Telling and showing
Telling gives a short label: "The market was busy." Showing gives the details that make the reader decide for themselves: "Bags bumped shoulders, a seller shouted prices, and a child was lifted above the crowd."
Telling is useful when you only need to move on fast. Showing is better when you want the reader to be there. In a good piece you use both, but the most important moments are shown.
Describing a scene with the five senses
A scene has five doors for the reader: sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. You do not need all five. Pick two or three exact details.
- Sight: colour, shape, size, light. "A red door with cracked paint."
- Sound: "The kettle whistled, then a spoon clinked."
- Smell: "The air smelled of wet earth."
- Touch: "The rail was cold and rough under my palm."
Exact is better than big. "A sparrow" is clearer than "a bird". "Thirty chairs" is clearer than "many chairs".
Strong verbs and fresh comparisons
A strong verb carries the picture. Compare "She walked" with "She shuffled" or "She marched". The verb already tells us the mood.
A simile compares with like or as: "The bus groaned like a tired buffalo." A metaphor says it is the thing: "The road was a grey ribbon." Use comparisons the reader can picture. Skip old ones such as "as white as snow".
Use few adjectives. One exact noun or verb beats three weak adjectives.
Describing feelings
You can show a feeling in four ways:
- Body: heart thumping, dry mouth, shoulders low, hands trembling.
- Actions: she reads the same line again and again; he tears the paper in half.
- Surroundings: the same place looks different to a happy and a sad person. A grey sky for a heavy heart.
- Thoughts and voice: short broken sentences for panic, long slow ones for calm.
Say the feeling word only when it adds something. Often the picture is enough: "She stood at the gate, shoulders low, and said nothing."
Try it: build a scene
Take a place you know, like your bus stop. Write three sentences. Sentence 1: one thing you see. Sentence 2: one thing you hear or smell. Sentence 3: show how a person there feels, with the body or an action. Do not write the feeling word. Then give it to a friend and ask them: "How does the person feel?" If they guess right, you showed it well.
Key formulas and definitions
- Show = detail + sense (not the label)
- Scene = 2 or 3 exact details from the five senses
- Feeling = body + action + surroundings (not the feeling word)
- Simile: A is like B | Metaphor: A is B
Worked examples
1. Change the telling sentence into showing: "The classroom was noisy."
Ask what a noisy class looks and sounds like. Possible answer: "Pencil boxes banged, two boys argued over a ruler, and at the back someone drummed on a desk." Three sounds, no word "noisy".
2. Show the feeling "nervous" for a girl waiting outside the principal's office.
Use the body and an action: "She pressed her damp palms on her skirt, checked the clock again, and rehearsed her first sentence under her breath." The word "nervous" is not used, yet we know it.
3. Improve: "The beach was beautiful." Use sight, sound and touch.
"Gold sand ran to the edge of a green sea. Waves hissed as they pulled back, and the warm sand slid between my toes." One detail for each sense, with strong verbs (ran, hissed, slid).
Common mistakes
- Writing the feeling word ("she was sad") instead of showing it with body, action or surroundings.
- Piling on adjectives ("a big, huge, tall, giant tree") instead of one exact detail.
- Using worn comparisons like "as white as snow" that the reader has seen a hundred times.
- Showing everything. A scene with 15 details feels crowded. Pick two or three and let them shine.