How to Make Readers Feel.
Show Don’t Tell
Showing vs Telling is maybe the most popular concept when it comes to writing fiction, and there’s a good reason for that. Getting it right can elevate our writing and allow us to craft a novel that immerses the reader for hours. Getting it wrong will almost always create the opposite effect.
So, let’s try to get it right, by grasping the essence of both techniques, distinguishing the clear line that separates them, and knowing when and why to use each.
Definitions
Both of the following paragraphs take Josh from point A — Josh is peering into the room — to point B — Josh stepping inside the room. Both tell us the purpose he’s stepping into the room for and how he feels about it.
Telling:
He stepped into the room, and it was very scary. He was frightened. An ugly smell made its way to his nose. Out of all the houses in the neighborhood, his cat, Chuck, had to hide in this one. The house had been abandoned for ages. No one ever came here. He decided to be more courageous and took another step.
This first paragraph is short, effective, and tells us everything we need to know straight, like: what is Jeff doing in the house and how does he feel about being in the house. As a writer, the first paragraph is the most valuable tool in your toolbox, if you ever want to bore your readers to death.
Showing:
With a foot in and the other refusing to follow, Josh’s limps shivered as the cold wind of the house crept onto him. A sharp stench of rotten meat lingered under his nose. He pulled his shirt’s collar up to shield it off. You had to hide here…great job Chuck. He thought, his eyes darting around the dead-silent room, taking in what little details he managed to take; the only light source was the beaming of the street light behind him. Red smudges of paint covered the beaten-up walls — he hoped it was paint. He almost put his second foot in, when something scratched against the eaten-up couch. please don’t be a rat. He forced himself to take another step.
This one, is a bit longer, a bit richer in details, and a bit more mysterious.
No writer wants that, so, problem solved; always show. I wish it was that simple, but it isn’t. Both showing and telling have a place in your novel, and choosing the right one is rarely that simple. Telling when we should be showing will make our scenes feel flat, lifeless, and boring. Showing, when we should be telling, will make it irritating.
Even though readers are close in the narrator’s head, you don’t have to show every last thought that enters that head. You can summarize a bit or skip things entirely if the story reads better that way. It’s all about balance.
— Janice Hardy, in Understanding Show don’t Tell”
So, the rule “Show don’t Tell”, while catchy, is mistitled. Its true meaning: know when to show, know when to tell. To know that, we need to understand the readers’ wants; why are they reading our novel, and how would the two techniques give them what they want? Understanding that will set us up to make the right decision every time.
So, why do we read?
EMOTIONS
Readers pick up a book for one of two reasons: to learn or to be entertained.
A long time ago, I had calculus — unfortunately — so I went and picked up the Calculus 101 book — a gigantic block that I hope you would never have to read. I got what I wanted from it; I learned calculus — and somehow still failed. But novels aren’t calculus. We pick up a novel for the same reason we watch a movie: to be entertained. And to be entertained is to have any feeling other than boredom.
When we pick up a book, we want to laugh or cry or shiver in fear or wonder in a world that is different than ours. So, entertaining the reader and making the reader feel something, basically, mean the same thing.
What about plot, and our interesting world, and our grand, shocking revelation at the end? Aren’t they enough to keep the reader engaged and entertained? Well, while crucial, all of these things would be useless ink on paper, if we failed to make the reader emotionally involved.
Plot isn’t a goal, but a mere device by which we channel emotions. We remember the Titanic, not a documentary about the Titanic, which has a similar plot. The documentary told us what happened, the movie showed us what happened. We remember what we learned in the documentary, and we remember what we felt in the movie.
There’s a reason behind the genres used to divide novels and movies. Readers will pick up a book based on what feeling they’d like to have. They want to laugh, comedy, cry, tragedy, be curious and on the edge of their seat, thriller. Plot, worldbuilding, and the philosophies that we’d like to discuss, are great, and important, but they come second.
Readers are looking for an emotion, and our priority as writers is to provide them with the exact feeling they’ve trusted us to deliver when they’ve picked up our novel.
I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud. — Stephen King
So, we want to make our words have an emotional impact on the reader. How can we achieve that by using showing?
I
WRITING WITH DETAIL.
Let’s go back to the two paragraphs:
Telling:
An ugly smell made its way to his nostrils.
The room was very scary.
Showing:
A sharp stench of rotten meat forced him to cover his nose with the collar of his thin blue shirt.
The room was very scary. How does that line make you feel? Scared? Terrified? Nothing? How about the line: an ugly smell made its way to his nostrils? Can you sense the ugly smell? Neither do I, and neither will anyone who would read it.
To make the reader feel is to establish a connection between the reader and the word. And that connection can’t be made by words like scary, ugly, beautiful, nauseating, exciting. When the reader tries to imagine or recall something ugly, he doesn’t recall just one, he recalls a hundred. Which of these hundred ugly smells is the character smelling? Which one is the reader supposed to imagine?
All of these words make the whole scene feel like an abstract sketch, and readers don’t connect to an abstract sketch, but to a colorful finished painting, that is rich with details.
A sharp stench of rotten meat. That’s very specific. That’s a small detail. That’s something that might or might not be relatable to someone. Two big spiders crept on a rotten piece of wood in the corner, one of them was a little too big. A lot of people are afraid of spiders — me included, the big ones at least. We can connect to the fear of seeing a spider, but we can’t be scared by scary stuff. And none will find a beautiful garden remotely beautiful unless we see the details that make it beautiful.
This is all about description, but what about action? When writing action, the same rule applies. For every action your character does, you’ll have at least three options to describe it.
The story starts in our heads, and we imagine it to be lifelike and realistic. As writers, that comes easy to us. The hard part is finding the word that exactly captures what we imagined. We wrote walk, but in our heads, we saw the character leap. We wrote watched, but the way our character was looking at the girl, seemed like he was gazing, not just watching. Did she smile at him, smirk at him, or…what?
Using the right verb will make the reader feel like he’s watching real people behave, and real events unfold. We don’t just look; we stare and gaze and glance. We don’t always sit on a chair, we throw ourselves on a chair, we crash on a chair, we sink into a comfy leather couch. Our verbs and nouns need to have that variety, not for the sake of variety, but because that’s how we describe real actions and that’s how we see the world.
Before moving into the next point, let’s see an example of how Fonda Lee describes one of her action scenes, in her novel — which is known for its addictive action style — Jade City.
Before the boy could scramble to his feet, Tar palmed his head and forced it to the floor. The thief reached for a weapon, a tiny gun, but Tar tore it from him and flung it through the broken patio door and into the harbor. The boy gave a carpet-muffled cry as the Green Bone’s knee ground down on his forearm and the paper packet was ripped from his white-knuckled grip. All this occurred so fast most of the onlookers did not see it.
— Fonda Lee, In Jade City
She could’ve written:
- Got to his feet || scramble.
- Grabbed his head || Palmed his head.
- Took it from him || Tore it from him.
- Thrown it away || Flung it through the broken patio door.
- A cry || A carpet-muffled cry.
- People who were watching the scene || Onlookers.
But she hadn’t. She used well-chosen verbs and nouns to create a clear and realistic action scene.
II
Use the Five Senses
Here’s something obvious: all humans experience the world using the same five senses: touch, taste, hearing, smell, and sight. Why is that important?
You’ve probably heard the advice “Make the readers forget they’re reading.”
If readers are to lose themselves in a narrative, they need to follow a character that explores the world, just like a real person would experience theirs: using our five senses.
Following that character, seeing what he sees, hearing what he hears, and smelling what he smells, will create the intended illusion that the reader will be immersed in.
We’ll talk about relatability shortly, but let’s touch on it a bit here.
Some sensory details mean the same thing for most of us. Most of us know the smell of a homecooked meal, the touch of a gentle breeze, or the humid beautiful smell of when rain meets dirt. Once we see some of these sensory details, the emotions they carry will be evoked, and a connection will be made. The readers will feel like they’re there with the character.
We need to keep two points in mind when dealing with sensory details:
A-Vary Your senses
Sight is the most interesting of the three. It’s the most used and will probably take most of your description and that’s alright. But remember that sticking to one sense, and excluding the other senses, can make the experience feel one-dimensional and unrealistic.
Not trying to contradict myself here, but don’t feel like you’re obligated to use all of them either. Using too many sensory details can be as damaging to our writing as using too little. Too little makes the scene one-dimensional; too much makes it boring and irritating.
But that’s a little complicated, do we use one, two, or five? what is the standard here? How can we know if a scene has too much or too little?
Easy problem, easy solution. Let’s keep our aim on the goal: emotions.
B-Write with Intent
What to describe and in how much detail we should describe it, should be determined by the intent of the scene, and the emotion we intend the reader to have. I mean, our character could be meandering in the most gorgeous of gardens, and we can choose to write two sentences or less to describe the beautiful flowers, and instead focus on the humming sound in the distance; cause there is a serial killer chasing our character and we would like the reader to be afraid. We want our readers to fear the merciless killer, not gaze at the colorful flowers.
We choose what to focus on, based on what’s important to the scene, and what delivers our intended emotion.
However, there is one exception to that rule. There will be details that need to be addressed, even if they have no emotional impact. This is just the common sense part of our scenes. When our characters are walking down the city sewers, we can’t avoid mentioning the terrible smell. When they’re climbing the highest mountains, we can’t ignore the hefty wind. When they’re in the desert…you get the point.
I’m with you, it’s not important, and that’s why we don’t need to focus on them, but it’s necessary to mention them. Spare them a sentence or two, and return your focus to the details that matter to the scene.
A way to do that is to put ourselves in our characters’ shoes for a bit and search for the things that we would be blind to if we didn’t see, and deaf to if we didn’t hear. We acknowledge them, then come back and assume the role of a writer. Now that the scene makes sense, we choose what to focus on based on emotion and importance.
There’s no rule of how many details we should include or how many of the senses we should use. We’re the ones that know what’s important in our story and what’s not. And as long as we focus on the goal and write with intent, we’ll get it right.
Until now, we’ve been discussing “Showing” on the small scale. Let’s take a wider look, and see how “Telling” and “Showing” compare on a broader view.
III
Utilize Relatability
I love the movie Horrible Bosses. It’s a good movie, and one of the reasons it’s so good and popular is its reliance — at the beginning of the movie at least — on the relatable, simple fact that most, if not all, people would despise working under a mean boss.
Reliability, simply put, is showing what the reader and the character have in common; it’s what makes your characters feel human, and what makes us fall for them.
How can we utilize this tool when we’re writing fiction?
Let’s take a look at the stars of our novel: the characters.
Our first step in making our characters loved, realistic, relatable, is to give them personality, fears, and dreams. Let’s start with personality.
Let’s say we have a character in our story. Let’s call her Julie. To make Julie rich with personality, we’ll have to answer a ton of questions about her:
Does she get nervous under pressure and start saying stupid things or does she stay calm? Is she aggressive in an argument? How exactly is she aggressive? Does she scream and shout or does she get physical, or try to hurt the other person with her will-crafted, mean remarks? How does she act when she’s sad, angry, or anxious? Does she talk with respect when speaking to an older person, or does she not give a damn?
And many more questions, need to be answered if we want the readers to look at Julie and see a girl, not ink on paper. How we behave, how we talk, our likes and dislikes, and our moral codes, are all a part of our personality. And we need to craft our characters to be as rich and as complicated if our reader is to have a chance of relating to them.
Now that we’ve got that information known. We know everything there is to know about our Julie. The next step is telling the reader everything there is to know about our Julie, right?
Not exactly; that’s a terrible idea. That would be telling, not showing.
So how do we show Julie’s character? By making use of every moment in our novel to flesh a different part of her personality. When there’s a moment in which she’s arguing about something with her 70-year old neighbor, show her aggressiveness and disrespect — or her passiveness and respect; not to say that respect and passiveness have anything to do with each other.
By the end of that argument, the reader will know something about Julie: she is aggressive in an argument, and she doesn’t respect the elderly. That’s enough for now. If we have an interesting plot, another moment will arise soon, and we’ll use that moment to flesh out another part of Julie. If we make every moment count, then it won’t be long until Julie stops feeling like a character in a novel, and be a girl or a woman that the reader knows like a friend. We relate to what’s familiar. It’s like sitting down with a stranger then gradually building a relationship as you you find out how much you have in common. And even the points that you differ on, will have the opportunity to spark your curiosity.
Watching an introverted character in an awkward situation mumble with his speech like an idiot makes me like him every time, because, sometimes, I mumble with my speech like an idiot. And even if I don’t, I may know someone who does. And for that to work, I need to be shown that part of the character, and not be simply told: “He’s an introvert who also mumbles with his speech.” So, it’s important to show specifics. “She was a mean girl with a venomous mouth.” isn’t going to have an effect unless we see that venomous mouth in action.
Let’s give a moment to address a point some of us might make: I’m not writing human beings; my protagonists are Elves and my antagonists are Orcs. That, understandable point, doesn’t matter one bit.
The point here is to make them feel human. They don’t have to be human. Disney and Pixar make movies about bugs, animals, and cars. But they knew that no one will relate to a car, so they gave the car personality, and human fears and goals, which leads us to our second point in relatability.
Your character is a father who’s struggling to connect with his son. He has a fear that their relationship will grow further and further apart to a point where it’s unrecoverable. Valid problem, valid fear. Show it.
Again, specifics are important. When it’s appropriate, show him trying and failing, show his thought process while thinking about the problem. Show the causes of that problem and why one solution might work while another might not. If we make the effort to show the problem in a believable way, and we show how the problem affects his life, then every father and every son will care because they relate; they’ll have an emotional connection to the character.
Most of us have similar insecurities, fears, and ambitions.
We feel deeply for the characters that try to beat the fears we have and reach the goals we are trying to reach. Give me a character who’s trying to make it as a fiction writer and I promise I’ll stick with him till the last word to find out if he makes it. Watching the journey at the end of which they succeed might give us hope. And their failure might teach us a lesson and win our empathy and tears.
These problems, fears, and goals, can be a minor part of your overall narrative, or the main point of the whole novel. Let them be known so your characters feel rich, and focus on them in whatever way serves your story best.
Now, hearing this, you might be tempted to find out the most popular relatable problem, or fear, and just give it to your character. I can’t say that this is a bad idea. But you’ll have to keep your eye on one thing that is crucial when building a relatable character: believability.
If the reader doesn’t fully believe that the character has this fear or dream or problem. If the way it is shown isn’t honest and realistic, or if it’s solved in an over-simplistic way, then it will have the opposite effect. It will be seen as unrealistic, and consequently, pull the readers out of the story, and in some cases, offend them. Quick example: if I see a struggling writer, who knows nothing about writing and doesn’t put the effort to learn the craft, write a bestseller in a couple of days, I’m not going to think he’s amazing and relatable, but laughably annoying.
This is especially important when you’re writing about mental illness — which is a subject that deserves its own article.
A way to stop ourselves from making such mistakes is to do our research or write from our personal experience.
The more serious the topic we’re planning to discuss, the deeper we should dive in attempting to understand it. It wouldn’t be that offensive if we got a fact wrong about…let’s say…hockey. But it would be nothing compared to getting a fact wrong about…say…depression. So, when writing about sensitive subjects, treading lightly is highly advised.
Now, writing from personal experience, or from problems that we ourselves face or about our own fears and goals, is optional; the internet — and the thousands of documentaries, interviews, articles, and novels on it — is at our disposal, and we can use it to learn everything about anything. But the fact remains, that putting a little piece of ourselves into our writing, might allow us to write something that hasn’t been written before. Something original that can’t be found anywhere, because we haven’t written it yet.
Reliability is a substantial part of character development, and to do it just, it needs to be discussed more thoroughly, but that’s a topic for another day.
For now, I’d like to leave you with one important piece of advice:
Showing takes more words, effort, and time, to write, and more importantly, to read. So, whenever you’re trying to decide how much of your effort and time you want to give to a description, a character’s goal, a character’s fear, a relationship, think about one thing: how important is it to the story.
That, in my humble opinion, is the only purpose of telling. It’s for the things that have to be there, but hold no effect or impact on the larger narrative. These include but are not limited to:
- Characters traveling from one place to another over long periods of time.
- Any worldbuilding that isn’t that relative to the story, but must be told for the story to make sense.
- Basically, anything that explains what’s necessary but not important.
So, think about every scene. What value does it provide to the story? Does it build the character, set the scene, build tension, provide a revelation or a conclusion or a twist? Every chapter, scene, and paragraph needs to add value to our story or be told.
That’s why we write with intent. We decide what we want to accomplish, then search for the words and the best tools to accomplish it, be it through showing or telling — cause even what we’re telling should be relatively necessary. Writing is a complicated craft, and readers like different stuff, but no reader likes his time wasted.
Summary
Showing
Makes use of vivid details, and sensory evidence of events our characters go through. It gives us everything we need, to imagine a memorable, lifelike story that we can lose ourselves in.
But consequently, it takes more of our words and more of the readers’ time, and for that reason, we should only use it when what we’re putting on the page actually matters to our story.
Telling
Summarizes parts of our story to the reader. It allows us to move quickly between the important events that carry the emotional impact.
And if we don’t want our book to end up being a thousand pages’ novel, then we’ll need to use it on the parts that are relatively less important. Let’s think of it as a fast train that takes us quickly through what’s boring and drops us off at what’s exciting.
To sum up, write with vivid details cause readers won’t relate to abstract generalities, use the five senses cause that’s the only way to create a realistic immersing experience, and utilize relatability.
Many more things are worth saying here. There’re other techniques to use and many pitfalls to avoid, but I didn’t want this article to be a book, so, we’ll talk again soon. Until then…bye bye.
