Free indirect style lets you blend summary with thought. The line reads in the character’s cadence without quotation marks.

• Example: He should stay quiet. Sure. Great plan. How long would that last.

Genre and audience tuning

Romance and thrillers thrive on on-page emotion. Readers want heat and breath in the moment. A first touch, a final reveal, a chase through alleys. These belong in scene.

Epic fantasy and historical fiction juggle scale. Use elegant summary to move armies, years, and trade routes. Land in scene for turns, betrayals, and vows. One tight line can carry a winter. The next page brings the duel.

MG and YA favor crisp telling between vivid scenes. Keep transitions lean and clear. Let scenes pop with concrete action and a clean emotional thread. Avoid long commentary that slows a young reader.

Mystery leans on summary for legwork and timelines. Let interviews, discoveries, and reversals play live. Roll phone calls and database grunt work into one charged paragraph.

Literary work often bends the ratio. If voice carries, a paragraph of telling earns its place. It still needs tension in the sentence, not a lecture.

Drafting reality

During a first pass, tell wherever you need to explore. Drop a bracketed note and move. Your future self will thank you.

• Example notes:
  • [Insert scene of argument on the porch, end with her not taking the keys]
  • [Summarize two days of storm prep, focus on the neighbor’s generator]

On revision, convert critical beats to scene. Look for emotional pivots and turning points. If a summary line hints at a shift, expand it. If a scene replays known info, compress it to one charged sentence.

Try this quick triage. Read a chapter aloud. When your voice flattens, you are likely in summary. Ask why the line exists. Orientation, momentum, contrast. Keep it. If not, cut or upgrade.

Action

Build a beat map. Walk through one chapter and mark each beat S, T, or X.

• S for show. Conflict on the page, a choice, a consequence.
• T for tell. Summary or exposition that clarifies stakes or moves time.
• X for cut. No new stakes, no forward motion, no fresh angle.

Then tune the balance.

• Ensure turning points and emotional pivots sit in S.
• Keep T to roughly a quarter of the chapter, unless your genre and voice argue for a different mix.
• Merge stray T lines into one elegant paragraph near scene edges.
• Where a T line carries heat, grow it into a scene.
• Where an S drifts or repeats, compress to T or cut.

You are not chasing a slogan. You are scoring the music of pace and distance. Use scenes to pull readers close when it matters. Use summary to keep the story clear and moving.

How to Convert Telling into Showing

You move from labels to evidence. Readers trust what they witness more than what they are told. Start small, upgrade sentence by sentence.

Swap labels for cues

Name the emotion and you hand readers a result. Show its signals and readers feel it.

• Telling: He was nervous.
  Showing: His thumb worries a hangnail. The laugh lands half a note high.
• Telling: She was angry.
  Showing: The pencil snaps in her fist. Eraser grit salts the desk.
• Telling: He was tired.
  Showing: He blinks at the same line three times. The coffee goes cold.
• Telling: She was jealous.
  Showing: Her smile holds, but she keeps rearranging the knives.
• Telling: He was in love.
  Showing: He remembers her coffee order before his own.

Mini exercise: write one line for fear, joy, shame, pride, relief. No labels. Use one physical cue or one skew in behavior.

Use specific nouns and verbs, plus sensory detail

Vague words fog the view. Specific words pull focus. Cut filters which shove you between character and moment.

• Filtered: I saw a dog run across the street.
  Close: A brindle mutt streaked across the street.
• Vague: The room was messy.
  Close: Socks draped the lamp. A pizza box sighed open on the desk.
• Filtered: She felt cold air from the vent.
  Close: Cold air threaded from the vent, lifting the hair on her arm.
• Vague: He spoke in an angry tone.
  Close: He clipped each word, tight as a stapler.

Pick one sense on purpose. Two at most. You do not need a catalog. Anchor one striking detail. Let verbs carry more of the weight. Trudge beats walk. Rake beats look through.

Quick swap list

• Filter words to watch: saw, heard, felt, noticed, realized, thought, knew, watched, looked, smelled, tasted.
• Try instead: remove the filter and write the event. Heard a siren becomes a siren swelled. Thought she was late becomes late already, the clock flashing 9:12.

Braid subtext into dialogue beats

People say one thing and reveal another. Pair speech with action which nudges meaning.

• Telling: She was annoyed with him.
  Showing: She stacks the plates a touch too hard. “It’s fine.”
• Telling: He didn’t want to answer.
  Showing: His phone lights. He lets it die on the counter. “I’m swamped tonight.”

Layer contradiction. A sweet line with a sour movement. A yes with a no in the eyes.

Try this quick drill. Write three lines where a character says “I’m fine.” Give each a different subtext. One where they want help. One where they hide guilt. One where they are done.

Cause then effect on the page

Instead of naming motive or outcome, let choices trigger outcomes where readers can see them.

• Telling: He regretted lying.
  Showing: He lies. She stops returning his texts. He keeps checking the last thing she wrote, like it might update.
• Telling: She was afraid to drive.
  Showing: She circles the block twice and parks five streets away. The keys sit warm in her palm.
• Telling: He was selfish.
  Showing: He takes the last slice. The kid reaches for air. He pretends not to notice, then turns the TV up.

Chain three beats. Choice, pushback, new choice. You build story pressure without a lecture.

Anchor then glide

Open with one vivid image. Compress routine action to skip the slog. Land on a decision or a reveal.

Flat version

She walked into the interview room. She was nervous. She shook hands with the panel and noticed a coffee stain on the table. She sat down and answered the first question.

Upgraded version

The chair’s vinyl stuck to her legs. Three faces waited. Signals blinked on a power strip under the table. She swallowed, smiled, and did not reach for the water. “Walk us through the Mercer account,” the middle one said. She decided to start with the failure.

See the shape. Start with a precise, sensory anchor. Glide through lighter beats in a sentence or two. Stop on the hinge where choice lives.

Try this with any flat paragraph. Circle one anchor detail which belongs to the character’s view. Compress movement into one clean line. End on a turn.

Mini upgrades you can steal

• The bar was loud.
  Bass shuddered the stools. Orders ricocheted off the tin ceiling.
• The city was hot.
  Asphalt breathed. Bus seats peeled at the backs of knees.
• The office was tense.
  Laughter cut off when the door opened. Pens lined up like soldiers.
• The beach was peaceful.
  A gull floated on a thermal. Foam laced the sand, then retreated.

Build a small bank of upgrades for your settings. Pull from it when drafts drift into vague.

Action

Grab five telling sentences from your pages. Line edits only, no new scenes yet.

For each line

1. Cut filters. Remove words which shove you out of the body.
2. Add one sensory specific tied to place or motion.
3. Tether the moment to a concrete action or a consequence.

Example pass

• Telling: He was nervous about the exam.
• Step 1: Nervous goes.
• Step 2: The pencil squeaks over the bubble sheet.
• Step 3: He skips question twelve, then flips back and fills it anyway.

One more

• Telling: She missed her mother.
• Step 1: Missed goes.
• Step 2: The shampoo in aisle four smells like lilac.
• Step 3: She stands there longer than she should, then drops two bottles in the cart.

You do not need pyrotechnics. You need evidence. Specific, sensory, cause and effect. When you supply proof on the page, readers do the math, which is where engagement lives.

Purposeful Telling That Works

Telling is a tool. Used with purpose, it keeps readers oriented, saves pages, and sharpens focus. You are not writing a transcript of life. You are shaping experience. Do that with a few clean moves.

Elegant time jumps

Skip the uneventful stretch in one charged line, then land in fresh action.

• By Friday, the rumor touched every inbox. Two resignations followed.
• Spring blurred into invoices and late dinners. In June, the letter arrived.
• After three quiet weeks, the bruises faded. His patience did not.

Notice the pressure. Each line moves the clock and plants a consequence. No itinerary. No weather reports. One push, then back to scene.

Quick check: if a day adds no new risk, compress it.

Clean recaps

Characters update each other. Readers already know the facts. Summarize in the narrator’s voice, or in a sentence of dialogue with texture, then move on.

• She told him what we saw at the docks. No mention of the note in her pocket.
• “Short version,” he said. “They took the truck, the cash, and left a glove.”
• We walked her through the plan again, slower this time, until her knuckles lost their shine.

Avoid replaying a scene you already wrote. One line keeps everyone aligned without dragging the pace.

Mini exercise: pick a chapter where someone briefs a new ally. Reduce the recap to two sentences, one with bias, one with a missing piece.

Montage and overview

Patterns matter. A tidy overview shows a trend without a blow‑by‑blow. Choose three to five specifics that point in one direction.

• Three calls went to voicemail. The fourth picked up, then hung up at his name.
• Rent doubled. Overtime dried up. The spreadsheet kept bleeding red.
• Training logs showed five miles, seven, then a flat line the week of the trial.

Each item earns its spot. Together, they tell a story of rise or decay. You set the stage for the next decisive moment.

Backstory and worldbuilding in one line

Context belongs at the point of need, not front-loaded at page one. Drop a single line that re-frames a choice, then return to the present.

• She never drove over bridges, not since the blackout on I‑83, so she took the long way and missed the call.
• The town ran on favors, not laws, which made his badge more decoration than shield.
• Bread went first during shortages, which is why she hid flour in coffee tins and slept better for it.

The line earns its keep because it bends action now. If it does not shift a decision, save it.

Voicey commentary without a lecture

In omniscient or memoir‑leaning narration, a quick, biased observation adds flavor and theme. Keep it brief. Keep it pointed.

• Management loved a dashboard more than a person.
• My father believed apologies were a form of theft.
• The neighborhood forgave noise. It never forgave late rent.

Two beats and out. No sermon. Let the sentence tilt the scene, then return to behavior.

Test yourself: strip three commentary lines from a page. If clarity drops or tone flattens, restore the sharpest one and leave the rest.

Foreshadow without spoilers

Skip “Little did he know.” Load the scene with a concrete tell that will matter later.

• The spare key was missing from the hook.
• The dog refused the back room, nails skittering on the threshold.
• He signed his name twice on the waiver. No one asked why.
• The smoke alarm on the second floor stayed silent when she held a match to it.

Readers log details. When the turn arrives, the payoff feels earned.

A quick rule: hint with objects, habits, or absences. Hold back prophecy.

When to tell on purpose

Ask three questions of any summary line:

• Does it compress dead space?
• Does it highlight a pattern or shift?
• Does it deliver voice in a way a scene would bloat?

If the answer is yes, keep it. If not, you are explaining out of habit. Trade it for scene or cut it.

Action

Write three elegant summary lines: one time jump, one recap, one montage.

• Time jump prompt: move the clock past uneventful days and land on a consequence.
• Recap prompt: let a character report what happened, but weave in bias or omission.
• Montage prompt: pick a pattern, list three specifics that show the trend.

Now open your draft. Find one filler scene where nothing changes. Replace it with your strongest line. Then aim the next scene at the new pressure you set.

Revision Tools to Balance Show and Tell

Revision is where you tune pace and distance. Scenes invite readers in. Summary keeps the train on the tracks. Aim for balance, then bend it to your genre and voice on purpose.

Ratio check

Start with a rough target of 70 percent scene to 30 percent summary for most commercial fiction. Adjust for your lane. Epic scope often leans heavier on summary. Romance often leans harder into on-page emotion.

How to measure without drowning in math:

• Print a chapter. Highlight scenes in blue, summaries in yellow.
• Count paragraphs or lines. Quick totals are fine.
• Mark any chapter that drifts far from your target. Decide if voice or function earns the drift.

Watch for clumps. Three blue scenes in a row with no breath often tire a reader. A long yellow block often saps tension. Alternate heat and air.

Mini test: pick one blue scene and one yellow block from the same chapter. Ask which one clarifies stakes, and which one moves conflict. Keep both if each earns a job. Cut or convert the freeloader.

Line-edit checklist

Use a tight pass to reduce drag and sharpen edges.

• Cut five filter verbs. Swap “I saw the truck roll past” for “The truck rolled past.” Swap “She felt cold” for “Cold seeped through her sleeves.”
• Replace three abstractions with specifics. Change “He carried guilt” to “He avoided her eyes and folded the receipt into a square.”
• Upgrade three verbs. Change “She went across the room” to “She crossed the room.” Change “They were talking” to “They argued.” Change “Birds were singing” to “Birds sang.”
• Trim adverbs that duplicate meaning. “Whispered softly” becomes “whispered.” “Ran quickly” becomes “sprinted.”

Do this pass on two pages at a time. Small bites keep your ear fresh.

Sensory pass

Use 2 to 3 purposeful senses in key scenes. Pick the ones that reveal character or pressure.

• Weak: “I saw the pool. I heard the whistle. I smelled chlorine.”
• Strong: “Chlorine stung the back of her throat. The whistle cut short, then broke into a second blast.”

Align comparisons with the mind on the page. A mechanic notes torque and grit. A pastry chef clocks sugar on the air and the dull shine of overworked dough. Keep images inside their lived knowledge to preserve deep POV.

Skip catalogs. One sharp image beats five bland ones.

Cliché and clarity audit

Stock beats flatten emotion. Swap them for behavior you can film.

• Swap “heart hammered” for “Her hands shook on the keys.”
• Swap “cold sweat” for “Sweat cooled under her collar.”
• Swap “eyes widened” for “His blink stalled, then stopped.”

Now check facts. If your character racks a shotgun twice, readers who know guns will bail. If a lawyer bypasses arraignment for fun, legal readers will mutter. Verify names, steps, and limits. Credibility keeps readers inside the spell.

Try this quick drill: circle three familiar phrases. Replace each with one observable action. No metaphors. No medical terms unless the POV owns them.

Reader feedback

Ask for notes you can use. Give readers a short menu.

• Where did you feel lectured or impatient?
• Where did you feel lost or pulled out?
• Which moments hit hard? Which ones felt thin?

Collect patterns. One note is taste. Three notes on the same page point to a problem. If a reader begs for more scene in a summary, mark it for expansion. If a reader skims a scene, mark it for compression or a sharper turn.

Protect intent. Solve the problem in your own way. A note might say “add backstory here.” The real need might be one line of present-moment motivation.

Build a scene and summary map

Map the book so you can steer revisions with intent.

• List chapters down the left. For each, jot S for scene-heavy or T for summary-heavy. Add quick notes such as “travel,” “reveal,” “decision,” “setup.”
• Flag chapters with long yellow stretches. Plan to compress or break them with an on-page beat.
• Flag chapters with wall-to-wall blue. Plan a clean summary line to pace breath and keep readers oriented.

Set two goals per chapter.

• One goal to enhance showing, immersion. Example: “Turn the argument recap into a three-line exchange with a choice at the end.”
• One goal to refine telling, clarity and pacing. Example: “Compress commute into one charged line that sets mood and plants a worry.”

Work the map in passes. First, fix structure. Next, line-edit. Last, tune rhythm. You will feel the balance shift toward intention.

Quick worksheet you can run today

• Open one chapter. Mark scenes and summaries with two highlighters.
• Cut five filters. Upgrade three verbs. Replace three abstractions.
• Add one sensory specific to each key scene.
• Swap two clichés for fresh action.
• Write one elegant summary line to replace a filler beat. Example: “By Tuesday, no one mentioned the break room incident, though the fridge stayed locked.”
• Log one show goal and one tell goal for the next pass.

Keep your touch light, your choices bold, and your eye on purpose. Showing pulls readers close. Telling keeps them clear. Use both, and you own the pace.

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