When Nathan Bransford offers advice, we listen. In case you’re wondering why, here he is once again with an unconventional but to the mind of this TVWriter™ minion brilliant take on the age-old platitude to “show don’t tell” in your writing.
by Nathan Bransford
“Show don’t tell” is simultaneously some of the best and worst writing
advice in literary land. While there are some very good ways to apply this maxim, no one really means quite the same thing when they say “SDT” and many writers take the wrong meaning from it entirely.
Here are a few different ways misinterpreting “show don’t tell” can lead you astray.
“Show don’t tell” doesn’t mean hiding motivations
Sometimes writers are so wary of “telling” readers things they end up
hiding why characters are doing the things they’re doing and how they’re thinking through their choices.
Motivation is so crucial in novels. There are different valid approaches to narrative voices, but it almost invariably pays to make sure the reader understands what’s motivating a character and why, both for the novel as a whole and within every individual scene. Readers anchor to a characters’ hopes like a north star and contextualize a lot of the plot based on what the characters want and why they want those things.
You honestly can’t be clear enough about what’s motivating a character, their hopes and dreams, and what’s at stake for them in the novel. Help the reader understand these elements with precision and specificity.