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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33281
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33281
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You have to understand what show vs tell means in the context of prose. In a movie, you can show something by pointing the camera at it. In prose, all you have is words and all you can do with words is tell things.

Showing in a prose context therefore means telling us one thing which leads us to see another. So rather than telling us directly that:

> John was nervous.

You tell us things that John is doing that lead us to conclude that John is nervous:

> John chewed his fingernails and looked at the floor.

You are still telling us these things about John. But you are doing it to make us conclude for ourselves that John is nervous. This is an effective technique in many cases because that is how we normally figure our when someone is nervous, so when we see if for ourselves, we believe it.

On the other hand this kind of showing takes more words and sometimes the thing you want to get across is more complex or less obvious from behavior. Thus if the idea you want to get across is:

> John was nervous about his mother's friend's cousin's appendectomy.

It is going to be quite difficult to get that idea across merely by telling us how John is behaving.

So, while you can definitely get some ideas across by telling us about other things, like a character's behavior, in prose you are always telling something and there are times where it is either cumbersome or impractical to get the idea across indirectly.

World building facts are very likely to fall into this category. You may be thinking about weaving the worldbuilding into the narrative, which is often a good idea, but that is not the same thing as show vs tell.

Original score: 2