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Telling
Friday 31st July 2026
Following on from my previous meditation, I have a habit of taking "show, don’t tell" to the extreme. I tell the reader very little.
Sometimes this is a virtue. It can bring a story to life. If there’s an angry character, I’ll show she’s angry rather than saying it. This is usually much more vivid and engaging.
In Everything Was Beautiful, there is almost no "telling". Every moment is an experience through Travis. Very rarely is he telling us "this is how I feel", "this is what I want", "this is my opinion", "this is how things are", "this is how things were", and so on. Which works for Travis’s character, because he is inherently mysterious, being Death. We are invited into his mind, we can feel his stream-of-consciousness, but he is not telling us anything.
It comes very naturally to me, showing without telling. When I write a novel, I’m thinking about what I can see, hear, taste, touch, smell. I’m thinking about the music of it all. The immediacy of it. I’m a very sensory person. I create portraits of people and places, tied together by themes.
But sometimes you need to tell.
What do I mean by telling?
It’s difficult for me to explain, because it comes much less naturally to me.
Some novels – maybe most novels – will show you the present story moment, and frequently transition into the character thinking about the past. It’s not a flashback. It’s not a scene. It is the character narrating, telling us things about their past (or even about the present). Telling us their opinions on it, how it made them feel. It’s about narrating inwardly rather than outwardly. That comes from telling.
As readers, we like to be told things. It fleshes out the characters. It deepens the story. There are some things that can only be told. Perhaps a character used to behave differently. We can tell the reader that, without showing it. Perhaps a character used to live somewhere else, had a different job that affects how they see the world today, had a pet who died. We don’t need (or want) a whole flashback for these things. They are flavoursome details that offer extra context to what’s happening right now.
I need to remember this. I need to remember that for certain stories, for certain characters, it’s okay to tell.
I’m sure this stuff comes easily to most writers. But it takes a bit of extra work for me. And it’s useful to unpack it.
This isn’t about me writing in a way that feels unnatural. It’s not about me wanting to copy what everyone else does. Telling is just an important tool in the toolbox.
Sometimes when I’m struggling for "things to say", it’s because I’m showing, not telling, and there are interesting things I know about the characters that I haven’t told the reader.