21. Show Don't Tell

21. Show, don't tell

Telling:

Generalizing about an experience in abstract language without providing examples or

details to illuminate the general statement

telling:

"It was so cold in the early morning air that everything seemed to be dying.

Showing:

Using specific examples and sensory details to expand and clarify general

statements.

showing:

"From the first moment that I got outside, I felt chilled to the very marrow. It was one of those nights on which the earth seems dead with cold. The frozen air becomes resisting and palpable, such pain does it cause; no breath of wind moves it, it is fixed and motionless; it bites you, pierces through you, kills the trees, the plants, the insects, the small birds themselves, who fall from the branches on to the hard ground, and become stiff themselves under the grip of the cold.

The moon which was in her last quarter and was inclining all to one side, seemed fainting in the midst of space, so weak that she was unable to wane, forced to stay up yonder, seized and paralyzed by the severity of the weather. She shed a cold, mournful light over the world, that dying and wan light which she gives us every month, at the end of her period." (Guy de Maupassant "Love")

-notice how Maupassant is able to bring the reader into the landscape through sensory detail and specific examples that demonstrate the cold seemed to be killing everything.