Siân Smith

Oct 178 min read

Show vs tell in non-fiction and memoir

If you’ve been writing for a while or you’ve studied the writing craft then you’ve probably heard of (and are maybe sick of!) ‘show don’t tell when writing’.

I work best when I have examples to work from, so I’ve included a few examples of what great ‘showing’ looks like in writing. Show vs tell is especially pertinent in fiction, but it’s also vital in memoir and narrative non-fiction.

Oh, and don't worry, you don't have to turn into Dylan Thomas to be great at writing your memoir.

What is the ‘show’ in show vs tell?

In a nutshell, ‘show’ is all about the sensory and emotional detail in narrative. It’s writing that creates a certain feeling in your reader, without naming that feeling, or makes your reader feel like they are standing right next to you, going through the experiences of this narrative with you.

Without realizing it, you are drawing your reader’s attention to a certain passage because of the emphasis you are placing on it. Engaging your reader and making them want to read on always works better than telling your reader to pay attention.

Why does it matter?

When writing ‘shows’ us what the protagonist or narrator is feeling or seeing, it plunges the reader right into their world. Have you ever read something and swear you can smell what the writer is describing (whether pleasant or gross)? Or had to remind yourself that what you’re reading isn’t your experience but the writer’s? This happens when you’re completely engaged with what you’re reading, which goes beyond telling us how the narrator felt (‘this made me feel sad’) to feeling like you’re experiencing that very thing yourself. To put it bluntly, too much telling results in lifeless and bland writing.

Showing helps readers to:

Engage with characters or narrators
Submerge themselves in the world of the book
Relate to certain characteristics of individuals in the book or understand how the narrator feels about those individuals
Build trust with the writer
Feel like they know you better than they know themselves!

I need some examples of ‘show’ in writing

Of course! That’s the only way I learn, too.

Let’s start with an easy one, which is an example I’ve made up so you can see (and hopefully feel) the difference between writing that tells and writing that shows.

As I went past the house, I happily remembered our time there.

Aw, how nice. But pretty dull.

If the memory of this home is crucial to this part of the book (or indeed, the whole book) then such emphasis will come from both the time spent on the passage and the vocabulary used to communicate how the narrator might feel at this point.

Here’s what a ‘show’ version of remembering this house could look like.

Without realizing it, my autopilot from fifteen years ago had kicked in and I found myself on the footpath leading to the first home we’d bought together. I had no idea if the same owners who’d bought it from us lived there now, but in all that time the ugly gnome knocker was still on the front door (every six months or so we’d say we were going to replace it, but we never did). The side gate was too tall for me to peek into the garden, but that suited me, because in my mind the orange and blue plastic swing set was still on the grass, with the wendy house next to it – taking up far too much room for that size garden. There was usually a detritus of various garden toys strewn across the lawn, too: toys always far outnumbered living plants.

You should be able to glean an air of fondness as this person recalls memories of their first home, but without using vocabulary that reads like a cheesy time warp video edit from an ’80s movie. So instead of ‘I fondly remembered my kids playing on a swing set’ it’s ‘in my mind the orange and blue plastic swing set was still on the grass, with the wendy house next to it’. You can perhaps also visualize the size of this garden (the Wendy house takes up nearly the entire garden) and the kind of homeowner they were (not green-fingered!).

My favourite memoirs are those that make you fall in love with landscape and nature. But remember, falling in love is something you do or experience, not something you’re told to feel.

Again, I’ll provide an example I’ve made up, purely to get my point across.

As I turned the corner, I saw the most beautiful sunset. So beautiful I could feel tears prickling my eyes and then wetting my cheeks.

Who doesn’t love a sunset? But I want to know more.

Let’s try adding some emotion without naming the emotion.

As I turned the corner, a pink light filled the horizon. The top half of the sun was just visible, melting into low-lying candy floss clouds. The strange combination of serenity and vividness displaced any concerns I had over the evening drawing in as I stood, unable to move. I was only brought out my trance when I realized the wetness on my cheeks was my own tears.

This type of writing may not be to everyone’s liking, but I’ve tried to focus purely on what the narrator was seeing in that moment and then communicate the feeling that evoked by the actions of the narrator. You could also add further detail here to indicate whether it’s warm or cold. Again, the amount of detail you add will relate to the importance of such descriptions to that part of the book or the book as a whole (i.e. if you want nature to be the star of the show, you need to write about it!).

This last example is to prove that ‘showing’ doesn’t mean using flowery language (perhaps you feel that way about the sunset description!) and you having to change your writing style. It’s from Rachel Cullen’s book Dear Tilly, as she describes a first date:

‘What shall we do later?’ he asks once he’s mopped up the remaining ketchup with his fingers. There is some sauce lingering in the corner of his mouth making me want to retch a little, but I can’t bring myself to offer any assistance.

‘Later?’ I ask, buying for time. ‘As in, later today?’

What can I tell him I am doing later? My mind races to concoct emergency scenarios. A family member has been taken ill. An injured pet. A prior engagement. A friend in need. A sudden onset sickness. Any of these would work, but disappointingly, no words come out in time.

I imagine you can easily sense the following two feelings Rachel experiences in this scene: disgust and panic.

The ‘tell’ version of this scene would have included phrases like ‘He asked if I wanted to meet up later, but the way he ate made me feel sick. I didn’t know what to say to this, so he took my silence as agreement for seeing him.’

Instead, she describes the scene in front of her that grosses her (and the reader!) out: ‘There is some sauce lingering…’. (This is an example of removing the ‘I’ from writing, which is one the exercises below.) She also tells us what is going on inside her head. You could class this as ‘telling’, but this method prevents her from reducing such a moment to simply stating ‘I didn’t know what to say’.

Although I worked with Rachel on this book, she was already a master of how to use show, so this is all her own work.

So can you never tell your reader anything?

Of course you can. In fact, definitely! If an entire book was written only in the style of ‘show’, it would, quite frankly, be a literary drain for you reader. As ever, it’s all about a balance.

Think about emphasis when it comes to show vs tell. If you’re describing a crucial scene or emotion in the book, you should try and dedicate more time to show those details and emotions, as this will engage your reader and make that part more memorable. Telling, however, can be handy when you just need to communicate some background detail but not bog the reader down in the minutiae of it all.

Telling is particularly handy when you need to pick up the pace. In my above example of the beautiful pause to watch an unexpected sunset vista, you may not need to describe the rest of the walk in such detail, if the next important part is (for example) about her missing her train to get home. You would have already communicated the unplanned pause in the description with the sunset, so you can succinctly tell the reader how she ended up missing her train and dedicate more time to the next important part – perhaps the aftermath of the missed train.

There are also times when a succinct ‘I was so angry’ can evoke such moments when the world seems to stand still and all you’re left with is a reduced vocabulary to try and express how you feel in the moment.

Remember:

Show is for emphasis and engagement
Tell is for narrative drive and facts pertinent to the story

Exercises to help you ‘show’ more

Write about an emotion without naming that emotion
Remove the ‘I’ from your writing (instead of ‘I saw the front door’ it ‘There was the front door’ followed by a description)
Read more poetry, especially if you are writing about nature or intense emotions

(Thank you to Patti Miller for these exercises – see recommended reading, below.)

With these exercises, try them out with some ‘free writing’. This is when you write about anything, absolutely anything. Nothing to do with your book or what you’d planned to write that day. Write about the funny interaction you saw on the street, how a song made you feel, describe your weekly food shop (I don’t mean write out your shopping list, I mean the experience of the supermarket). Knowing what you write might not end up being read by anyone else can help remove any inhibitions (hence the phrase ‘free writing’).

What if I struggle with showing more?

Whenever I advise a writer to try and incorporate more showing than telling, it’s the try that I want them to focus on. First of all, just give it a go (the above exercises should help). No doubt it will feel rather uncomfortable at first and you might even feel self-conscious about it. But with more practice, you should find this new method of writing blends with your existing style of writing.

However, if you’ve tried free writing a few times or you tried adding more showing into an existing manuscript and it sticks out like a sore thumb, just take it out. Another crucial writing tip to remember here is to make sure everything in your book is relevant. And that extends to the way you write a scene. If sensory or emotional writing just isn’t flowing for this book, don’t worry about it. Personally, I’d rather someone successfully told me how to feel than failed while showing me how they felt, or I felt bogged down by description after description of everything they can see and feel, or it feels like that scene has been written by someone else.