Show BUT Tell: Retrospective On A Rule That Leads AND Misleads Writers

“Show, don’t tell. It’s the golden rule of writing!”

I was in grade school the first time I ever heard this phrase and never stopped hearing it after to this day. It’s a staple phrase and rule every writer encounters in any class, critique group or workshop along their journey. As the phrase implies, “show, don’t tell” is a writing technique that directs the writer to reveal information through character action, dialogue and sensory details rather than through narrative or stating the character’s emotions. The phrase is all fine and good for short-hand discussions about writing techniques, but maybe it's time to reevaluate the ‘golden rule’ as a 'golden guideline'.

This is not the moment I rise myself up on my imaginary internet soap box to proclaim to you that the golden rule is wrong. Internet clout’s the bored man’s (and woman’s) game that doesn’t interest me. No, this is the moment where I state my adherence to “show, don’t tell” as a guideline rather than a rule—because I’ve seen what happens to writers who don’t. I’ve seen my fair share of critique groups from my college years to the one I avidly attend now. Every now and then, I encountered group members who trapped themselves in the exhausting practice of “show, don’t tell” at all costs. This resulted in pieces pages and pages full of oversized paragraphs over-saturated with descriptive narrative and long-winded dialogue that overcompensated to state nothing outside of these “safe zones”. Understandably, such overburdened writers would appear frustrated when the group’s feedback pointed out excesses of purple-writing and a plot drowned to vagueness because of it.

“But it's SO OBVIOUS. You're not a writer if you can't make sense of THAT!”

Oh, the snobbery of the self-proclaimed enlightened. Everyone's experienced this kind of reaction when first learning to write. I didn’t bring this up for pity. I brought this up to pose the question that both interested and inspired me to write this blog post. Where does the confusion regarding this golden rule come from? Why is an intentionally shortened and simplified phrase still capable of misleading?

The most obvious answer to those questions is simple confusion, though in my experience, I noticed other sources of confusion from certain circles and they teach the rule. Confusion, to start, can come from a range of circumstances. From inexperience of first starting out as a writer to simply being surrounded by peers who aren’t providing sufficient feedback to comprehend how to incorporate “show, don’t tell” into your writing in a way that doesn’t stifle your narrative voice. For example, the worst critique group I ever had was during my fresh out of college years. My group members would point out my telling, but hardly pointed out whenever I was showing the correct or preferred way. Fast forward to today, the best critique group I’ve ever had will not only tell me where my showing is working, but they’ll also tell me where it isn’t. It’s an additional plus that the writers that complete this group are a handful of people who believe in the balance of showing and telling. Something rare for those ‘circles’ I mentioned previously.

These circles I'm referring to are the ones within the universities. The exclusive, academic lead creative writing departments that pride themselves on educating award-winning authors in the literary world. They do, don’t get me wrong—but only if they favor literary fiction. There’s a strong, dismissive bias that exists in the universities for genre fiction, particularly regarding how genre fiction allows a little more telling in its showing than literary fiction writers are comfortable with. Among my genre fiction peers, I heard a very different phrase that went hand in hand with the golden rule.

"Writers lean the rules so they can break the rules.”

Therefore, writers learn the golden rule so they can break the golden rule. Another source of the spiraling confusion, I suspect, that comes with the rule-breaking. I understand the rule so I want to break it in my writing…but how best to do that? The answer I’ve come to is to accept influence from other writers. Accepting influence is something every writer does when in pursuit of refining their craft. We do this when we receive feedback from our critique groups, when we attend author panels for advice and craft talk, even when we analyze the books we’re reading. We do it when we remind ourselves to “show, don’t tell” in our writing. Accept the right influence for your writing, be bold in your rule-breaking, surround yourself with other writers who are interested in seeing your projects be the best possible versions they can be and when your attempts don’t work out—try, try, again.

---

Until next time, from the Writing Nook!