Showing vs.

Telling
Creative Writing
September 18, 2014

The Creative Writing Workbook

The Golden Rule

Show Dont Tell is the primary rule of creative
writing.
It means what it says: show your reader
things, dont tell them about them.
Writing that tells, instead of showing, is not
creative writing its a report. Showing is
what makes writing creative.
Telling forces a reader into a passive position,
where theyre simply receiving information.

Showing
Showing invites readers to engage with
a piece, as they interpret what they see,
infer from it, and project what theyve
concluded forward into the unfolding
action.

Telling vs. Showing

Telling means handing down information
to your reader.
Showing means inviting them to
participate in your story.

Practice 1
Someone is absorbed in an activity on
a laptop in a city coffee shop; chopping
wood in the wilderness but they are
harboring a secret. Someone unrelated
to the secret enters the frame and
engages them, and suddenly the secret
is in danger of spilling out.

Longitude by Dava
Sobel
Once on a Wednesday excursion when I
was a little girl, my father bought me a
beaded wire ball which I loved. At a
touch, I could collapse the toy into a flat
coil between my palms, or pop it open to
make a hollow sphere.

Longitude by Dava
Sobel
Telling would have been the standard
way to start a biography, but Sobel
decided to take the showing approach,
with its everyday diction and feel-good
focus.

Lord of the Flies by William

Golding
The boy with fair hair lowered himself
down the last few feet of rock and began
to pick his way toward the lagoon.
Though he had taken off his school
sweater and trailed it now from one
hand, his grey shirt stuck to him and his
hair was plastered to his forehead.

Lord of the Flies by William

Golding
Were shown a schoolboy, scrambling over
seaside rocks. Were pretty sure we know
whats going on as we read these opening
lines. This is some sort of school trip, and
one boy has wandered off from the rest.
That assumption couldnt be further from
the mark: this boy is scrambling over
seaside rocks because a plane full of
school kids has just crashed on a deserted
island, killing all the adults.

Lord of the Flies by William

Golding
The action of the novel is how the boys
can survive without adults, shelter, or
supplies.
Starting the novel with the plane crash
would force the important action into
the background instead of the
foreground.

My Last Duchess
by Robert Browning
Log on to your computer.
Look up the poem.
Read it.

My Last Duchess
by Robert Browning
The speaker is a Renaissance duke
entertaining a guest. His opening lines are a
courtly invitation to enjoy the work of a
famous artist whom he commissioned. The
Duke sounds almost subservient in his
courteousness to his guest: Willt please
you
As the poem develops, we realize that this
courtliness is a mask. The Duke coolly
explains how his last Duchess managed to
displease him, by failing to remain sufficiently
aloof from all but her noble husband.

My Last Duchess
by Robert Browning
He cites a stroll in the palace orchard,
when she smiled because someone
picked cherry blossoms for her.
With mounting horror, we realize that
this Duchesss human warmth was, for
the Duke, a fatal flaw.
As the poem concludes, we realize that
the Duke is giving a barely veiled
warning to the wealthy parents of his
next bride. In showing us the horrible
truth about what happened to the last

Practice 2
What is your best story about a
Christmas mishap? If Christmas doesnt
interest you, tell me about a plumbing or
roofing emergencyany accident or bad
luck.
Write your story out as a scene using
actions alone to tell your reader what
they need to know. The only way to
encode information in your scene is in
what your characters do and say.

A Martian Sends a Postcard

Home by Craig Raine
Log on to your computer
Look up the poem
Read it

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home by

Craig Raine
(In homes a haunted apparatus sleeps)
What was being described?
Raine makes interesting points about our
relationship with technology by showing up
an everyday object in a new way.
The poem is full of everyday things presented
in a new light: books are birds with many
wings, which sometimes perch on the hand,
causing eyes to melt or the body to shriek
with pain. Mist is when the sky is tired of
flight, rain is when the earth is television.
The author takes a step sideways from the
world to report on its phenomena in a fresh

Practice 3
Write your own extraterrestrial postcard
home. Make the familiar strange, then
see if you can find meaning in the
strangeness.