Show Don't Tell: 20+ Before and After Examples
"Show, don't tell." It's perhaps the most ubiquitous piece of writing advice given to aspiring authors. It is also frequently misunderstood.
Some writers take it as law, fearing any direct statement or summary will ruin their manuscript. Others dismiss it entirely, frustrated by its vagueness. The truth, as with most craft elements, lies in the balance. "Showing" isn't about eliminating every instance of "telling." It's about choosing the right tool for the job.
Showing creates immersion; it invites the reader to step into the scene and experience it alongside the characters. Telling creates distance, which can be useful for transitions or summarizing distinct periods of time. But when you want your reader to feel, show.
This guide covers:
- What "show don't tell" actually means
- Core craft principles
- before-and-after examples (emotion, character, relationship, setting, change, conflict, time, power, and stakes)
- A full emotion reference covering anger, nervousness, fear, grief, relief, joy, and shame
- Common mistakes to avoid
What "Show Don't Tell" Actually Means
Before diving into examples, what does it mean to show and not tell? We define the terms and discuss in more detail in this article, but here's an overview:
Telling conveys information directly to the reader. It's efficient and factual. It leaves little room for interpretation. E.g. He was nervous.
Showing reveals information through action, dialogue, sensory details, behavior, or interior experience, in ways that invite the reader to feel and deduce rather than just receive. E.g. She kept glancing at the clock.
The Camera Test
A useful heuristic is the "Camera Test." Ask yourself: Could a film camera capture this moment?
If you're writing about a character's internal thoughts ("She felt sad") or summarizing a trait ("He was a generous man"), a camera couldn't see it. That often signals telling.
If you are describing physical actions ("She wiped a tear from her cheek") or behavior ("He tipped the server fifty percent"), a camera could record it. That usually signals showing.
The camera test is a practical starting point, not a law. Fiction can also be shown through what a character remembers, what an object means to them, or how grief reorganizes their perception of an ordinary room. A camera couldn't capture those things, but it's still showing; they dramatize the interior rather than report it. Keep that in mind as you work through the examples below.
Showing Through Memory, Objects, and Association
Physical behavior is one vehicle for showing, but not the only one. A character's emotional state can be revealed just as powerfully through:
- What they notice: A grieving person fixates on the dead person's half-empty coffee mug; a suspicious character catalogs every exit in the room.
- What an object means: The same watch can represent love, obligation, or resentment, depending on the character and context.
- Memory and sensory association: A smell, a familiar phrase, or an unexpected song can pull a character into the past, revealing emotion without a single stated feeling.
- Dialogue and subtext: Characters rarely say exactly what they mean. The gap between what is said and what is meant is often where showing lives.
Telling:
She still missed her father.
Showing:
The hardware store always did it. The smell of sawdust and machine oil hit her on the way through the door and she was nine years old again, watching him work at his bench, his hands always knowing exactly what to do. She picked up what she came for and left quickly, not because she was in a hurry, but because standing in there too long felt like something she couldn't afford.
This kind of interior showing is just as legitimate as physical action. In some cases it's more precise, because it reveals both the emotion and the inner life of the character at once.
Example 1: Showing Urgency
As an effective way to add tension, creating urgency in a scene is an important place to show.
Telling:
Sarah's rent payments were past due and her car payments were behind schedule. She was nervous about the job interview. It needed to go well.
Showing:
Three months behind on rent. Two more weeks before they'd repo the car. This interview had to work. Sarah's heel tapped against the waiting room floor. She pulled her résumé from her bag for the third time, smoothed a crease that wasn't there, and slid it back in. When the receptionist called her name, her folder slipped from her hands, scattering papers across the tile.
What Makes It Work
- Stakes embedded in the showing: The financial pressure isn't abandoned when we move to showing; it's woven into the opening beats so the reader understands exactly what's at risk.
- Physical manifestations: The tapping heel and fidgeting hands signal anxiety without using the word.
- Repetitive behavior: Checking the résumé a third time shows insecurity escalating.
- Loss of control: Dropping the papers confirms the pressure breaking through.
Example 2: Showing Character Personality
You can tell a reader that a character is arrogant, or you can let the character's actions prove it.
Telling:
Marcus didn't care about other people or what they thought of him. Even his smile showed arrogance.
Showing:
Marcus cut the line at the coffee shop, tossed a twenty on the counter, and didn't wait for change. "Cappuccino. And fast," he said through a yawn.
What Makes It Work
- Interaction with others: How a character treats service workers is a prime indicator of personality.
- Dialogue: The curt, unprompted command ("Cappuccino") speaks volumes.
- Body language: A yawn makes it seem casual, like it's how he treats everyone.
Example 3: Showing Relationship Dynamics
Relationships are defined by the space between characters: what they say, and often more importantly, what they don't.
Telling:
Claire and Tom's marriage had grown distant. They rarely ate together, and when they did, they didn't speak. Work meetings, incessant scrolling, television. Someone else had come between them.
Showing:
Claire set Tom's plate on the table: chicken on the left, vegetables on the right, the way he liked it. He nodded, eyes still locked on the muted television. She sat across from him, cutting her food into smaller and smaller pieces. The scrape of her knife filled the silence. Then his phone lit up on the table. He glanced at it, turned it face-down, and pushed back his chair. "Meeting tonight. Don't wait up." The door closed before she could answer.
What Makes It Work
- Routine devoid of warmth: Claire knows his preferences, but the intimacy is gone.
- The sound of silence: The scraping knife emphasizes the absence of conversation.
- A loaded detail: The phone turned face-down plants a question the reader will carry without it needing to be stated.
- Physical distance: Tom leaves without a real goodbye.
Example 4: Showing Setting and Atmosphere
A generic description leaves the reader in a void. Specific sensory details build a world, and anchoring them in a character's perception keeps the reader inside the experience rather than outside.
Telling:
The house was old, creepy, and abandoned. There were holes in the roof. It made her skin crawl with worry and fear.
Showing:
Wallpaper peeled from the walls in long, curling strips. Something skittered behind the baseboards, too large to be a mouse. The floorboards groaned under each step, and through a crack in the ceiling she could see the darkening sky. In the corner sat a child's toy, faded and dust-covered, its button eyes fixed in her direction. She held her breath and stood still, listening.
What Makes It Work
- Sensory engagement: You can hear the floorboards and the skittering creature. It engages senses beyond sight.
- Character anchored in setting: Her stillness, her held breath. The fear belongs to her, not just the room.
- Unsettling specificity: The toy with its fixed eyes adds a precise, personal element of dread.
Example 5: Showing Character Change
Character arcs are about transformation. Showing the "before" and "after" through action is far more powerful than summarizing the change.
Telling:
After the near-miss, James became more cautious and appreciative of life.
Showing:
Before: James wove through traffic at fifteen over the limit, one hand on the wheel, the other holding his phone. "I'll be there when I get there," he told his sister, hanging up mid-sentence.
After: James checked his mirrors twice before merging. At the yellow light, he stopped, earning a honk from the car behind him. He didn't care. He turned off the podcast and called his sister back. "Sorry I was short earlier. Everything okay?"
What Makes It Work
- Concrete behavioral shifts: Driving habits serve as a metaphor for his approach to life.
- Changed priorities: Stopping at the yellow light (safety) versus weaving through traffic (haste).
- Relational repair: The phone call demonstrates his newfound appreciation for his family.
This example touches on a core premise of show don't tell: trust your reader. Not every change needs to be explicitly noted. Readers find joy in the discovery, in realizing James has changed, not being spoon-fed the entire story.
Example 6: Showing Character Through Accumulated Detail
Avoid the "mirror check" scene where a character catalogues their own reflection. Instead, weave characterization into action and let accumulated detail do the work.
Telling:
Detective Morrison stared into the mirror mid-shave. A weathered man in his fifties looked back. A man who looked like he'd seen too much.
Showing:
Detective Morrison's tie hung loose, coffee-stained and wrinkled. When he rubbed his face, his palm rasped against three days of stubble. He poured lukewarm coffee into a mug that read "World's Best Dad" in faded letters and didn't bother with sugar anymore.
What Makes It Work
- Object as character detail: The coffee-stained tie and the worn mug reveal a man whose routines have slipped.
- Action: Rubbing the stubble gives us a tactile sense of his weariness.
- Layered inference: The "World's Best Dad" mug, faded and clearly not recent, suggests a fatherhood that may have drifted as much as everything else has.
Example 7: Showing Internal Conflict
Internal conflict is difficult to show because it happens inside the mind. The key is to externalize the struggle through hesitation, physical objects, and the gap between what a character says and what they almost said. It's the difference between text and subtext.
Telling:
Anna wanted to tell her mother the truth, but she was afraid it would hurt her.
Showing:
"How was school?" her mother asked, setting down a plate of cookies.
Anna opened her mouth. Closed it. The acceptance letter crinkled in her backpack. University of Toronto. Three thousand kilometers away. Her mother hummed while she poured milk, the same song she'd sung when Anna was little.
"Fine," Anna said as she bit into a cookie she didn't want.
What Makes It Work
- Physical hesitation: Opening and closing her mouth shows the urge to speak battling the fear.
- Symbolic objects: The acceptance letter represents the truth; the cookies and humming represent the comfort she's afraid to shatter.
- The lie: Her final dialogue confirms the choice she made, showing her fear won without stating it outright.
Example 8: Showing Time Passage
You don't always need a dateline to show time passing. The evolution of the environment can do the work for you.
Telling:
Over the next few months, winter turned to spring, and the town began to recover from the flood.
Showing:
In January, sandbags still lined Main Street, brown water stains creeping up storefronts. By February, Leo's Diner had reopened, though only three tables were salvageable. March brought the first window displays downtown, and by April, the high school baseball team played their opening game on the newly re-sodded field. Someone had planted tulips where the worst of the damage had been.
What Makes It Work
- Markers of progress: We see the transition from sandbags to tulips.
- Named locations: Leo's Diner gives the town specificity.
- Emotional arc: The town moves from survival mode to the resumption of ordinary life.
Example 9: Showing Power Dynamics
Power isn't just about titles or who's loudest; it's about who controls the space and the time.
Telling:
The CEO was intimidating. When she spoke, everyone listened. Nobody wanted to be on her bad side.
Showing:
The CEO entered the conference room. Everyone straightened in their seats. She didn't sit. She stood at the head of the table, checking her watch. When James started his presentation, she held up one finger. He stopped mid-sentence. She answered a text, then gestured for him to continue. Twenty seconds later, she interrupted. "Give me the summary. How much are we up?" James glanced at his thirty-slide deck. "Eighteen percent this quarter." She nodded, then left. The meeting that had been scheduled for an hour ended in twelve minutes.
What Makes It Work
- Spatial control: Standing while others sit commands attention.
- Interruption: She controls when others speak.
- Brevity: Reducing a 30-slide deck to one number demonstrates her dominance over their work.
Example 10: Showing Stakes and Danger
Telling us a situation is dangerous is rarely as effective as showing the countdown.
Telling:
Time was of the essence. No one needed reminding of how dangerous the situation was. One mistake and they would all be dead.
Showing:
The timer read 00:47. Red numbers counting down. Sweat dripped and stung Elena's eyes as she stripped the wire. Blue or red: the manual said blue, but this model was different. She'd seen the modification report. Or had she? 00:32. Her hands shook. The plaza outside was filling with the lunch crowd: hundreds of people who didn't know.
What Makes It Work
- Real-time constraints: The countdown anchors the tension.
- Physical symptoms: Sweat, stinging, and shaking hands ground the danger in the body.
- Concrete stakes: The "lunch crowd" reminds us of the innocent lives at risk.
The examples thus far cover a range of situations. Emotion, though, is where most writers reach automatically for telling, and where showing pays the highest dividends. It's worth dedicating examples specifically toward showing emotion, because connecting with characters is what keeps readers turning the page.
Show Don't Tell Examples for Emotions
The tools for showing emotion are the same ones covered throughout this guide: physical manifestation (what the body does), behavioral change (how the character acts differently), environmental filter (what they notice and how they perceive the world), and memory, objects, and sensory association (what the emotion pulls them toward or makes them see differently). Any of these can carry the weight. Often the most powerful passages use more than one at once.
And a final tip before we dive in: vary your strategy, and save the most effective passages for the most dramatic moments. If you character clenches their fist every time they're angry, the phrase loses its impact over time.
Showing Anger
Anger has a spectrum from cold to explosive. The physical presentation is very different at each end, and readers will feel that difference.
Telling: The professor was furious. She couldn't believe a student had the nerve to cheat in her class. She called him into her office to give him the news.
Showing (hot anger):
Professor Vance's chair scraped back so hard it nearly tipped. She slammed a fist on the sturdy oak desk of her office. "Get out. Now," she yelled, so loud that students in the classrooms beyond could hear.
Showing (cold anger, often more frightening):
Professor Vance set down her pen. "I've already called your parents," she said. "They're waiting outside." She folded her hands. "Your picture will be removed from the school portrait." A pause, the length of a breath. "It will be as though you never stepped foot on these grounds. That is the price for betraying my trust."
Physical tells of anger to draw from: jaw clenching, neck flushing, hands forming fists then releasing, precise and deliberate movements (cold anger), rapid or elevated speech (hot anger), the face going still rather than expressive, a sudden drop in volume or sudden outburst.
What Makes It Work
- Spectrum matters: Hot anger and cold anger read completely differently on the page. Choose based on the character, not just the intensity of the emotion.
- Control as menace: Cold anger is often more unsettling precisely because the character is choosing their response. The deliberateness is what's frightening.
Showing Nervousness and Anxiety
Nervousness is one of the most searched-for show don't tell topics because it's easy to name and many of the 'shows' are cliche ("butterflies in her stomach" has been read a million times).
Telling: He was nervous about the presentation. He felt anxious the whole time as the auditorium filled up. It needed to go well.
Showing:
He'd already checked his slides four times this morning. Now he was checking them again, scrolling through on his phone while the conference hall filled up around him. His mouth was dry. He took a sip from his water bottle, misjudged, and felt the moisture hit his collar.
Another approach: showing anxiety through hyper-awareness:
He noticed everything. The hum of the fluorescent lights. The fact that his co-presenter had a coffee stain on his left cuff. The way the moderator hadn't smiled since she walked in. He lined up his answers in his head like cards on a table and watched them shuffle out of order.
Physical tells of nervousness to draw from: repetitive behaviors (rechecking, rearranging), hyper-awareness of surroundings, over-preparation, dry mouth, difficulty maintaining eye contact or difficulty looking away, voice going either quieter or artificially loud, over-explaining, finishing sentences too quickly.
What Makes It Work
- Repetition as escalation: Checking slides for the fifth time isn't quirky; it shows anxiety compounding as the stakes become real.
- The misfire: Spilling water on his collar is a small physical failure that signals the loss of control anxiety produces.
- Hyper-awareness as a symptom: Cataloging the interviewer's coffee stain and the fluorescent hum shows a mind that can't stop processing, even when it would rather not.
Showing Fear
Fear lives in the body before it reaches the mind. The best fear writing is almost purely physical. The cognitive understanding of what's happening often comes after.
Telling: She was terrified. She felt a wave of fear wash over her.
Showing:
She stopped moving. Not a decision; her body simply stopped. She expected silence. Instead, her heartbeat thrummed in her ear.
Showing (during action):
She ran. Not the way she'd run on the track team, measured and efficient. This was all forward, all push, everything behind her closing in even when she didn't look back. Her lungs pulled in air that tasted like iron. She didn't feel her feet hit the ground. She felt everything else.
Physical tells of fear to draw from: sudden stillness followed by sudden movement, the body acting before the mind processes, tunnel vision (noticing very little or fixating on one thing), time dilation (things feeling slower or faster than they are), going cold, going numb, involuntary sounds, prickling sensations, shaking only noticed afterward.
What Makes It Work
- The body leading the mind: "Not a decision; her body simply stopped" establishes that fear bypasses rational thought entirely.
- Two registers of fear: Still fear and running fear read completely differently on the page. Both are valid; the choice depends on the scene and the character.
Showing Grief and Sadness
Grief is one of the most difficult emotions to write because the worst grief is often strangely quiet. There are no dramatic tears, just an absence where something used to be.
In that vein, one of the most effective ways to convey loss isn't to describe the feeling of loss itself, it's to describe what could have been. Don't show the hole in the person. Show the person they would have been if it was still full.
Telling: She was devastated by the loss. Tears came often and heavy. She no longer wore mascara.
Showing (the functional grief, going through the motions):
She made coffee the way she always made it. Two cups. She set both on the counter before she remembered, then stood there looking at the second one for a long time. She drank it too. They both were cold.
Showing (the sudden wave):
She was fine. She'd been fine for two weeks, handling it, managing. Then she was in the cereal aisle and she saw the brand he always bought, the one with the cartoon on the box, the one she'd made fun of him for. Too sugary, she'd always said. He wasn't sweet like her, he'd reply.
Physical tells of grief to draw from: going through routines without thinking, noticing absence in small mundane things, the body feeling heavier, forgetting to eat or eating automatically, laughter at unexpected moments followed by the wave (guilt of feeling joy without them), the inability to explain what's wrong because it's not reducible to a single thing.
What Makes It Work
- Routine interrupted by absence: Making two cups of coffee is mundane. The moment she stops is where the grief enters. Ordinary behavior broken open by a missing person is grief in its most honest form.
- The delayed wave: The cereal aisle example works because she was fine until she wasn't. Grief doesn't move in straight lines, and readers recognize this immediately.
Showing Relief
Relief is often overlooked, but it's one of the most physically vivid emotions: the body releasing tension it's been holding for hours.
Telling: She felt an enormous sense of relief lifted her up like a rising tide. Finally, she could relax.
Showing:
The call came at 11:47. She read the words twice, then found herself sitting down on the floor. She let out a breath that had apparently been waiting since Tuesday.
Physical tells of relief to draw from: exhaling (often long and audible), unexpected physical collapse (sitting, leaning against a wall), laughter that isn't quite controlled, shaking that appears only after the danger has passed, noticing things that had been filtered out during stress (sounds, colors, hunger).
What Makes It Work
- Involuntary collapse: She doesn't decide to sit on the floor; she finds herself there. Relief undoes the body's held tension all at once, often before the mind catches up.
- Realizing stress: Looking back, she realizes the state she was in (breath since Tuesday). Her baseline changes, which punctuates the relief.
Showing Joy and Excitement
Happiness is one of the easiest emotions to tell and one of the hardest to show with specificity. "She was happy" means nothing. Joy looks different in every character.
Telling: Her phone buzzed and she almost didn't answer it. She'd been waiting three weeks and had talked herself out of hoping. When she finally picked up and heard his voice, she was overcome with joy.
Showing:
Her phone buzzed while she was doing the dishes at the restaurant. When she saw the number, she set a wet glass down on the counter too hard. "Hello?" She turned off the tap and sat on the floor in the middle of the kitchen, listening to the offer. Her eyelids fell shut. She'd never have to wash another grime-stained plate again.
Physical tells of joy to draw from: the need to move (pacing, bouncing, grabbing someone), wanting to tell people but not yet knowing the words, laughing without a specific trigger, warmth in the chest, heightened awareness of sensory detail (everything seeming brighter, more vivid).
What Makes It Work
- The involuntary action: Setting the glass down too hard (he didn't mean to do that). The body responds before the mind has processed anything. This is one of the most reliable ways to show an emotion arriving.
- The floor: She doesn't sit in a chair. She sits on the floor of a dirty restaurant. That physical collapse is the body releasing weeks of tension — it communicates what "she was overwhelmed with happiness" never could.
- The reveal: Never was it stated directly she was happy. It's inferred by her disatisfaction with her current job.
Showing Shame and Embarrassment
Shame wants to disappear. The physical presentation of shame is the body trying to make itself smaller, and the mind trying to retroactively undo what happened.
Telling: She snorted at the table, then went quiet, ashamed of the sound. She tried to make herself small in her chair.
Showing (embarrassment):
The laugh came out wrong, more like a snort. In the silence after, she took a great interest in her fork. Her face was hot. She hoped it wasn't red, that they weren't able to see.
Showing (deeper shame):
She replayed it in the shower. The snort, the silence, the look on his face when she realized he hadn't been joking at all. She'd thought it was a punchline. How foolish. She ran the hot water until it went cold but it didn't help.
Physical tells of shame to draw from: inability to make eye contact, sudden fascination with neutral objects, the face going hot, becoming very still, trying to make conversation as if it didn't happen, replaying the event involuntarily, physical constriction in the chest or throat.
What Makes It Work
- Displacement behavior: Becoming "very interested in her fork" is a precise, recognizable way to show someone refusing to acknowledge what just happened.
- Involuntary replay: The shame resurfaces at random, unwanted moments, which is how it actually works. Its intrusion into an ordinary dinner conversation is what makes it feel real.
Remember: guilt is about actions and shame is about identity. Making that distinction explicit in the prose adds psychological depth without slowing the scene. Are they embarrassed about what just happened, or are they ashamed of who they are?
A Note on Mixing Showing and Telling
Not every emotional moment in your novel needs this full treatment. Showing emotion in depth is an investment of words and reader attention, which means it should be spent on the moments that matter most.
You may have noticed that in almost every example above, the "Showing" version is significantly longer than the "Telling" version. This is intentional. Telling compresses time into a brief summary; showing expands it into real-time action and sensory detail. If you show every minor frustration, every walk to the car, and every transition, your word count will balloon and your pacing will drag. Use telling to fast-forward through the mundane, and spend your showing on the moments that matter.
For minor emotional beats, a single concrete detail is often enough: "She laughed too quickly" or "He didn't quite meet her eyes." For transitional moments, a sentence of telling can move the story forward without sacrificing immersion.
For the underlying theory of when to show and when to tell, see our show don't tell guide. For more on strong verbs, the engine of effective showing, see our strong verbs reference.
Summary of Core Principles
Three principles run through all the examples above.
- Use Specific, Concrete Details: Generalizations kill engagement. Don't say "nervous"; say "tapping heel." Don't say "old house"; say "peeling wallpaper." The specific always beats the general.
- Engage Multiple Senses: Writing is often too visual. Incorporate sound (the scraping knife), texture (the stubble), and physical sensation (the sweat) to create a sensory experience that pulls the reader in.
- Trust Your Reader: You don't need to explain that Marcus is arrogant or that Claire is resigned. If you show the behavior clearly, the reader will understand, and what's more, they'll feel like a detective piecing together the clues you've laid.
Common "Show Don't Tell" Mistakes
Even with good intentions, writers can stumble. Here are a few traps to avoid:
- Over-showing: Not every moment needs this treatment. If a character is just walking from the kitchen to the living room, just say that. Save the deep showing for emotional beats and major plot points.
- Unnecessary filtering: Watch for filter words like "saw," "heard," and "felt" that put the reader at arm's length from the action. "She saw the man enter" keeps you behind Sarah's perspective; "The man entered" drops the reader directly into the room. That said, filter words aren't always wrong. "She felt the ground shudder beneath her" keeps us anchored in the character's body. The question is whether the filter earns its place or just adds distance.
- Explaining after showing: If you've written a scene where Sarah is fidgeting and dropping papers, don't end the paragraph with "She was very nervous." You've already done the work. Trust your reader.
Tools like Inkshift can help writers identify passages that are too on-the-nose, find overused descriptions, and sharpen their prose. Either with a manuscript critique that analyzes pacing, structure, and character, or full inline comments throughout an entire manuscript.
Conclusion
"Show, don't tell" isn't about eliminating exposition; it's about intentionality. It's about knowing when to summarize a journey and when to let the reader feel the gravel in their boots.
When you master this balance, your characters stop being descriptions on a page and start feeling like living, breathing people. Your settings stop being backdrops and become environments.
As you edit your draft, look for the moments where you've labeled an emotion or summarized a conflict. The tools available to you are broad: action and behavior, yes, but also dialogue and subtext, sensory detail, objects that carry meaning, and the memories and associations that reveal what a character carries inside. Choose the approach that puts the reader most fully inside the experience, and then trust them to feel it.
