Show don’t tell - Hints and Tips

Remember the golden rule of Show Don't Tell. The best way to demonstrate this is to show you: Instead of ‘she was a tomboy’, how about; she was the only girl who always had a sticking plaster on her knees.

Or how about when describing emotions; That night, lying in her damp sheets, she listened to her heart. Across the room his face stared out of the photograph that seemed already to be yellowing. She stared into the dark, imaging she could see dust gathering on the frame. He was gone.

Use strong, accessible, specific images to invite your readers into the characters world. Experience what the character experiences: He watched the last red strand of sky fade to dark. “That’s that,” his mother said. Then his heart broke.

Phrases like ‘Henry was overcome with grief’ cannot by themselves tell the tale. You need the characters bodies; arms, eyelids, knees, to fully convey to the readers that the character is a human being who is suffering or savouring or fleeing or fuming. Good fiction is about human interaction, and human interaction takes place in the realm of emotion. Let your characters hearts break, let their laughter ripple, let their shame consume them.