"Show, don't tell" is a phrase writing mentors beat their apprentices over the head with. In case you've never heard it, don't worry, I also first heard it when reading writing advice.

In an earlier draft, I considered TELLING you what "Show, don't tell" means. However, why not go full meta and SHOW it to you instead?

What "Show, don't tell!" Means

Back when I was in high school, I wrote a story named "SPQ". It had a similar premise to Starsnatcher (random dude kidnapped by aliens wants to get back to Earth), but a completely different protagonist. Here's how I opened:

"The protagonist of the SPQ universe is a young man called Sören Bachmann. Sören is 19 years old and lives in Germany. He is a blonde, blue-eyed, muscular, 1.9 m (6.2 ft) tall and 90 kg (200 lbs) heavy man who works in a store and has a keen interest in astronomy and exotic things. Despite not looking like that at first glance, he is fairly childish and not exactly the brightest person ever."

Yes, this was my first paragraph. Not part of my description, not an author note, the first part of the story.

Imagine this was a movie. How would you convey this information to your audience? Would you have a narrator read out the following paragraph to your audience? Maybe you would if it was for small kids. But otherwise, it'd be extremely clunky. How would you convey this information?

Would you tell that he is the protagonist or would you show it by having him be the one the camera follows all the time?

Would you tell them that he is from Germany, or would you give all the streets he walks past German names?

Would you tell them that he works at a store or would you shoot a scene that shows him doing precisely that?

Would you tell them he likes astronomy and exotic things or would you put maps of space and jars full of weird-looking bugs in his bedroom?

Would you tell them how big and heavy he is or would you show how he looks compared to his peers? Do the precise numbers even matter?

The paragraph above doesn't feel like it's part of a story. It's intrusive. Like I said earlier, it's like when a movie pauses itself so that the voice-over narrator can tell you something.

Now that I've shown you what the difference between showing and telling is, I'll tell you.

Telling is giving the reader a conclusive statement.

Showing means providing the reader with evidence that leads to such a conclusion.

Why is the latter seen as better than the former? Well, from what did you learn more? From the two definitions I gave you or from the SPQ example I showed you?

Showing is evocative. If you just tell everything that happens, you have a plot synopsis, not a story. It's one thing if you tell your readers that your main character is a nice person, but if you want them to have that "awww, what a nice person!" feeling, you need a scene where they save a kitten. Without showing, you can't evoke emotions in your readership. Many readers found Starsnatcher dull and emotionless because I kept telling rather than showing what characters felt. For example, in chapter 3.x, I had the narrator narrate how guilty he felt without having him act that way (so, you see, I struggle a lot in this area, too).

Secondly, showing is more trustworthy. How many stories have you read where we're told a character is really smart only for them to behave like an idiot? Or where a villain is supposedly super dangerous, but fails all the time? Or where the main character is supposed to be a nice person, but behaves like a total jerk? Your readers won't believe everything just because it's stated in the narration or in a line of dialogue. Specific demonstrations (like the cat-saving), however, are harder to argue against.

Finally, showing just feels cleverer. Readers, especially older readers, like figuring things out by themselves. That's why jokes or lines of dialogue feel smarter if they rely on subtle implications. "Are you kidding me?" feels more natural than "I can't believe that what you just told me is true!".

However, we have a little problem here: I used the movie analogy, but unfortunately, us Wattpad authors don't have the luxury of being filmmakers (in most cases). Movies can literally show stuff visually. If a character is blonde, they can just cast a blonde actor. Unfortunately, Wattpad doesn't have its casting option anymore, so we need to think of something else.

How To Show

Let's get back to our paragraph:

"The protagonist of the SPQ universe is a young man called Sören Bachmann. Sören is 19 years old and lives in Germany. He is a blonde, blue-eyed, muscular, 1.9 m (6.2 ft) tall and 90 kg (200 lbs) heavy man who works in a store and has a keen interest in astronomy and exotic things. Despite not looking like that at first glance, he is fairly childish and not exactly the brightest person ever."

Later, here's how I rewrote it (I made him Swedish rather than German, by the way):

"[The] protagonist is a 20 year-old man from Sweden called Sören Johansson. He is a blonde, blue-eyed, fairly muscular, 1.9 m (6.2 ft) tall and 90 kg (200 lbs) heavy man wearing jeans, chucks and a "What would Picard Do?" T-shirt. He is sitting on a chair in front of a wooden table with a laptop on it it [sic] (the screen showing astrofriends.net) next to a small house in a rural area. Even though he actually lives in Malmö, his vacation has just begun and he is hence right now visiting his grandparents in a little village. This is shown when we can see his grandmother approaching him and asking "What are you doing right now, Sören".

This is still atrocious, but slightly better. Why? Well, I removed some of the telling. I didn't tell the reader he likes astronomy or that he is childish anymore. Instead, I had him read a website named "astrofriends.net". This sounds like a rather childish website and it sounds like it's about astronomy. I finally wrote a paragraph that feels like part of the story rather than a pre-chapter author note.

However, it's still utterly terrible. First of all, no-one needs to know his precise height and weight. There are less clunky ways to show that he's tall and heavy. Another problem is the repetitive sentence structure (the second and the third sentence both start with "He is..." and have a similar syntax), but that's not our main focus today.

This paragraph just fails to evoke emotions. It's boring. Like, what is the reader supposed to even feel? Sören is on a vacation in a village with his grandparents. Wow.

The point was to show how peaceful and ordinary his life was before the aliens kidnapped him. Without peaceful music and beautiful pictures, it's admittedly hard to make readers feel at peace. However, it can still be done in text.

Let's look at the first few sentences of the popular Wattpad book Fayre:

https://www.wattpad.com/742328084-fayre-chapter-i-the-longing-like-poison

"The sky is clear blue. Fluffy white clouds drift by slowly. The birds are singing nearby. The lake is calm and the water is glittering under the early summer sun. The leaves rustle softly as the grass whispers in the breeze. I look up at the big weeping willow tree looming over me. Its branches sway and the low hanging ones sweep the surface of the lake."

Normally, I'd consider the repetitive sentence structure bad writing, but it creates a certain rhythm, so, I'll let that slide. Let's focus on the sentences themselves.

What's so different here? "The sky is clear blue" is straight-up telling. So is "The birds are singing nearby". What's so different from saying "he lived in a village"? The author uses more sophisticated language than I did, like "looming" or "swaying", but that's not what makes this paragraph work so well.

Words have connotations. When you read a word, it puts a small picture in your head.

Blue sky. Fluffy clouds. Singing birds. Calm lake. Shining water. Rustling leaves. Branches that swim in the water.

Taken together, this sequence of descriptions creates an atmosphere. We can immerse ourselves in the moment. It's like these long panning shots many movies begin with. You know, these shots where the camera moves over all the mountains and forests and skyscrapers or whatever before zooming in on the main character. In written text, showing is basically nothing more than lots of telling. However, it isn't random telling. It's telling that subtly tells the reader your conclusion. When you direct a movie, you don't just record everything your audience should see. You focus your camera on important details.

When To Tell Rather Than Show

The paragraph from Fayre is a lot more fun to read than either of these openings from SPQ. However, it has a huge disadvantage: It barely contains any information. It's information content is basically "I sat at a lake".

Showing takes much more words than telling.

You might have wondered why most traditionally published books are so long and why the Wattys don't accept anything shorter than 50,000 words. A summary is less engaging than a book, but it's also shorter.

If you show rather than tell absolutely everything the reader needs to know, your book is going to be a million rather than 50,000 words long.

For example, how am I supposed to show rather than tell that Sören is blonde and blue-eyed? Should I insert a long description-in-the-mirror scene ("he combed his short, shiny, ash-blonde curls out of the way to look as he looked at the azure-turquoise orbs that stared back at him from the mirror reflection")? That's 29 words wasted when "blonde and blue-eyed" is just four words.

I could write more, but I've made my point.

When To Show, When To Tell

There isn't a simple answer, but there is a rule-of-thumb. The more important something is, the more words you need to throw at it.

Is it fairly unimportant? Just tell the reader in one sentence?

Is it important, but only for one scene and the reader can already forget it in the next chapter? Then, show it in one or more paragraphs. The peaceful village matters a lot for Sören in chapter 1, but not after the aliens kidnapped him.

Is it so important that your reader must remember it for the rest of the book? Then you should probably dedicate a whole scene or chapter to show it.

As with a lot in writing, there are no hard-and-fast rules and you just have to use your gut. What do your chapters look like? Do they feel rushed? Does your protagonist go from their home, to their school, to Starbucks, to their local nightclub and then back home again in a single paragraph? If so, you should probably slow down and savour the moment more, especially if plot-important stuff happens in that paragraph. Does it, on the other hand, feel like nothing is happening for 3,000 pages because you're too busy describing what your characters look like or what their day-to-day life is like? If so, just tell the reader what's going on and save time.

Hope that helps.