"Show, don't tell": how to use it without overdoing it
Last updated: September 2026
The problem is almost never that a novelist doesn't know the "show, don't tell" rule. It's that they apply it everywhere, all the time, until a simple scene drowns under three paragraphs of symbolic gestures. Misjudged in either direction, this principle can weigh a novel down just as easily as it can weaken it.
What "showing" actually means
Tell
She was furious.
Show
She set her cup down a little too hard. Coffee spilled onto the saucer. She didn't apologize.
Nothing in the second version names the anger. The reader recognizes it anyway — and more importantly, feels it, because they just inferred it themselves instead of being told. That's the whole difference: living a scene, versus being told about it.
Short answer: showing means replacing a named emotion with a concrete detail (a gesture, a silence, a choice of words) that lets the reader understand the emotion without being told. Telling states it directly. Both have their place; the problem starts when you only ever use one.
Save it for the moments that matter
Showing every micro-emotion in a 300-page novel is exhausting to write and tiring to read. Save the technique for the scenes where you want the reader to stop: a breakup, a revelation, a first confession. Everywhere else — a character crossing a room, three days passing, a decision already made — a direct sentence does the job, and does it faster.
Scene or summary: the real choice behind show/tell
Narratologists distinguish the scene (a moment unfolding in real time, with its gestures and lines) from the summary (a compressed recap). Showing almost always implies a scene; telling almost always belongs to summary. So the real question isn't just "should I show this?" but "does this moment deserve a full scene, or does a one-sentence summary move the story along just as well?"
The opposite trap: showing too much, and badly
The classic flaw isn't telling too much. It's replacing a clear sentence with three paragraphs of physical metaphors: trembling hands, pounding heart, tightening throat, in that order, in every tense scene. If showing takes three times more space than telling without adding any new meaning or emotion, that's not an improvement. It's just longer — and readers feel it.
Dialogue and action show just as much as the body does
"Showing" isn't limited to physical symptoms. A line that dodges the real question, a decision that contradicts what a character just said, a silence exactly where an answer was expected — all of that shows an emotion, often better than a sensory description does. Ernest Hemingway called this the iceberg theory: the reader only sees a tenth of the ice, but senses everything else below the surface, because the author knows it's there. Thoughts count too: well-placed internal focalization ("She had to leave. Now, before Marc came back.") shows urgency without ever naming it.
Show it, don't explain it afterward
The hardest habit to break: showing a scene that already works, then adding "she was scared" right after, just to be safe. That safety net undoes all the work that came before it. If the scene did its job, the reader already got it. Spelling the emotion out again doesn't reassure them — it tells them you didn't trust them to get it.
Happy writing!
Frequently asked questions
Should telling always be avoided?
No. For factual information or transitions ("three days later"), telling directly stays clearer and faster to read than staging everything as a scene.
How do I know if I'm overdoing the "show"?
If a scene stretches over a full page for a simple feeling, or the meaning gets lost in metaphors, that's the signal to cut. Reread the scene after removing half the sensory details: if it still works, keep the shorter version.
Does this apply to character description too?
Yes, and it's often where it matters most. Rather than listing personality traits when a character is introduced, let their actions and choices reveal them over the following scenes.
How do I spot the places where I'm telling instead of showing?
Look for adjectives and adverbs that name an emotion directly (furious, sadly, nervously): those are almost always the first spots worth reworking. Inkbound's style assistant highlights them automatically as you write, so you're not hunting them down one by one during revision.