Show vs. Tell Revisited: When Telling Is the Stronger Choice

If you’ve ever sat in a creative writing workshop, you’ve experienced it: You turn in a piece you’re genuinely proud of, and someone across the table hits you with the dreaded red-ink gospel, “Show, don’t tell!”

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

The Rule That Haunts Us All

It’s the writing advice equivalent of “just be yourself” at a job interview. Technically correct. Practically useless without context. We think it’s made a lot of writers terrified to just say a thing when saying a thing is exactly what the moment needs.

Here’s our truth: Telling is a legitimate, powerful storytelling technique, and we will help you learn when to use it as one of the most underrated skills in the writing craft.

Showing Is for Main Character Energy Moments

We want to be clear first: We absolutely think showing has its place. When your protagonist is falling apart at a funeral, you don’t write, “She was sad.” You slow the camera down. You describe her fingers white-knuckling the pew. She keeps swallowing like she’s trying to push the grief back down her throat.

Showing is for the scenes that matter. It’s for the kiss scene, the betrayal, or the moment your character finally stands up to the person who’s been making their life miserable for three hundred pages. These are the big moments. These are the scenes readers dog-ear and screenshot for BookTok. You earn those moments by doing the work of showing.

But here’s what TME editors noticed: If every single sentence in your novel operates at that intensity, your reader is going to be emotionally exhausted by chapter 4.

When Telling Is Actually the Power Move

Pacing and Transitions

Think about it like binge-watching a show. You don’t need a full cinematic sequence every time a character drives to work. Sometimes the show just cuts to them already at the office. That’s telling. That keeps the story moving.

In writing, “Three weeks passed before she heard from him again” is not lazy. It’s you, the author, respecting your reader’s time and keeping the momentum alive. Sometimes the most direct path through a scene is just telling the reader what happened and moving on.

Imagine you’re on a dating app, and someone’s profile says, “I’m a wanderer of urban landscapes who finds solace in the alchemy of fermented beans.” Sir. Just say you like coffee and long walks. We’re begging you.

That’s what overshowing looks like in fiction. When you’re so committed to never telling that your reader has to decode basic information, you’ve maybe lost the plot, like literally. Sometimes clarity is the kindest, smartest creative writing tip you can follow.

The Real Rule: Know Your Moments

Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the greatest to ever do it, was a master of elegant telling. In her essays on the writing craft, she argued that narration, which is the act of a narrator simply telling, is the fundamental tool of fiction.

You don’t need a full flashback scene to establish that your character grew up poor. A single, well-placed line of telling, like “Money had always been a question in their house, never an answer,” can do more work than two pages of showing ever could.

Here’s the updated, actually useful version of the advice: Show for impact. Tell for pace.

Your storytelling techniques should be flexible. The best writers, like Hemingway with his iceberg theory of leaving things unsaid, Le Guin with her confident narration, and King with his ruthless editing, all understood that the writing craft does not follow one rule forever. There are multiple choices to make.

We’re telling you not to agonize over whether to show or tell, but to be reflective enough to ask yourself if the moment you’re creating needs action or reflective narration.

If it’s the emotional climax of your story, slow down and show every breath. If it’s Tuesday and your character needs to get to work, just tell us. We’ll thank you for it. Writing is a series of choices. Now you have one more tool in the box.

If you’ve polished your manuscript, we’re here to accomplish your editing needs. Send your manuscript to themanuscripteditor.com for a complimentary 800-word sample edit now.