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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30190
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30190
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I take the "show don't tell" maxim to deal primarily with how my characters feel, or the content of their personality, and to mean **_"write about effects and manifestations, do not just state such things."_**

here is an obvious example: Does it help you, as a reader, if I write "Andy is hilariously funny," but I never have a scene where anybody laughs at anything Andy says?

I can write, "Stevie had a flawlessly photographic memory for baseball statistics; and this helped him place winning bets." This is bland and unbelievable; but it wouldn't be if I have scenes where Stevie is _exercising_ this ability, expounding upon why he places the bets he does, perhaps to a new girlfriend or some other new acquaintance or friend.

I can write, "After she calmed down, Jenny felt regret for her outburst." A scene describing how exactly Jenny's regret manifests itself would be better writing.

Simply stating something about an internal mental state (or personality characteristic), or stating that something exists, rolls off readers, it can have little or no impact.

That is just part of the psychology of us humans reading a story; simple abstract claims do not get internalized nearly as well as what we feel "we saw for ourselves". "Alex truly hated Bill" is not as powerful as Alex doing something that can only be interpreted by the reader as Alex truly hating Bill. Thus if you can write a specific and concrete example of what Alex does _because_ he truly hates Bill, it becomes _redundant_ to also make the claim.

In the end every sentence we write is a claim; but the "claims" about actions or events that took place and dialogue that took place let the reader imagine they are seeing and hearing things. But the claims about feelings (hate, love, boredom, sexual excitement, greed, rage, etc) and abilities or skills (at fighting, puzzle solving, feats of recall or learning or arithmetic, etc) don't trigger imagination. It isn't enough to say "Sherlock possessed extraordinary powers of observation and deduction, and Watson was frequently astonished by them," and leave it at that. A writer needs to _demonstrate_ Sherlock's ability with concrete examples, so the reader can feel as astonished as Watson.

Making claims about feelings, abilities, or personality traits is a shortcut: It is one sentence or word instead of a whole scene. Sherlock's throwaway demonstration of his abilities, when first meeting Watson, take pages to describe; and that may be part of the formula, too: It takes 2 seconds to read a sentence, and five minutes of imagined engagement to follow the demonstration, and I think it just **_takes_** several minutes and a scene for this kind of thing to feel real to the reader.

So although every rule has its exceptions, in general you should kill these claims about feelings / emotions, abilities and personality traits. Write a demonstration of them, instead. Part of the writing craft is figuring out how to incorporate such demonstrations into the narrative so they feel natural and unforced.

Original score: 2