Show Don't Tell: What It Actually Means (With Examples)

March 2026 · Red Ink Report

"Show, don't tell" is the writing advice everyone has heard, most people misunderstand, and almost no one explains properly. It gets reduced to a blanket rule — showing good, telling bad — which leads writers to dramatise every minor moment in exhausting detail and never summarise anything.

The real principle is more nuanced, more useful, and much easier to apply once you understand what it actually means.

What "Telling" Is

Telling is when the narrator states a conclusion directly. It gives the reader the answer instead of the evidence.

Sarah was furious.

That's telling. The narrator has labelled Sarah's emotion for us. We're informed she's furious, but we don't experience her fury. It's a secondhand report of a feeling.

Detective Harris was a brilliant investigator.

Also telling. We're told he's brilliant, but we've seen nothing that demonstrates it. We're being asked to take the narrator's word for it.

What "Showing" Is

Showing provides evidence and lets the reader draw their own conclusion. The reader infers the emotion, the character trait, the relationship dynamic from what they observe.

Sarah slammed the folder on the desk. The papers scattered. She didn't pick them up.

We're never told Sarah is furious. We don't need to be — we can see it. The physical action conveys the emotion, and the reader's inference is more powerful than any label.

Harris glanced at the crime scene photos, then looked again. "The bruising pattern on the wrists — those marks weren't made by rope. That's a zip tie, cut off post-mortem. Someone staged this to look like a different kind of crime."

We're not told Harris is brilliant. We're shown him seeing what others missed. The reader concludes he's a good detective based on evidence, and that conclusion sticks far more firmly than being told.

The Before-and-After Test

Here are common telling patterns and their showing alternatives:

Emotion Labels

Telling: "He was nervous about the interview."

Showing: "He checked his tie in the car mirror, adjusted it, then adjusted it back. His mouth was dry. He should have brought water."

Character Traits

Telling: "Maria was generous to a fault."

Showing: "Maria pressed the twenty into the busker's case before Tom could stop her. That was the last of their lunch money."

Relationship Dynamics

Telling: "The brothers had a complicated relationship."

Showing: "James stood when Michael entered, then sat down again immediately, as though he'd caught himself doing something he'd decided not to do."

Atmosphere

Telling: "The house felt creepy."

Showing: "The hallway smelled of damp carpet and something sweeter underneath. A clock ticked somewhere upstairs, too loud for the empty rooms."

When Telling Is Better

Here's the part most writing advice omits: sometimes telling is exactly right. Showing everything creates bloated, exhausting prose. The reader doesn't need a dramatic scene for every piece of information.

Transitions and Summary

"The next three weeks passed without incident." That's telling, and it's exactly correct. You don't need to show three uneventful weeks. Summarise and move on.

Low-Stakes Information

"She drove to the office" doesn't need to be shown unless the drive matters. If nothing happens on the journey, tell it in a sentence and get to the scene that does matter.

Pacing Control

Showing slows the pace. Telling accelerates it. Skilled writers alternate between the two to control the reader's experience of time. A chapter that's all showing will feel exhaustingly slow. A chapter that's all telling will feel like a report. The art is in the mix.

When the Reader Already Knows

If you've already shown that a character is anxious through three scenes of nervous behaviour, you've earned the right to simply say "She was anxious again" in subsequent scenes. The reader has the evidence; the shorthand now works.

The Rule of Emotional Weight

The most practical guideline is this: show moments that carry emotional weight. Tell moments that carry information.

If a scene is important — a confrontation, a revelation, a turning point — show it. Let the reader experience it in real time through action, dialogue, and sensory detail. If a scene is logistical — getting from one place to another, establishing a time jump, conveying background information — tell it efficiently and move on.

The mistake isn't telling. The mistake is telling at the moments that matter most, and showing at the moments that don't.

Finding Telling in Your Own Work

Search your manuscript for these common "telling" flags:

• Emotion words used as labels: angry, sad, happy, nervous, frightened, excited, relieved. Each one is an opportunity to show instead.
• "She felt" / "He realised" / "She noticed": These filtering phrases insert the character between the reader and the experience. "She noticed the door was open" is weaker than "The door was open." Cut the filter.
• Adverbs in dialogue tags: "he said angrily" is telling. The dialogue itself should convey the anger. If it doesn't, rewrite the dialogue, not the tag.
• Explanatory narration after action: "She slammed the door. She was furious." The first sentence shows; the second tells. Cut the second — the reader already got it.

A thorough self-edit should include a pass specifically looking for these patterns. And if you want an outside eye to flag showing-vs-telling issues across your manuscript, a developmental report can identify where the balance tips too far in either direction.