Show, Don't Tell: How to write vivid descriptions, handle backstory, and describe your characters’ emotions (Writers’ Guide Series)

The Gatsby scene quoted above (Fitzgerald’s version) shows us how people react to Gatsby, and shows us effectively. But the writer also tells us that the three Mr. Mumbles leaned forward “eagerly,” that one girl spoke with enthusiasm, that a man nodded “in affirmation.” Granted, stylistic conventions have changed since 1925, but even so, the tellin

I suppose the clearest difference between telling and showing in fiction is, generally, the difference between a purely informational statement and one that attempts to add a human aspect to its repertoire and, in doing so, includes the reader either emotionally or physically.

Even within descriptions that have nothing to do with character emotion, there are ways you can show rather than tell. Rather than telling your readers that your hero’s car is an old broken-down wreck, you can show him twisting two bare wires together to turn on the headlights or driving through a puddle and being sprayed from the holes in the floo

Talking about emotions won’t compel a reader to feel those emotions. “He felt sad” won ‘t make a reader feel sad. Instead, the reader must be made to feel the situations in the story, to experience what the characters experience, and as a result, just as a sequence creates emotion in the characters, it will also do the same in the reader. This is a