The most misunderstood writing advice

And how it can help you tell better stories

Sep 28, 2025

Over the summer I claimed “show, don’t tell” is the worst writing advice I’ve ever received. It lacks nuance, isn’t always true, and gets shouted from the rooftops in every writing / story 101 curriculum.

I’ve come around to it being more misunderstood than outright bad.

In many ways, the missing ingredient is when to show and when to tell. Without those ideas, it sounds like we need to “show” everything. But that’s simply not true and leads to bloated, boring stories.

Let’s explore three examples, starting simple then getting more complex:

⛔ “I was nervous.”
✅ “I clicked the pen in my pocket, click click click, and tried to stop. I kept clicking.”

The trick is how “show, don't tell” forces storytellers to think cinematically and behaviorally. You have to ask, how do nerves actually manifest in the body? How do I put those actions on the page? Clicking the pen despite actively trying to stop shows the Reader everything they need to know about the character’s nerves.

But why is it more effective?

Because you’ve created emotional subtext — the underlying feeling behind your character’s actions.

This means the Reader gets to feel clever. They get to play psychologist and decipher what’s going on in your character’s brain and heart based on their external actions. The Reader — instead of being explicitly told — gets to make that interpretation. People love that!

Rule 1: Show to create emotional subtext.

Time for a more complex example…

From F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

The flowers were unnecessary, for at two o’clock a greenhouse arrived from Gatsby’s, with innumerable receptacles to contain it. An hour later the front door opened nervously, and Gatsby, in a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-colored tie, hurried in. He was pale, and there were dark signs of sleeplessness beneath his eyes.
“Is everything all right?” he asked immediately.
“The grass looks fine, if that’s what you mean.”
“What grass?” he inquired blankly. “Oh, the grass in the yard.” He looked out the window at it, but, judging from his expression, I don’t believe he saw a thing.
“Looks very good,” he remarked vaguely. “One of the papers said they thought the rain would stop about four. I think it was the Journal. Have you got everything you need in the shape of — of tea?”
I took him into the pantry, where he looked a little reproachfully at the Finn. Together we scrutinized the twelve lemon cakes from the delicatessen shop.
“Will they do?” I asked.
“Of course, of course! They’re fine!” and he added hollowly, “… old sport.”
The rain cooled about half-past three to a damp mist, through which occasional thin drops swam like dew. Gatsby looked with vacant eyes through a copy of Clay’s Economics, staring at the Finnish tread that shook the kitchen floor, and peering toward the bleared windows from time to time as if a series of invisible but alarming happenings were taking place outside. Finally he got up and informed me, in an uncertain voice, that he was going home.

This passage is NOT all showing. Take a look at what Fitzgerald ‘tells’ you.

Gatsby sent a “greenhouse” of flowers before he arrived.

There’s no description of the flowers. You have no idea what they look like. You have no idea what species they are. You have no idea how the narrator arranged them or how much Gatsby paid for them. You know very little about them, and that’s the point.

The flowers serve as efficient characterization through telling. They establish that Gatsby is anxiously preparing for the evening, but Fitzgerald doesn’t waste time describing the flowers in detail because that’s not where the emotional center of the scene lies.

You do NOT have to show everything. Every story choice is a trade off. I think about it like this…

Showing takes up more mind space for the audience than telling. When everything is emphasized, nothing stands out. By compressing, you give yourself room to focus where your story needs it most.

Fitzgerald does just that. He jumps straight from the flower delivery to:

Gatsby distracted in simple conversation (“What grass?”).
Gatsby’s disheveled appearance (pale with dark signs of sleepiness beneath his eyes).
Gatsby’s vacant eyes and uncertain voice.

Fitzgerald uses telling to quickly establish context and give us a hint at the character’s inner state, which then allows him to devote more narrative space to showing Gatsby’s actual nervous behavior when he arrives.

Show and tell work together to build voice. It’s not just what you describe, but how much space you give it and why.

Rule 2: Tell to compress.

Third and last example:

From Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns

A week passed, but there was still no sign of Tariq. Then another week came and went. To fill the time, Laila fixed the screen door that Babi still hadn't got around to. She took down Babi's books, dusted and alphabetized them. She went to Chicken Street with Hasina, Giti, and Giti's mother, Nila, who was a seamstress and sometime sewing partner of Mammy's. In that week, Laila came to believe that of all the hardships a person had to face none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.
Another week passed.
Laila found herself caught in a net of terrible thoughts.
He would never come back. His parents had moved away for good; the trip to Ghazni had been a ruse. An adult scheme to spare the two of them an upsetting farewell.
A land mine had gotten to him again. The way it did in 1981, when he was five, the last time his parents took him south to Ghazni. That was shortly after Laila's third birthday. He'd been lucky that time, losing only a leg; lucky that he'd survived at all.
Her head rang and rang with these thoughts.

There’s a phrase I love — “The camera reveals the cameraman.”

What your narrator shows, tells, or skips entirely reveals who they are.

A narrator who describes every flower in a garden sees the world very differently than one who only notices the locked gate.

Your choices as the storyteller hinge upon:

Your purpose with this specific aspect of the story.
Your point-of-view character — be it yourself or someone else.

The Hosseini passage works because we see Laila’s specific fears (land mine, his parents’ scheme) rather than generic worry. If you or I were dropped in that same situation, we’d have different worries.

Your decisions around what to show and what to tell in your stories come back to the perspective your story is told from.

Rule 3: Your choices reveal your narrator.

This leads me to a set of guidelines on when to “show” and when to “tell.”

After years of wrestling with these rules, I’ve come to believe:

Show to create emotional subtext. This is about reader engagement. When you show a character’s external behavior (pen clicking) rather than stating their internal state (anxious), readers get to interpret and feel smart. This creates a more active reading experience.
Tell to compress. This is about efficiency and pacing. Use telling to handle necessary but mundane information quickly so you don’t bore readers with extended scenes of flower delivery (and the like).
Your choices reveal your narrator. This is about perspective and voice. What your narrator chooses to notice, describe in detail, or completely ignore reveals their personality and shapes the story’s tone.

I stopped hating the “show, don’t tell advice” when I stopped looking at it as a hard and fast rule, and instead as a tool. You need to both show and tell.

The skill is knowing which tool fits the moment.

Cheers,

Nathan

World Builders

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