Showing vs. Telling

On my post Relationship Advice?, Anonymous had this to say:

Can I ask you a question, though, from a non-writer? What exactly do you mean by telling instead of showing? How do you distinguish between the two? Since a book is all about the words, how does an author show and not tell?

Excellent question, Anonymous. May I add, what a beautiful name! Has it been passed down through generations of family members? Bwah, ha, ha, ha. Seriously, I will take any friends I can get, even if they need to hide their identities.

Let me give you two lines that could be placed at the same point in a plot.

OPTION A: He was angry.

OPTION B: He kicked the door.

Both very simple sentences; both start with a subject-verb combination. Which would you pick as a reader? Would you rather be told what to think (A) or “see” an action from which you must deduce how the character feels (B)?

The key to good writing is setting the scene so thoroughly that the reader knows exactly what emotion the character feels. If the scene is a teenage boy being told he’s grounded, his kicking the door probably is out of anger. Let’s take the same boy, but put him in a different scene. A woman and her baby are trapped in the neighboring apartment with flames leaping from the roof. The teenager kicks the door. He kicks again, harder, and the door breaks open. His kick is now a heroic action and we can feel the adrenaline rushing through his body, taste the bravery on his breath.

There’s a huge trend in Christian Fiction to remove all speaker attributions. He said and she shouted are a dying breed because of the very same thinking: Are we going to tell the readers who’s talking or are we going to show them? Are we going to tell how the words were said or create conversation that shows the volume and tone of the words?

Anyone else want to chime in? All this was very hard to grasp as a beginning writer and I guarantee you’ll still find points of telling in my books where I need to move the action along or cut out the boring play-by-plays. (He reached out for the receiver, lifted it, brought it to his ear, and said, “Hello” = He answered the phone.)

Maybe it’s better, as a reader, not to understand the difference. Maybe you’ll enjoy more books without yelling at the page or taking a red pen to the print. Maybe you should forget you ever looked at this post.

I wish you…Happy reading!