Mostra, non raccontare: esempi ed esercizi

"Show, don't tell" is the most frequently given — and most frequently misunderstood — piece of writing advice. It does not mean you should never state anything directly. It means that when you want the reader to feel something, you need to give them the raw material to feel it themselves, rather than handing them a conclusion.

What Telling Actually Looks Like

Telling names an emotion, quality, or state without evidence:

Sarah was angry. She had always had a bad temper, and today was no exception. She was furious at Mark for forgetting their anniversary.

The reader is told three times that Sarah is angry. They understand intellectually, but they do not feel it. The writer has done all the work and left nothing for the reader to experience.

What Showing Looks Like

Showing provides the sensory details, actions, and dialogue that let the reader arrive at the emotion themselves:

Sarah set the plates down — carefully, precisely, each one centered on its placemat. She straightened the napkins. Smoothed a crease in the tablecloth. When Mark walked in forty minutes late with no flowers and a gym bag over his shoulder, she smiled, pulled his chair out, and said, "How was your day?"

The reader feels the controlled fury. The deliberate domesticity, the late arrival, the absence of flowers, the eerily polite greeting — these details create a visceral understanding that "Sarah was angry" cannot match. Notice also what is happening beneath the surface: the reader infers the tension, the history, the impending confrontation. That inference is what makes the scene feel alive.

When Telling Is the Right Choice

Here is the part most writing advice leaves out: telling is not always wrong. It is the right tool when:

• Transitioning through low-stakes time. "Three weeks passed" is perfectly fine. You do not need to show all twenty-one days.
• Establishing context quickly. "He had been a carpenter for thirty years" can be told in passing. Showing it through a multi-page flashback would slow the story for minimal gain.
• The emotion is not the point of the scene. If a minor character is nervous and it is not important to the plot, a quick "She looked nervous" moves things along without wasting the reader's attention.

The rule is really about proportionality: show the moments that matter most to your story, and tell the rest efficiently.

Before-and-After Examples

Character Trait

Telling: James was generous.

Showing: James pressed the twenty into the busker's case, then turned up his collar and walked on before the man could thank him. His rent was due Friday.

The telling version labels. The showing version proves the trait through action, and the detail about rent makes the generosity meaningful — it costs him something.

Atmosphere

Telling: The house was creepy.

Showing: The front door swung inward before she touched it. Inside, the hallway wallpaper curled away from the walls in long strips, and somewhere upstairs a floorboard creaked under weight that should not have been there.

Relationship

Telling: They were no longer close.

Showing: They used to split a cab home. Now David checked his phone while Lena put on her coat, and they both said "See you" without looking up.

Practical Exercises

These exercises are designed for 15-minute sessions. Do them with a timer — the constraint helps.

Exercise 1: Emotion Without Naming It

Write a 200-word scene in which a character feels a strong emotion — grief, jealousy, excitement, shame — without ever naming the emotion. Use only physical sensations, actions, and dialogue. When you are done, ask a reader to identify the emotion. If they get it right, your showing is working.

Exercise 2: Rewrite a Told Passage

Find a paragraph in your own work where you have told instead of shown. Rewrite it at twice the length, replacing every abstract statement with a concrete detail. Then cut it back down — you will find the strongest details naturally survive.

Exercise 3: The Object Exercise

Describe a room to reveal the personality of its inhabitant without the person being present. Choose five specific objects and describe them in a way that tells the reader who lives there. A stack of library books with no bookmarks. A running trophy used as a doorstop. A fridge with nothing but condiments and beer.

Exercise 4: Subtext Dialogue

Write a conversation between two characters who are arguing about something mundane (whose turn it is to wash the dishes) when their real conflict is something larger (one of them wants to leave the relationship). Neither character is allowed to mention the real conflict directly.

The Test

When revising, ask yourself at each emotional beat: "Am I naming the feeling, or creating the conditions for the reader to feel it?" If you are naming it, look for the specific physical detail, the telling action, or the loaded silence that can replace the label.

The goal is not to eliminate all telling from your prose. The goal is to make sure that every important moment is experienced, not just reported.

Revise with precision in Plotiar. Use the document editor to highlight told passages and rewrite them side by side with shown alternatives. Try it free.