How to Show, Not Tell, With Simple Examples

“Show, don’t tell” is probably one of the most repeated pieces of writing advice around, and also one of the most annoying.

Not because it is wrong, but because it is usually handed out like a magic phrase everyone is meant to instantly understand. A writer shares a passage, someone says, “You need to show, not tell,” and then disappears as if that solved anything. Meanwhile the writer is left wondering what on earth they are actually supposed to do with that.

The truth is, “show, don’t tell” is useful advice when it is explained properly, and deeply unhelpful when it is treated like a rule without context.

At its simplest, telling is when the writing gives the reader information directly. Showing is when the writing lets the reader experience or infer that information through action, behaviour, detail, dialogue, or context. Neither is automatically bad. The problem is not telling itself. The problem is telling in places where the scene would be stronger if the reader were allowed to feel or notice the truth for themselves.

For example, if you write, “Sophie was angry,” that is telling. It gives the reader the information in a straightforward way. There are times when that is perfectly fine. Not every sentence in a book needs to perform emotional theatre. But if the moment is meant to carry weight, that line may feel thin because it does not let the reader experience Sophie’s anger. It only labels it.

A showing version might be, “Sophie shoved the mug into the sink so hard it cracked against the tap.” Now we are not being told she is angry. We are seeing behaviour that lets us feel it. The emotional information lands more strongly because the reader is participating instead of being handed a label.

That is what showing does. It creates involvement.

Another example. Telling would be, “Daniel was nervous before the interview.” Again, clear enough. But if the moment matters, showing often does more. You might write, “Daniel checked his tie for the fourth time, then realised he had been holding his breath.” That gives us nerves through behaviour. We recognise it. We feel it. The line carries more life because it is not just informing us. It is putting us there.

A lot of writers hear this and assume it means telling is always lazy and showing is always better. That is not true at all. If you showed every single thing in full detail, your book would become exhausting. Sometimes telling is the cleaner, smarter choice. “He had always hated funerals” is fine if the sentence is there to move efficiently through a beat that is not central. You do not need a whole page of sensory immersion every time a character walks into a room feeling mildly uncomfortable.

The real skill is knowing when to show and when to tell.

Usually, you want to show the moments that matter most. Big emotional turns. Important conflicts. Relationship dynamics. Key revelations. Places where you want the reader to feel something rather than simply understand it. Telling is more useful for transitions, summary, compression, and information that does not need to be dramatised in full.

Think of it this way. Telling gives information. Showing creates experience.

If the reader only needs the information, telling may be enough. If you want the reader to feel the moment in their chest a bit, showing is usually the better tool.

One of the easiest ways to shift from telling to showing is to stop naming the emotion and start looking for what the emotion does. Fear might make someone go silent, laugh too quickly, hesitate at the door, or keep checking the window. Shame might show up in somebody changing the subject, becoming overly defensive, or suddenly focusing very hard on a tiny practical task. Grief might not always look like crying. It might look like somebody still buying their dead partner’s favourite yoghurt out of habit and only realising at the checkout.

That kind of detail is where showing becomes powerful. Not because it is flowery, but because it is specific.

Specificity is almost always more effective than generality. If you say, “The house was creepy,” the reader gets the idea, but it stays vague. If you say, “Something wet dripped steadily inside the walls, though the ceiling above her looked perfectly dry,” the feeling becomes much sharper. The reader starts participating in the unease. That is the difference.

The same applies to character description. Telling would be, “Mara was beautiful.” But beautiful to whom? In what way? That word is so broad it barely paints anything. Showing might give us the way other people look twice when she enters a room, or the careless confidence with which she pins up her hair using the pencil she was just writing with, as though she has never had to wonder whether she is being watched. Suddenly the impression feels more real because it is coming through observed detail rather than a broad label.

A lot of showing also happens through dialogue. Instead of telling us that two characters are uncomfortable with each other, you can let us hear it in the gaps, the clipped replies, the forced politeness, the way one of them keeps pretending not to understand simple questions. That lets tension build naturally. Readers are very good at picking up tone when you give them enough to work with.

Where writers often go wrong is in thinking showing means adding more description. It does not, not necessarily. Showing is not about quantity. It is about choosing the right detail. One sharp image will usually do more than a whole paragraph of general scene-setting. One revealing action can do more than a long explanation of someone’s personality. The goal is not to smother the reader in sensory information. The goal is to give them something concrete enough to build feeling from.

This is especially important because over-showing is a real thing. If every emotional beat is dramatised to the hilt, the writing can start to feel heavy. Readers get tired. Scenes begin to sag under the weight of too much emphasis. Sometimes a clean, well-placed telling sentence is exactly what the moment needs. The point is not to ban telling from your work. The point is to notice when you are leaning on it because it is easier than writing the scene properly.

A good question to ask yourself is this: am I telling the reader something they could feel more strongly if I let them see it?

If the answer is yes, that may be the place to revise.

For instance, “He was exhausted” might be perfectly fine in passing. But if that exhaustion matters, maybe the stronger version is, “He sat on the edge of the bed to take off his shoes and woke an hour later still half bent over.” That is a simple image, but it lands harder because it lets the reader feel the state instead of receiving the label.

Or take something like, “She missed her mother.” Clear, yes. But a showing version might be, “At the supermarket, she still reached automatically for the brand of tea her mother used to drink, then stood there holding the box longer than made sense.” That is grief made visible through behaviour. It is small, ordinary, and human, which is often exactly why it works.

That is really the heart of showing. It makes things human.

It pulls emotion, tension, atmosphere, and character out of abstract language and puts them into actions, objects, habits, sensory moments, and choices. It gives the reader something to lean on. Something to feel. Something to recognise.

So yes, “show, don’t tell” matters, but not as a rigid command you obey at all times. It is better understood as a question of emphasis. Where do you want the reader to simply know something, and where do you want them to live inside it for a moment?

Once you start thinking in those terms, the advice becomes much less irritating and much more useful.

Because then it is not really about showing off your writing skill. It is about helping the reader feel closer to the story. And that is usually the point.