Hi Reader,

If I had a dollar for every time a writer told me they'd been advised to "show, don't tell," I could retire to a beach with a very tall stack of paperbacks.

It's the most repeated advice in fiction. It's also the most puzzling, because almost nobody tells you how to actually do it.

So let's fix that today.

Here's the thing: "telling" isn't always wrong. Sometimes you need to move quickly, and a simple "Three years passed" does the job better than three pages of scenes. But when it comes to the moments that matter, the emotional beats, the turning points, the scenes you want your reader to feel, that's where showing earns its keep.

Let me give you some before-and-afters so you can see the difference on the page.

Telling: Sarah was nervous about the interview.
​Showing: Sarah checked her reflection for the third time, then wiped her palms on her skirt and reminded herself to breathe.

See what happened there? I never used the word "nervous." I didn't have to. The behavior carries the emotion, and the reader gets to do the satisfying work of figuring it out.

Here's another:

Telling: The old house was creepy and clearly hadn't been lived in for years.
​Showing: Dust sheeted the furniture in ghostly white, and somewhere upstairs a shutter banged against a frame no one had latched in a very long time.

One more, because this is the fun part:

Telling: He was angry at his brother.
​Showing: He set his coffee down very carefully, the way you do when you don't trust yourself to set it down any other way.

When you find yourself naming an emotion flat-out, that's your signal to pause and ask: what would this look like? What would my character do? Then put that on the page instead.

Now, here's my honest caveat: spotting where to "show" in your own manuscript is hard. We're too close to our own pages. We know what we meant, so our brains fill in the emotion even when the words on the page don't. That's exactly what a fresh, experienced set of eyes is built for. If you're staring at a draft that feels flat but you can't pin down why, just reply to this email and we'll talk.

Go find one "telling" sentence in your work in progress this week and transform it. Just one. I promise it'll change how you read the rest, and it's one small step toward telling your best story.

Happy writing!
Sue

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