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You can't read a book on writing,
or scan the pages of a writing group without coming across minds agonizing over the number One unwritten 'rule,' amongst many superfluous writing 'rules.'
'Show don't tell.'
A simple three three-word statement,
it would seem...
but one that is complex in nature and which can confuse most writers.
It is also a principle,
which if adopted into your writing, will demand a high degree of self-training to master its intricacies.
You might well need to make many changes in how you see writing and in how you practice it.
However, the effort is well worth it!
With the struggle to master it a depth, it will bring
a human clarity,
a much more economical and yet profound quality to everything you scribe onto your screen or paper.
'Showing, not telling,' is often illustrated by this wonderful Anton Chekhov quotation...
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass."
This beautiful sentence, in such a lyrical fashion, is in basic terms saying...
showing illustrates, while telling merely states.
Here’s a quick example:
Telling -
Michael was terribly afraid of the dark.
Showing -
As his mother switched off the light and left the room,
Michael tensed.
He huddled under the covers, gripped the sheets, and held his breath as the wind brushed past the curtain.
As a writer of Crime Thrillers,
at the start of my career I had more a sense of what I disliked in the genre, than what I actually liked!
My main pet hates were cozy murder TV series and complex Police films heavy on procedures, where they felt the need at the very end for the detective to sit everyone down to tell them how they had solved the case.
Why?
It always struck me that it was because the writers and directors felt that they'd most probably lost their viewers and had left them behind through obtuse or overly complex storytelling...
using Twenty words when half a dozen would have been much more eloquent and effective.
With this realization, 'show, don't tell,'
made natural sense to me.
But how to do it?
With great luck I came across this great story.
It was the true tale of a 22-year-old aspiring writer named Arnold Samuelson.
He had traveled to Florida on a wing and a prayer, in the hope of getting some writing advice from no less than Ernest Hemingway, a writer who he idolized.
Hemingway was at home when he knocked on the door and he begged him for just a few minutes of conversation. Hemingway obliged in giving Samuelson much more than that!
He informed him that he was leaving Florida soon to go on a fishing trip...
and offered Samuelson the opportunity to join the crew of his boat.
During gaps between the daily chores and routines, he would have time to critique Samuelson’s work and to mentor him.
Samuelson naturally jumped at the opportunity.
It was later in an article,
that Hemingway shared some of the writing advice that he gave to Samuelson during the deep sea fishing trip.
The most valuable of these was a writing exercise that would help Samuelson sharpen his observational skills so he could vividly describe his experiences on paper.
This was to become known as Hemingway's '3-step Exercise.'
An exercise and discipline that gives us writers the essential tools to 'show, and not tell' in our writing.
Step 1: Pick a situation to observe closely and then try to retell it in words.
For Samuelson, this was focused on fishing, but for you it might be as simple as your daily commute.
For instance...
what is the name of that corner shop that you pass every day?
The homeless man at the junction,
can you describe him, do you know a little of his story?
After all, we are often in autopilot mode. We do things, see things,
hear things, without actively concentrating on them.
Things pass us by and we're not even aware that they have.
But now, you must pay close attention to everything that is happening around you and to you.
Look for the small but important details that once would have passed you by.
In effect, making a finer weave in the fishing net of your senses,
with less passing through it.
Her shoes, they're very worn...
I wonder why?
The man at the corner of the bar,
he has a slight accent...
can I pin down where it comes from?
The shop that looks so out of place amongst the others...
why, what makes it stand out?
Actively watch.
Actively listen.
Actively engage.
Then write it down.
Keep notes.
And incorporate these elements in what you write...
making sure that your readers see these things also.
This first step forces you to avoid vagueness in your writing.
Through conscious viewing and listening, it sharpens your observational skills.
Step 2: Practice empathy by paying attention to the emotions and reactions of others in the situation you’re observing.
Empathy is the great ability to understand and be sensitive to the feelings of others, to be able to see the world through another person’s eyes. To tread the path that they tread, in their shoes.
Hemingway emphasized to Samuelson the great need for a writer to develop a sense of empathy.
As Hemingway put it...
"Then get in somebody elseʼs head for a change. If I bawl you out, try to figure out what Iʼm thinking about as well as how you feel about it.
Donʼt just think who is right.
As a man, things are as they should or shouldnʼt be.
As a man, you know who is right and who is wrong. You have to make decisions and enforce them.
As a writer, you should not judge.
You should understand."
As you experience a situation,
think about the feelings and motivations of those around you.
What might that person who pushed in front of you in that queue be thinking?
The girl in the crowd who is crying,
how must she be feeling?
Why is she crying?
And examine your part in this scene...
Why are you not helping her?
What does her crying, alone in a crowd, do to you emotionally?
Difficult self examinations...
but ones that will make you a more insightful and a better writer.
Through actively examining your inner self, it switches your empathic button to the 'on' position.
Step 3: Repeat steps 1–2 (in other words: practice, practice, practice. )
Hemingway told Samuelson,
that writing in a more informed descriptive manner and with a greater sensibility,
can and must be learned.
Hemingway's method insisted that you should be able to go into any room, and when you come out, know everything that you saw there and not only that...
if that room gave you any feeling, you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling, and what it did to you emotionally.
For that to happen you have to
practice.
Human life is everywhere.
Human feelings and emotions are like punctures in an old garden hose...
they leak out everywhere and if we are open to them, we can examine how they've impacted us as fellow human beings.
So practice.
For a writer, the World is a petri dish...
so be open to it as such.
To describe something vividly is an essential skill for every writer to master...
and to become a great storyteller, who through a seemingly simple description can link into a shared human emotion, universal truth or experience,
is something very special.
It is a skill set that all of our most famous and beloved writers have in common...
Shakespeare, Dickens, Chekhov, Hugo, Plath, Tolstoy.
These incisive descriptions can evolve your sentences from vague and boring into moving,
pivotal and highly memorable.
The '3-Step Exercise' helps to get us up close and personal to mastering important skills that can craft words that emotionally connect with our readers.
As Hemingway wrote:
"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you:
the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow,
the people and the places and how the weather was.
If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer."
As a trained counselor,
this technique was not a difficult one for me to master...
as the skill set for it are the bedrock of a counselor's training.
However, how to use it in the craft of writing?
To explain this I can only delve into my own writing and not lean on the shoulder of a great writer like Ernest Hemingway.
In my own debut novel,
'DRAGONS EYE,'
I had what I perceived to be a problem. I'd placed my Senior Homicide Investigator up to his knees in fetid mud on the banks of the great Huangpu River in Shanghai. In front of him a dreadful and distressing scene...
Eight dead, mutilated bodies chained together.
I wanted...
in fact needed to get across the horror of it all.
So much humanity holed and lost.
A detective who had witnessed a Thousand murder victims before...
such violence, the commodity of his trade.
However, for me he had to,
against the odds, to have retained his humanity.
He had to have retained his moral compass and compassion.
And yet, I really didn't want to turn it into a full chapter of heavy Police procedural, forensic heavy diatribe.
Vast descriptions of bloody wounds.
The poor victims and he, my main character, my detective...
had to build a solid, trusting and unbreakable link with my readers.
That had to trust him.
Invest in him.
And so the only four words that I put into this detective's head, a detective who had witnessed a Thousand other murder victims bleed before him were...
'Somebody's babies...
somebody's children.'
This is the power of 'showing,
not telling.'
Try this technique for yourself.
Keep your notes from your experiences.
Your insights into your empathic journey.
And mould these into unforgettable sentences, riveting dialogue and insightful descriptions that can hook your readers at a human level when grafted into your manuscript.