Show, Don't Tell: 20 Examples and How to Fix “Telling” Sentences

Show, don't tell is the advice to let readers see what a character does, says and notices, instead of stating the conclusion for them. “She was nervous” tells; “She checked the time on her phone, then checked it again” shows, and the reader works out the nerves on their own.

The advice is everywhere, but it's often handed out without examples. This guide gives you twenty before-and-after pairs you can study or copy, a three-step method for fixing a telling sentence, and the cases where telling is the right call.

At a glance

1. Telling gives the reader a conclusion (“angry,” “beautiful,” “close friends”). Showing gives them the evidence and lets them draw it
2. Show what matters to the scene: emotions at turning points, first impressions of important characters, relationships that change
3. Tell when you need to move fast: time jumps, routine actions, facts readers already know
4. Overcorrecting is its own problem. Not every feeling needs a racing heart and clenched fists

What show, don't tell means

When you tell, you name a quality: angry, kind, rich, cold, in love. When you show, you put on the page the things that would make someone think that word. A slammed cupboard, a hand on a shoulder, a coat that cost more than a car.

The difference matters because readers believe what they work out for themselves. If you write “Mark was generous,” readers take your word for it, a little. If Mark pays for a stranger's groceries and pretends he dropped the money, readers decide he's generous, and they remember it.

The idea is old. Percy Lubbock described fiction in terms of “showing” and “telling” in The Craft of Fiction (1921). The line most often quoted, “Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass,” is usually credited to Anton Chekhov, but it's a paraphrase of a passage in an 1886 letter to his brother, not a sentence he wrote.

Telling words to watch for

These words don't always mean you're telling, but they're where telling hides.

• Emotion labels: angry, sad, happy, nervous, scared, excited, jealous, relieved
• Character labels: kind, cruel, brave, lazy, smart, shy, arrogant
• Judgment words: beautiful, ugly, amazing, terrible, strange, perfect
• Relationship summaries: best friends, hated each other, were close, didn't get along
• Filter verbs: felt, saw, heard, noticed, realized, seemed, knew

Filter verbs are the sneakiest. “She felt the cold wind” puts a layer between the reader and the wind. “The wind cut through her coat” removes it.

20 show, don't tell examples

Each pair shows the same moment twice. Use them to see the move, not as lines to paste into your book.

Emotion

[Nervous]
Tell: Jun was nervous before the interview.
Show: Jun read the same line of his CV four times. When the receptionist said his name, he stood up so fast his chair scraped.

[Angry]
Tell: Ellen was furious with her brother.
Show: Ellen put the plate down so carefully it didn't make a sound. “Say that again,” she said.

[Sad]
Tell: After the funeral, Tom was very sad.
Show: Tom set two mugs out before he remembered, and then he stood there with the kettle until it went cold.

[Relieved]
Tell: Priya was relieved when the test came back negative.
Show: Priya read the result, put her phone face down on the table and laughed at nothing.

[Embarrassed]
Tell: He was embarrassed by his mistake.
Show: He laughed a beat too late, and for the rest of the meeting he didn't look at anyone above the chin.

Character

[Generous]
Tell: Mark was a generous man.
Show: Mark paid for the woman's groceries and told her the cashier must have rung them up twice.

[Arrogant]
Tell: The new manager was arrogant.
Show: The new manager called everyone by the wrong name for a week and corrected nobody's spelling but his own.

[Brave]
Tell: Ruth was brave.
Show: Ruth's hands were shaking when she walked onto the ice, but she kept walking until she reached the boy.

[Lazy]
Tell: Dan was lazy about housework.
Show: Dan had worked out exactly how many mugs could balance on the pile in the sink.

[Shy]
Tell: Lena was very shy.
Show: Lena practiced ordering a coffee three times in her head and still pointed at the menu.

Setting

[Rich]
Tell: The house was obviously owned by rich people.
Show: There was a room just for coats.

[Run-down]
Tell: The apartment was in bad condition.
Show: Someone had painted over the damp patch on the ceiling, and it had come back through the paint in the same shape.

[Cold]
Tell: It was a freezing winter morning.
Show: The milk on the doorstep had pushed its foil cap up a quarter of an inch.

[Busy]
Tell: The station was very crowded.
Show: Nobody at the station walked in a straight line.

[Quiet]
Tell: The village was very quiet at night.
Show: At night, you could hear the church clock from the other end of the village.

Relationships

[Close friends]
Tell: Sam and Alice had been best friends for years.
Show: Alice ordered for both of them without asking, and Sam didn't look up from the menu.

[Growing apart]
Tell: The couple had grown distant.
Show: They each had a side of the bed and a side of the fridge.

[Secret crush]
Tell: Nora had a crush on her coworker.
Show: Nora knew which days Felix brought his lunch and which days he went out, and she had stopped bringing hers on the days he went out.

[Rivalry]
Tell: The two students were bitter rivals.
Show: They'd both stopped raising their hands in class. Neither wanted to be the second to answer.

[Distrust]
Tell: She didn't trust her stepfather.
Show: She took her phone with her to the bathroom.

How to fix a telling sentence in three steps

1. Find the conclusion. Underline the word that tells: nervous, generous, cold, close.
2. Ask what would make someone think that word. If you walked into the room, what would you see or hear that made you think “she's nervous”? List two or three specific things. Specific means something only this character, here, would do.
3. Pick one and cut the label. One strong detail usually does more than three. Then delete the telling word, or keep it only if the detail is ambiguous without it.

Step 2 is where most fixes go wrong. “Her heart pounded” and “his fists clenched” are things every character does. They show, technically, but readers have seen them so often that they read like labels. The detail that works is the one tied to this character's life: the CV line, the second mug, the coffee order practiced in her head.

When telling is better

Show, don't tell is about where to spend words. Showing takes more of them, so use it where the moment matters and tell where it doesn't.

• Time jumps. “Three weeks passed” is better than three weeks of scenes where nothing changes.
• Routine actions. “She got ready for work” is fine unless something about getting ready matters.
• Information readers already know. If they saw the fight, a later line can say “after the fight” without replaying it.
• Pace. In an action scene, a short telling line (“He was too late”) can land harder than a detailed one.
• Voice. Some narrators tell on purpose. A first-person narrator who says “I was a coward that summer” is showing you who they are by how they judge themselves.

A common rule of thumb: show at turning points, tell in between.

Mistakes when writers overcorrect

Every feeling becomes a body part. If every emotion arrives as a heartbeat, a stomach or a jaw, the scene starts to read like an anatomy lesson. Mix in dialogue, choices and what the character notices.

The detail is too subtle to read. If readers can't tell that the second mug means grief, they'll miss the point. A little context nearby (we know Tom's wife died) makes the detail readable.

Nothing is ever named. Sometimes a plain statement after the detail clinches it. “She took her phone with her to the bathroom. She didn't trust him, and she didn't want to start.” The showing earns the telling.

Turning telling into a scene in TypeTak

TypeTak is an AI writing editor where you write alongside an agent. When you're revising, what you want is to find the lines that state a conclusion and see what they'd look like as a scene.

• Get a note on the exact sentences that tell. Feedback can leave Revision marks in place, beside the passage it's talking about, with a comment on what to change and a suggested rewrite you can apply or ignore.
• See other ways to write one sentence. Put the cursor on a line and choose another wording from the cursor menu, then keep the one that sounds like you.
• Catch the habits you repeat. The Style card in Feedback lists words you lean on too often, which is where “felt,” “seemed” and other filter words tend to pile up.

Which lines to show and which to leave as telling is still your decision. For the dialogue side of the same problem, Other Words for Said covers tags and action beats.

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