Advice for Writers: Show don’t Tell

The advice writers are most often given is ‘show don’t tell’. In Facebook writing groups, critique groups, writers’ circles, creative writing workshops, the mantra is ‘show don’t tell’.

What does it even mean? What are you supposed to achieve with that?

It sounds confusing. It sounds like you’re meant to draw pictures for your readers rather than write them a story.

Creating a world of story

I remember when I was a child visiting my grandparents. My grandfather was a reader of crime novels, war stories and spy thrillers. Every week, he would visit the public library and take out another two or three books. 

I watched him reading them. I would try to guess what exciting things must be happening in the story. I always knew when he was in the middle of a dangerous bit because of his physical reactions. His legs twitched and jumped as if he were running away from an enemy soldier or spy. His fingers ran along the edges of the pages almost like he was grabbing for a gun. 

He enjoyed the thrill of those stories. He felt the excitement as if the events were real. He felt it physically.

The writers he enjoyed most were those who drew pictures for him so that he could see, hear, feel, smell and even taste what the characters were experiencing. They didn’t go in for long descriptions of scenery or detailed character sketches. Those writers created a world of story and dumped my grandfather into that world unceremoniously.

Those writers focused on the experience of the characters in the story, how it made them feel, and what they were struggling to achieve, and made it become real.

Writers who ‘show don’t tell’

That’s what writers who ‘show don’t tell’ are trying to achieve. A good writer will get out of their own way and stop dictating facts to their readers. They won’t tell their readers what they are supposed to think. Not directly. A good writer will show their readers the world from the point of view of their characters. Then they let their readers experience the events along with the characters.

It’s like living another person’s life. Even sat in your armchair in front of the fire, just like my grandfather did, you can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. You can be James Bond. You can catch that spy and hunt down the criminal mastermind.

As a reader, you know that. You’ve had that experience yourself, whatever genre you read. As a writer, it’s your job to give that gift to your own readers.

I can help you start doing that exact thing. Access my FREE workbook to help you learn the difference between showing and telling in your writing…

Write a story that will make someone cry

Many writers wish they knew how to write a story that will make someone cry. They want to know how to make their readers feel such strong emotion that they sob while reading about fictional characters. Many such writers get part of the answer on their own: they understand that to make people cry they need to have characters in their stories who feel strong emotions themselves. However, they are often still missing a key part of the characterisation process. That key part is character resilience. 

Once you’ve created this character we admire, give them something to struggle with. Give them an event that’s really hard for them to cope with, because it challenges the thing they care most about. If they care most about their young family, threaten that family. If they care most about getting a promotion that they’ve worked for since forever, introduce a character who’s even better qualified.

OK. You’ve challenged your character and they’ve answered the challenge. What next? Your character now needs to encounter hardship and difficulties on their journey to solving the problem. Things have to be hard. You have to give them something that’s difficult to achieve. You also have to make the obstacles in their way tougher and tougher to overcome. Their emotions need to be stretched tighter and tighter as they start to crack under the pressure.
They might feel a great temptation to give up and let the bad guy get what he wants. They must sink into a pit of despair. And there must be a terrible loss. To make someone cry when they read your story, you must put your character through an event that is too much for anyone to realistically bear. But even that is not enough.

You must go a step beyond this. What will make your reader cry is not so much the fact that something awful has happened. What brings your reader to tears is your character’s reaction to this event. There will be the immediate despair, of course. But then he or she must show their true mettle. They must pick themselves up, look their defeat in the face, and face it anyway. They must be defiant and resilient even though it is surely impossible that they will overcome.

Again, The Hunger Games offers us a great example of defiance and resilience. Katniss loses a friend and ally. She initially despairs but then shows her true courage and is defiant in the face of the enemy.

It is the resilience of the human spirit that makes a reader cry, not the sight of a character crumbling.

Will your character finally overcome the obstacles to their happiness and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?

Maybe. That’s up to you. You’re the writer. In a sad story with a tragic ending, certainly your character won’t. But they’ll go down fighting. The key to making your readers cry when they read your story is always your character’s resilience. 

Do you get upset when people can’t see your story’s value? Especially when they say they’re interested in what you want to share with the world, but their actions don’t live up to this? They don’t read your blog (never mind share it), don’t come to your talks, don’t put their money where their mouths are.

I know, it is frustrating when that happens. It can even leave you feeling rejected, as if your story isn’t worth telling. I feel your pain. But I’m going to tell you where you’ve been going wrong so that you can start to fix it.

All Our Stories Have Value

It’s true – ALL our stories have value, intrinsically. Whether your story is about climbing an impossible mountain (literally or metaphorically), about your years in front of adolescent pupils, or about a boy wizard. Your stories come from within you. As such, they are valuable.

So why don’t others recognise the value of them? Why do you feel like nobody cares? This is the truth of the matter… all of us –including you – only care about the stories of other people when the parts of our brains which control empathy, imagination and emotion have been stimulated. In other words, we only give a flying fiddle about someone else’s story when we can imagine ourselves in that situation and facing the same challenges.

You might be thinking right now: “That isn’t the way I think. I always care about other people’s stories. I’m really interested in other people.”

I’m not denying that you have a normal degree of empathy in your psychology. That empathy has to be triggered, though. Unless you are an extreme empath, you do not engage with others’ experiences entirely by your own devices. That would be a very uncomfortable nature to have. How would you ever get any peace from other people’s pain?

What Those Storytellers Have Done…

Those storytellers who have triggered your empathy have done so in such a skilful way that you probably don’t even realised they did anything. That’s why you think it’s all down to your own empathy. What they have done is tell their story in such a way that they have made your brain experience it as if it is actually happening to YOU, not to them or their character. They’ve got into your head and made you feel as if you are there, with the problems and threats in the story facing YOU.

Your brain does not know the difference between the sights, sounds and smells in real life, and the sights, sounds and smells you are only hearing in a story. That sounds insane, I know, but it’s true. If a neuroscientist looked at scans of your brain in the two scenarios, there would be no marked difference in the bits that lit up.

How Do I Fix My Stories Then?

Our imaginations are linked to our senses. Learn to tell your stories by stimulating your audience’s senses. Once they can imagine it, they can begin to develop empathy. Once they have developed empathy, they will begin to care about what happens in the story. They will be captivated because, you see, they no longer feel that it is someone else’s story. It is now their story as well as your own.

Would you love to learn how to tell stories that captivate? Join The Storytellers’ Academy.

Curious? Want to discover more? Join the FREE group I’ve Got a Story to Tell.

Our own mortality weighs heavily on us humans. If only we could make ourselves immortal. Sound a bit heavy? Only because it’s true.

Picture those alchemists of old, hunched over bubbling potions, strange collections of ingredients lining the walls. See those scientists intent on their microbes in petri dishes and stem cells in… whatever receptacles stem cells are kept in. All of them focused on finding the way to extend life, perhaps forever.

Our human instinct towards survival is not only an instinctive concern with the survival of our species. It is a concern which each of us has with surviving as an individual for as long as possible.

How Long Can We Really Live?

Who knows what life expectancy in good health future generations may look forward to. Some scientists predict that in years to come it will be quite normal to receive your telegram from the Queen on your hundredth birthday. Happy days. And good news for the job security of admin staff at the Palace.

Sooner or later, though, the day must arrive for us all when we shuffle off our mortal coil (to quote the Bard). Go to meet our maker, push up the daisies, snuff it (to quote Monty Python – we all know the sketch!).

So Is That The End?

I’m not talking about an afterlife or reincarnation or being cryogenically preserved. That’s for other people to write about. I’m talking about living on in this world as yourself.

So, are you up for it? Want the secret?…

This is what you do…

Tell stories that captivate, that arouse the imagination and engage the emotions of other human beings.

Stories that captivate can change lives. Change the lives of others, and you can live on.

Would you love to learn how to tell stories that captivate? Join The Storytellers’ Academy.
Curious? Want to discover more? Join the FREE group I’ve Got a Story to Tell.

Think you don’t have the imagination to tell stories?

Yes, you DO!

First of all, let’s clarify what we mean when we talk about that phenomenon called ‘imagination’.

Imagination is the ability we humans have to conjure up pictures, sounds, smells, textures and tastes which are not actually there in front of us. That’s it.

It is a great mystery of life that our brains are biologically able to do this. When you think about it, it is pretty incredible that we can ‘see’ a familiar face without that person being in the room. It is amazing that we can ‘hear’ a song in our heads without it actually playing anywhere. But we ARE able to do it. When you do this, you are using your imagination.

Therefore, you definitely DO have the imagination to tell stories. Please… banish forever that false belief that some people have imagination and others are born without it. That is total codswallop.

I can’t make things up, though…

Firstly… so what?

Just like any other part of your body, the parts of your brain which control your imagination can be trained. You can start with imagining people and things you know well. Focus on recreating in your mind’s eye the colours, shapes and textures. Stretch and squash the shapes until you have them right. Imagine dripping drops of ink onto the picture until you have the right shade. Do the same with the sounds, altering them with a make-believe dial or buttons until the pitch, rhythm and quality is right.

When that becomes easier, move on to conjuring up things you’re less familiar with. This could be the time to add in other sensory details such as smells.

Once you’ve developed your skills in this way, you can turn your mind to creating a mental film of a city you’ve never been to in real life. You can even start creating images of things that don’t exist at all – the elements that make up the alien world in a science fiction story, let’s say.

Want to tell your story and make real connections? Learn the secret…

What’s the big secret? … The story is not about you!

How can your story possibly not be about you? You’re the one who lived through the events, right? Sure you did. However, once you turn what happened into a story, it becomes about your audience – not you.

This is often the hardest thing for a teller of personal stories or memoirs to wrap their head around. It is also the most crucial thing. Let’s unpack it…

When you tell a story, you’re giving away a gift. Think about the times you have chosen a physical gift for someone else: you considered what sort of gift would be right for that person, yes? You took into account their interests and tastes rather than your own.

But have you ever made the mistake of buying a gift for someone based on what you would like to receive? Remember that blank expression that crossed their face when they unwrapped it, before they managed to hide it behind a smile? Right then, you knew that the gift you thought was so lovely was going to vanish into a drawer, never again to see the light of day.

That doesn’t mean the object itself was awful. It just wasn’t a good gift.

Telling your story is the same. You have to take into account your audience’s interests. 

Does that mean my story has no value?

No. No it doesn’t mean that.

Every story has value. That is true whether your story is about raising your children, rowing across the Atlantic, teaching pupils to read, or the journey to becoming a millionaire.

So how do I tell my story so that other people will be interested?

A story that holds other people’s interest is one which allows them to imagine that the story is about them. They need to ‘live’ the story for themselves along with you – either looking over your shoulder or actually being you, especially when the tension of the story reaches its height.

They need to see, hear, feel and smell the experiences. Your job as the storyteller is to park your ego and allow them to do that. Allow them to make the story their own.

In other words, you have to learn to let the story go. Give it away. That might feel scary. It might feel unfair. After all, you’re the one who lived it.