Show vs. Tell: Why you need both
“Show, don’t tell.”
It’s probably the first piece of writing advice most of us hear. And it sounds simple enough: don’t state things directly, dramatize them instead. Yet if you follow the rule too literally, your prose will bloat with unnecessary detail. If you ignore it, your writing risks turning flat and lifeless.
The truth is that both showing and telling are essential. The craft lies in knowing when to lean into one, when to use the other, and how to weave them together so readers feel both immersed and guided.
Let’s dig deeper — with the help of some of literature’s greats.
Why “Show, Don’t Tell” Became a Rule
The origin of the advice isn’t about banning telling altogether, but about reminding writers that readers don’t want everything explained. A flat “She was angry” tells us the fact. But showing — Her jaw clenched; the glass rattled in her hand — lets us witness the anger ourselves.
Showing gives readers the illusion of immediacy, as if they are in the room. But telling is still part of every novel, because stories cover more time than anyone can dramatize scene by scene. Without telling, a novel would collapse under its own weight.
Chekhov and the Precision of Image
Anton Chekhov is often credited (perhaps apocryphally) with the line:
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
The spirit of the advice is clear: abstractions (“the moon is shining”) are less powerful than concrete, sensory specifics. By showing how moonlight touches the world, the writer allows readers to experience it for themselves.
But note something else: Chekhov doesn’t suggest pages of description. The glint on broken glass is a single image — efficient, sharp, memorable. Showing does not mean excess. It means precision.
Hemingway and the Power of Omission
If Chekhov urges us to show through image, Ernest Hemingway demonstrates how to show by omission.
In Hills Like White Elephants, a man and woman sit in a train station. They circle a conversation about abortion without ever naming it. The dialogue is oblique, restrained. The tension lies entirely in what is unsaid.
This is showing by restraint — letting silence do the work. Hemingway’s “iceberg theory” suggests that the bulk of meaning lies beneath the surface, invisible but present. If he had simply told us, “They argued about abortion,” the scene would lose its haunting power.
Virginia Woolf: Telling That Resonates
If Hemingway represents radical showing, Virginia Woolf demonstrates how powerful telling can be.
In Mrs. Dalloway, she writes:
“She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged.”
That’s pure telling. No gesture, no external marker. Yet it captures a paradox of consciousness that showing might not achieve.
Woolf’s gift was distillation. She could step directly into a character’s mind and state what they felt without ornament. The rhythm of the sentence, the compression of contradictions, makes the telling resonate as poetry.
The takeaway? Telling isn’t laziness when it crystallizes experience into a phrase no dramatization could equal.
Toni Morrison: Blending for Power
Toni Morrison shows us how telling and showing can combine into myth.
“124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom.”
This opening line of Beloved is telling at its boldest. A house cannot literally be spiteful. But Morrison follows the statement with showing — shattered mirrors, overturned furniture, the constant haunting. The blunt tell sets the stage; the sensory show makes it believable.
Morrison demonstrates that telling can work if it’s charged with resonance, then anchored by lived detail. The interplay creates unforgettable atmosphere.
Gabriel García Márquez: Telling That Feels Like History
In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Márquez opens with a sweeping piece of telling:
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
This line compresses decades, establishes fate, and yet also invites intimacy. It tells us the arc in advance — the firing squad — but keeps us hooked through a sensory anchor: ice, shimmering with wonder.
Márquez’s genius is the alternation. He begins with a declarative sweep, then narrows into image. Telling and showing fold into one another, giving his prose both mythic scale and tactile immediacy.
Why Writers Need Both
Think of showing and telling as two tools in a kit.
Showing: immersion, intimacy, lived experience.
Telling: summary, compression, clarity, commentary.
If you rely only on showing, your story becomes bogged down in minutiae. If you rely only on telling, your prose feels abstract and distant. The most compelling narratives use both, shifting gears depending on the moment.
Practical Applications
1. Show to Heighten Emotion
When you want readers to feel what a character feels, don’t explain it. Render it in physical detail.
Telling: She was terrified.
Showing: Her heartbeat hammered in her ears; she fumbled the key twice before it slid into the lock.
2. Tell to Compress Time
When you need to move the story forward, a sentence of telling can cover months.
The summer passed in a haze of dust and labor.
3. Show and Tell Together
Sparingly, use telling for clarity, then back it with sensory evidence.
He was nervous. His palms left damp prints on the lecture notes.
4. Blend for Rhythm
Sometimes you need the efficiency of telling to set the tone, and the vividness of showing to carry the rhythm. Writers like Morrison and Márquez excel at this alternation.
Exercises to Train the Balance
Expand a Tell Into Show
Take a telling sentence (He was lonely) and rewrite it into a scene. What gestures, silences, or settings convey that loneliness?
Compress a Show Into Tell
Take a vivid scene and summarize it in one sentence. What happens to tone and pacing?
Switch the Gears
Write a passage that alternates: tell, then show, then tell again. Notice how it changes rhythm.
Study the Masters
Take a page from Woolf, Hemingway, or Morrison. Highlight where they tell. Highlight where they show. Ask: Why here? Why now?
Closing Thought
“Show, don’t tell” isn’t a law. It’s a reminder not to rob readers of participation. But storytelling isn’t participation alone. It’s also guidance, compression, rhythm, and voice.
The writers who last — Chekhov, Hemingway, Woolf, Morrison, Márquez — all knew when to dramatize and when to declare. They showed us glints of light on glass. They told us of spiteful houses and inevitable fates. They trusted readers to travel both paths.
The art is not in obeying the rule, but in mastering the balance.
Most advice about pacing is frustratingly simple: keep it fast, keep it moving. But fiction isn’t a car chase. Pacing isn’t about how quickly you get to the end—it’s about how you control time inside the reader’s body.