Why “Show Don’t Tell” Is Sometimes a Crock
As a creative writing teacher, I often encounter students who have been (to put it bluntly) brainwashed into the belief that their writing should always “show don’t tell.” For this reason, they are continually leaping into scenes without providing the reader enough context to understand, and thus feel the full impact, of that scene.
Over the years, I’ve developed a standard way of explaining the limitations and risks of cleaving to the law of “show don’t tell.” Here’s what I tell students:
Imagine you’re embarking on a new short story. Because you’ve learned that stories are most compelling in scene, you begin with a man and woman entering a tall building from opposite directions. Better yet, to keep the reader from getting bored, you start with the man and the woman standing before a bank of elevators.
They’re middle-aged, formally dressed. There’s a nervous little ballet as they enter the elevator, and another one over who’s going to press the buttons. They’re both headed for the penthouse suite on the thirty-ninth floor, which traps them in the same small space, as Hitchcock recommends. Because you’ve taken your Show-Don’t-Tell multivitamin, you’re able to record lots of telling details. The dark patches beneath the woman’s eyes, discernible despite the concealer she’s applied. The sidelong glances the man casts at her every few seconds. How he reaches to loosen his collar. Even the drop of sweat that rills down the woman’s torso and traces her ribs. One senses a tremendous, suppressed tension between these two.
Let’s consider another approach. In this version, you begin by telling the reader about two high schoolers who hang out in adjacent cliques. The dude’s family has money, so the young woman thinks of him as stuck up. She’s in AP classes, so he sees her as an intellectual snob. There’s a lot of sarcastic combat, the kind meant to disguise the spark they both feel.
Along comes prom night. Ah, prom night! Long on boozy banter, short on discretion. Our couple winds up on some dark terrace making out. It’s quite a scandal, because he’s already got a girlfriend, or she does. (It’s your story. You get to decide.)
Off they go to college. But a few summers later, at some backyard party, they meet again. They’ve grown up enough to hate themselves a little less, and the moment comes when they summon the nerve to stare into each other’s eyes and acknowledge the spark.
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They court, marry, build careers. Then they have kids, one after another, a girl and a boy. On their tenth anniversary, they head off to an eco-lodge and suddenly—oops—there’s another baby on the way. For their fifteenth anniversary, they decide they deserve something special. So they go for it: an in-ground pool. Why not? The big kids love to swim; the little one is half dolphin. Cavorting in the pool is about the only thing that tires her out, even if she needs to be reminded to wear her water wings.
At some point, the wife heads out of town for the weekend. Or maybe it’s the husband. Point is, there’s only one parent to handle meals and soccer games and emails from work. And at some point, amid all the hubbub, the gate to the pool gets left open. And the third child—the little girl who needs reminding about her water wings—wanders through that gate, alone.
Now then: Nobody can truly know the depth of this kind of loss. We can say only that this couple is living in a very different story now. They love each other. They’ve built a life of deep meaning and joy, so they put everything they can into staying connected. The wife refuses to blame the husband. The husband struggles not to blame himself. They both get into therapy, then couple’s counseling. They do the work.
But gradually, inexorably, it becomes clear that they can no longer live together under the shadow of this loss. They promise each other that they’ll separate without rancor or blame. But you know how it goes: Hurt people hurt people.
They spend a year keeping the marriage alive through legal combat. But eventually the day comes when they have to finalize the divorce. It’s the second hardest thing they’ve ever faced, to give up on the dream of reconciliation, to sign away all they’ve built. One of them has hired a fancy lawyer, so they have to go to a fancy office to make it official. In the end, they wind up entering the same tall building from opposite directions. They wind up in front of the same bank of elevators. The papers are waiting for them, neatly arrayed on a conference table on the thirty-ninth floor. The only way to get there is by taking the elevator.
You simply can’t tell me that the first ride we took in that elevator is the same as this ride. Because now, every detail we’re shown—the nervous ballet over who presses the buttons, her sleepless eyes, his desperate tugs at the shirt collar, even that lonely drop of sweat—arises from the truth of what they’re living through.
I’m not suggesting this kind of essential context can’t be revealed, skillfully, thrillingly, in the midst of scenes. Or that we should discard the Show-Don’t-Tell mantra. When our characters are in danger, our readers want (and deserve) scenes, not narrative assertions. But be generous in revealing the danger. Tell the reader just enough that they can feel what they’re being shown. When you trap your characters in an elevator, make sure the reader knows what they’re carrying across the threshold.
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