Craft Glossary · term

Show, don't tell (and when to tell)

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Plain English: Render experience through concrete action, sensory detail, dialogue, and subtext so the reader feels it — rather than summarizing it for them. "She was nervous" (tell) vs. the bitten thumbnail and the unanswered question (show).

Rule: Dramatize the moments that matter — the emotional and turning beats. But "show don't tell" is a half-truth: tell to compress what doesn't matter (transitions, time- skips, low-stakes logistics) and to control pace. Good prose is mostly judicious telling with showing reserved for the load-bearing beats.

Fail: Two opposite failures — (1) telling the beats that should land ("the climax was devastating"); (2) over-showing trivia, so a character can't cross a room without three sensory clauses. The repo names a specific case: stating a line that re-explains what was already dramatized — cut it.

See: Dramatic embodiment

Arjuna Badger Press · Craft Library

Glossary · Doctrine · Anti-patterns · Triptych form · LLM tells

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