Creative Writing: Show, Don't Tell When Writing Fiction
How many times have you read, or heard writers talk, about ‘show, don’t tell’? Have you any idea what they are on about?
I discovered the difference between telling and showing when I was working as a journalist. My copy for the newspaper was fine but my fictional stories sounded flat. Why?
Because, as a journalist, my job was to tell the story, give the facts.
A man’s first visit to Worcester went wrong from start to finish and ended with him being arrested. The day began when JS and his girlfriend were dropped off at the wrong church and got lost on their way to…
Get the gist? That’s telling you what happened and that way is no good for a story.
For fiction you’d need to show JS and his girl being dropped off. Picture it. Their taxi stops, they get out, the churchyard looks deserted…
John held open the door of the taxi for Clare to get out. The breeze rustled her flimsy pink dress. She dipped her head, clutching her hat so that it wouldn’t be blown away. He smiled. He’d never seen her in a hat before.
That’s showing. It shows us John, already out of the vehicle. We see him holding the door open for his girlfriend. We are shown what Clare is wearing. We see the wind rustling the skirt of her dress. We are shown exactly how Clare gets out, by dipping her head so that her hat doesn’t fall off. Shown John’s smile as he takes in her new outfit.
Showing is all about painting pictures with words. Adding detail, like the breeze. Getting inside the character. No-one told us that John cares for Clare. That too has been shown by his actions.
This content was provided by one of our users, Lynne
