Write On!
By Kellie Underhill

Whether you write for business or whether you’ve decided you want to help write the novel we’re collaborating on in the Bread ‘n Molasses Blog, you can improve you’re writing skill.

This month — the grand-daddy of all writing tips!

The number one rule every aspiring writer learns is: Show, Don’t Tell. It’s probably the most important thing to keep in mind and also the most difficult thing for writers-in-training to get their heads around.

What does it all mean? What’s the difference between ‘showing’ and ‘telling’? Consider this:

Jill’s face was fat. This sentence ‘tells’ us Jill’s face is fat. It’s grammatically correct, states a true fact — there is nothing technically wrong with this.

But now, let me try to ‘show’ the difference.

Jill’s eyes sunk in the folds of flesh like two pinheads buried deep in a tunnel of flab. Without ever saying Jill’s face is fat, we know it is. Readers can see it because the sentence ‘shows’ rather than ‘tells’.

Both sentences really say the same thing — that Jill’s face is fat — but the showing sentence is better. Showing is almost always better than telling.

So, why is that? Well, take a minute and think about your favourite children’s story. We all know the story of Cinderella. Would the fairy tale have stood the test of time if it had been written like this?

I doubt if the story had been originally ‘told’ in this way that we would still know it today. That’s why ‘showing’ a story can be better. Without the mental images of the glass slipper, the pumpkin carriage and so on we can’t see what’s going on. Without any sort of dialogue between the characters, we can’t hear what’s going on. And if we can’t see it or hear it in our minds, we won’t care about it.

‘Showing’ forces readers to use their imagination and participate in the story, rather than just absorb information. Through ‘showing’ readers are empowered and able to come up with their own ideas about things.

But it can be easy to fall in the ‘telling’ trap. Even more experienced writers like myself sometimes have a hard time ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’. Look at this example from one of my short stories:

The verbs argued, blurted and loved are vivid and strong, but is it any wonder this story is still in my slush pile of unpublished fiction? Imagine if I had shown this sentence rather than told it. I mean this is exciting stuff! If I showed you, you’d see something like this:

See, that’s what I’m talking about. The story comes alive when it’s shown rather than told. Readers feel like flies on the wall, in the room observing as it happens and able to make up their own minds about what this all means.

If someone is sneaking down a hallway, show them tiptoeing. If a pretty girl walks into a room, show all the men’s heads turning. If Sandra is attracted to John, show her heart skipping a beat every time she sees him. Use specific examples to show your point, rather than just telling the reader what’s happening.

Of course, there are times when ‘telling’ is better than showing. If you show every little detail regardless of relevance, the story soon becomes overblown and unwieldy. Some parts of a story are less important than others.

If it doesn’t matter that the story happens to take place in an old building, then you don’t need to show floorboards creaking, paint chipped walls, cobwebs and dusty furniture. It’s okay to simply state they entered the old building.

Since more words are required to show things in writing, telling the less important details helps to keep the story uncluttered.

Until next month, Write On!

Kellie Underhill is the editor of Bread 'n Molasses. Her writing credits include The Moncton Times-Transcript, The Brunswick Business Journal, The Atlantic Chamber Journal and The Reader magazine. Send comments about this article to editor@breadnmolasses.com.