Scribbles: How to Write

SHOW, DON'T TELL (DESCRIPTION)

Sometimes, there are things you just need the readers of your work to know. You can tell them that information, or you could show them. The difference is quite noticeable.

Let's say I have a character called Lucy and a character called Ayesha. Lucy is the POV character, and I want to describe Ayesha, her best friend.

One way to do this, telling:

Example 1: Lucy walked up to the school, feeling miserable. She hated school. Ayesha leant against the wall, waiting for her. She had brown eyes, and was wearing a green headscarf, blue jeans, and a patterned top. The wind made her scarf flutter, so she pinned it back. She looked up as Lucy came nearer.

Now, I bet you yawned reading that. Every piece of information in that paragraph was stated. Lucy hates school. Ayesha has brown eyes. It's a trap that's easy to fall into, but dreary as hell for a reader. Any reader's mind likes to be engaged a little. Let your readers work out for themselves that Lucy hates school, instead of just telling them. Lead them to the conclusions you want them to make, don't just plop the conclusions in front of them.

(and, sidenote: did you get confused about which 'she' I was refering too? Me too. Best way to avoid this is to change paragraphs when you change who 'she' (or 'he', or 'it', or 'they', or-) is referring too. Comment here if you want more on this.)

Of course, in writing, nothing is ever useless. Telling the readers something is a good way to draw it to their attention, and even what is normally an overuse of telling, like in the paragraph above, can be great to create unique character voices. But often it's just hard for the reader to slog through, and they will give up.

Now, let's redo that scene. This time we're trying to show the reader facts, instead of telling them.

Example 2: Lucy kicked at a loose piece of paving stone. School sucked. The only good thing about it was getting to see her friends. A smile flitted across her face as she turned into the school parking lot and a familiar face jumped out at her.

Ayesha leant against the wall, frowning at her phone. Her full lips twisted in annoyance as her loose headscarf tried strained at the pins that held it. She cursed the wind under her breath, nimble fingers smoothing out the olive fabric. Lucy barked a laugh, and Ayesha's head snapped up. She rolled her eyes and fell in step next to Lucy.

The first noticeable thing about this example is that it is a lot longer than Example 1. Showing is a great way of padding out your writing. If you find that you're chapters are too short, or can't seem to write long paragraphs, you may be telling instead of showing.

To start showing, try to blend describing things and movement. Does a character have purple eyes? Write a sentence where their eyes flicker upwards, or roll sardonically, or widen in shock. Then put the word 'purple' in front of the 'eyes' bit. Boom, there you have a sentence that describes how a character looks and advances the story. Much better than the world freezing for a while as a protagonist stands in front of the mirror and remarks on their eye colour.