Last Updated July 22, 2020.
Originally Posted June 7, 2017.
2020 marks my fourth year as a full-time freelance editor. In that time, I’ve been honored to revise captivating manuscripts; to fact-check strange trivia (how long does it take for a ring to pass through a body, anyway?); and to experience so much more.
As unique as my clients’ work is, there are still common editorial mistakes for which I’ve prescribed practical suggestions for revision time and time again. I originally wrote this five-part series three years ago, when I was still in my first year of full-time self-employment, but I wanted to spend the next five weeks reviving it, bringing it back to the top of my blog.
Why? Because the lessons still ring true.
I’d like to share my Top 5 with you, as a cautionary tale for your own fiction or creative non-fiction. We’ll start with an oldie but a goodie: showing, not telling.
I know, I know. “Show, don’t tell!?” you’re think-shrieking. “I’ve heard this a million times before!”
I’m aware. If you’ve taken a creative writing workshop or even a high school composition course, you’ve likely heard the advice: “Show, don’t tell.”
When we’re writing fiction or creative nonfiction, we want to show instead of tell, which translates to telling our story through a series of interconnected scenes instead of summarizing the events that happen within them.
If a character needs a raise to pay the rent, the writer shouldn’t explicitly state, “Bob needed a raise to pay his rent,” at least not without also providing supporting details. Instead, they may place an important conversation between Bob and Bob’s best friend in a coffee shop, where Bob explains that he’s having his second triple latte of the day after pulling an all-nighter with the quarterly earnings report.
So, yes, “Show, don’t tell.” You know that intuitively. But I’m here to explain part of the “why” behind this age-old adage. (Try saying that three times fast.)
So, why are we editors and writing instructors so fond of this advice?
Well, for one thing, summary runs the risk of assumptions and stereotypes, which your reader may not share with you.
Perfect example: I was once working with a writer whose manuscript explored adoption from the foster system. One chapter's goal was to explain that one particular character was not fit to raise a child, that the protagonist should do it instead.
However, the “unfit mother” character was introduced in a section that read more like rote summary than like a scene. This would have been problematic in and of itself because I as the reader cannot lose myself within a book without being anchored by supporting details like dialogue tags, descriptive scenery, and insight into character motivation.
Not only do supporting details anchor me and orient me within a manuscript, they also give me the support I need to suspend my disbelief that the actions contained within, no matter how fantastical or hard to believe, are, in fact, true.
When the narration gives the reader few details, the reader will grasp greedily at whatever information those few details give her.
That’s what happened here. One of the only concrete details on the page was that the “unfit mother” character was a former victim of child abuse. Remember how I said summary risks assumptions and stereotypes? Well, as a result of my prior knowledge of child abuse victims, I as the reader didn’t feel disdain for this character.
Instead, I felt pity, love, sympathy.
The writer needed to convince me of something counterintuitive and controversial.
They couldn’t rest on their laurels and assume the reader felt the same way as they did about the character. This was a tall order that certainly wouldn’t be accomplished in a summary. To do this, I encouraged them to ground the introduction of the character in a scene full of concrete supporting details.
If I’m meant to see that this character is paranoid, entitled, self-absorbed, I need to be shown that, not told that. Show me her eyes flitting around the landscape, ignoring the other person in the conversation, unable to land on one thing over another. Show me her cagey posture with folded arms, a reluctance to pick up her own child. Let me hear her stories, hear how she complains about never having enough money but then how she brags about faking sick to work three days in a row.
Bottom line: I as the reader can argue with the believability of a character, a plot point, or something else if it’s presented on the grounds of assumption or tautology (i.e., “she’s bad because she’s bad”). But it’s much harder to argue against concrete details and literary facts.
Show, don’t tell. QED.
Key ring on a wooden table.
Action Items:
To fix “show, don’t tell” problems in your own work, read through your manuscript. Identify passages that have little description or dialogue. Be sure to build up description and dialogue that is purposeful and moves the story forward, while cutting the rest out. By doing this, you’re helping the reader suspend their disbelief in the story that you’re telling.