Show, don't tell is a technique used in various kinds of texts to allow the reader to experience the story through action, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the author's exposition, summarization, and description. It avoids adjectives describing the author's analysis, but instead describes the scene in such a way that the reader can draw his or her own conclusions. The technique applies equally to nonfiction and all forms of fiction, literature including haiku[1] and Imagism poetry in particular, speech, movie making, and playwriting.[2][3][4][5]
The concept is often attributed to Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, reputed to have said "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." What Chekhov actually said, in a letter to his brother, was "In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you’ll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball."[6]
The distinction between telling and showing was popularized in Percy Lubbock's book The Craft of Fiction (1921), and has been an important element in Anglo-Saxon narratological theory ever since.
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Show, don't tell is a technique used in various kinds of texts to allow the reader to experience the story through action, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the author's exposition, summarization, and description. It avoids adjectives describing the author's analysis, but instead describes the scene in such a way that the reader can draw his or her own conclusions. The technique applies equally to nonfiction and all forms of fiction, literature including haiku[1] and Imagism poetry in particular, speech, movie making, and playwriting.[2][3][4][5]
The concept is often attributed to Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, reputed to have said "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." What Chekhov actually said, in a letter to his brother, was "In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you’ll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball."[6]
The distinction between telling and showing was popularized in Percy Lubbock's book The Craft of Fiction (1921), and has been an important element in Anglo-Saxon narratological theory ever since.
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