The Problem With Telling Your Readers How To Feel
I spent about three weeks revising a short story last fall where the protagonist was supposedly grieving. Every paragraph had variations of "she felt sad," "her heart ached," or "the weight of loss pressed on her." The reader knew she was sad because I told them so. They didn't feel anything.
Showing and telling in writing is one of those writing concepts that gets explained a thousand different ways, usually with the same tired examples about someone being angry versus them slamming a drawer. The basic idea is straightforward: tell the reader information directly, or let them figure it out from concrete details. The execution part is where people struggle. Here is how it actually works when you stop overthinking it. Telling is when you summarize an emotion, a trait, or a scene in abstract terms. Showing is when you provide sensory evidence that lets the reader arrive at the same conclusion themselves. Tell: "Mark was nervous about the presentation."
Show: "Mark smoothed his tie for the fourth time in two minutes and checked his watch when nobody was looking." The second version does not name the emotion. It gives the reader two behaviors that happen to indicate nervousness. That is showing. It is also more interesting to read, which is the main reason people recommend it. But here is where most writing guides miss the point: you should not show everything. Telling has a legitimate place in narrative prose. It is faster, it compresses time, and it prevents scenes from becoming sluggish. The question is not whether showing is good and telling is bad. The question is knowing when each one serves the scene.
When Showing Actually Matters
I learned this the hard way during a novel draft in 2023. I had written a scene where two characters reconnected after five years. I told the reader they were awkward, then I told them they were happy, then I told them something was still unresolved between them. The scene played like a summary, not a moment. It took up two pages and delivered nothing emotional. So I rewrote it without naming a single feeling. I focused on small physical details instead. One character reaches for a coffee cup that is already empty. The other notices but does not say anything. They both stare at the table for three seconds too long before speaking again. That is it. No emotional labels. The awkwardness and the unresolved tension come through because the reader witnesses the behavior directly. The revision took about forty-five minutes. The original scene was maybe four hundred words. The new version is six hundred. It is longer but it does more work. That is the tradeoff you need to understand before you start editing.
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Common Pitfalls People Hit
The first mistake is over-showing to the point of exhaustion. You can spend three paragraphs describing someone's micro-expressions while the plot moves nowhere. Readers will skim past that stuff because it slows everything down. I have seen entire chapters turn into catalogs of physical details with zero narrative momentum behind them. The second mistake is relying on telling during scenes that need emotional weight. If a character just found out their parent died, and you write "She was devastated" in one sentence and move on to lunch, the scene will fall flat. The reader needs to experience the moment, not be informed about it afterward. Telling works fine for background information or transitions between scenes. It fails when it replaces a moment the scene actually demands. A third pitfall is showing emotions that the reader already knows. If your protagonist is clearly terrified based on everything that has happened, you do not need another paragraph of sweating and shaking. The reader has already placed the emotion. Adding more evidence at that point feels redundant. Show the new information instead. Advance the scene with something the reader has not seen yet.
My Edge Case From Last Year
There is one scenario where showing breaks down completely, and I ran into it while drafting a first-person narrator who is emotionally detached. The character literally could not describe his own feelings in any meaningful way. If I showed his emotions through behavior, it would contradict the voice I was trying to build. The narrator needed to tell the reader what he felt because the telling itself was the point. The flat, clinical delivery was creating the characterization. The workaround was to keep the telling for internal state but show everything around him. The environment, the other characters, the physical details of the scene. Let the contrast between his flat narration and the rich world around it generate the emotional effect. It took two passes to make it work without sounding like a gimmick, but it held up by the end.
How To Practice This Without Overhauling Everything
You do not need to rewrite every paragraph. Pick one scene per draft that feels emotionally thin. Run through it and identify every instance where you name an emotion directly. Ask yourself whether the scene would work better if you removed that label and replaced it with observable detail instead. Keep the telling if the emotion is secondary to the plot or if the pacing demands speed. Replace the telling only when the scene is carrying real emotional weight. A practical test is reading the scene aloud. If you catch yourself saying "he was angry" or "she felt lonely," pause and check whether the surrounding sentences actually demonstrate that state. If they already do, the label is unnecessary. If they do not, add the detail instead of the label. This process usually takes about twenty to thirty minutes per scene for a first pass. It is not fast, but it catches the biggest problems without requiring a complete rewrite. Most writers who commit to this find that their dialogue and action lines improve automatically because they stop relying on emotional summaries to carry the scene.
There is no shortcut that replaces actual revision. The concept is simple. Applying it consistently is what separates competent drafts from polished ones.
