Everyone's heard the phrase "show, don't tell" so many times, it's like they're scared to do anything but. I read a lot of ms work (especially my own) that's weighed down with too much ballast posing as worldbuilding telling of little commonplaces and everyday dialog involving greetings, leaden chit-chat etc. Much of that is better left told or removed entirely.

There are times when you need to tell.

• When time has passed, but nothing's happened effecting your story.


• A change of location, when little of interest occurred on the journey.


• Commonplaces of everyday life that don't advance plot, character, or setting.


• Events that happen off-screen, so to speak, outside of the POV of your character/s but still significant in some way.

Most of your telling-not-showing is going to happen at the beginning or end of chapters or scenes. It's routine business keeping, letting the reader know that time has passed and location has shifted (if it has).

Try and keep it down to a line or two. I know a genius of a writer can make almost anything riveting, but geniuses wouldn't bother with this blog, so I don't need to address them.

Let's say you're writing a Regency and your heroine is returning with her maiden aunt to the country after spending the season socializing in London. She's not wealthy so she and her aunt travel by post. Nothing of interest happens on the journey. Maybe the trip was made uncomfortable by being squashed into a corner by a grossly fat man who smoked awful tobacco, or maybe it was pleasant thanks to her aunt's small-talk, since auntie has an eager interest in naval affairs and played whist with some officers who'd been at Trafalgar. Such details might be nice to know but I think you can do away with the whole trip with a single line.

Now nothing happening can also be used to build suspense, but you don't want to overdo it. Let's say the most exciting and frightening thing ever to happen to your heroine happened in the first chapter, when the exact same journey into the country to go live with her aunt the coach was robbed by a dashing highwayman who wore a painted party mask over his face. This trip she's wondering if he'll show up again, replaying details of the first encounter in her mind, like the fact that he rode a sure-footed mule rather than a big, spirited charger. You'd probably cover the trip in two or three paragraphs to a page or so, still mostly telling. Though she's both hoping for and dreading another encounter, maybe you'd drop into showing when you describe her having difficulty breathing as the horses ascended the hill where the highwayman appeared before, and then do a bit of business about her relief mixed with disappointment at arriving at the rural town in safety. But again, keep it short because nothing happened.

You don't want to spend time on nothing happening.

You will only show that which is important to the plot or character. For example, if on the journey the grossly fat man who's squashing her mentions that the ladies need not fear, for he's heard the redcoats caught and hung the masked rogue plaguing the county's roads, you're going to spend a lot more time on the journey because would be an important plot point, and you'd want her to get whatever details the fellow knows through conversation (and maybe even a hint that they hung the wrong man). You'd probably spend a little more time describing the gentleman and the confines and conversation of the carriage trip because what happens in the coach is important and the readers need to be able to imagine it.

Obviously, if she encountered the highwayman again on the trip, all of that would be shown, because it would be an exciting and important scene.

Another thing that can almost always be dispensed with are the everyday greetings and so on between friends and acquaintances. In Pride & Prejudice, Mrs. Phillips is always rushing up to Longbourne with some news or other, and Austen always sensibly skips the greetings or the sitting down for a tea or whatever and goes straight to the news. Now, there will be times when you'll want to show every moment of a character's arrival or departure, but that should only be because you're dropping clues like a trail of breadcrumbs for the reader to follow, or to build anticipation toward some stunning revelation. Nevertheless, you can still dispense with boring and everyday exchanges, the openings and closings of doors (unless they've got a Godfather-like significance to the story). Let's look at Austen's Sense & Sensibility, where we have Edward Ferrars, whom Elinor Dashwood loves but believes is lost in marriage to a childish indulgence of a girl named Lucy Steele, arrives at their humble cottage (they only have two servants, so distressing are the girls' circumstances). This is a key scene, but Austen still trims fat to get at the lean:

Not a syllable passed aloud. They all waited in silence for the appearance of their visitor. His footsteps were heard along the gravel path; in a moment he was in the passage, and in another he was before them.

His countenance, as he entered the room, was not too happy, even for Elinor. His complexion was white with agitation, and he looked as if fearful of his reception, and conscious that he merited no kind one. Mrs. Dashwood, however, conforming, as she trusted, to the wishes of that daughter, by whom she then meant in the warmth of her heart to be guided in every thing, met with a look of forced complacency, gave him her hand, and wished him joy.

He coloured, and stammered out an unintelligible reply. Elinor's lips had moved with her mother's, and, when the moment of action was over, she wished that she had shaken hands with him too. But it was then too late, and with a countenance meaning to be open, she sat down again and talked of the weather.

Marianne had retreated as much as possible out of sight, to conceal her distress; and Margaret, understanding some part, but not the whole of the case, thought it incumbent on her to be dignified, and therefore took a seat as far from him as she could, and maintained a strict silence.

When Elinor had ceased to rejoice in the dryness of the season, a very awful pause took place. It was put an end to by Mrs. Dashwood, who felt obliged to hope that he had left Mrs. Ferrars very well. In a hurried manner, he replied in the affirmative.

Another pause.

Elinor resolving to exert herself, though fearing the sound of her own voice, now said,

"Is Mrs. Ferrars at Longstaple?"

"At Longstaple!" he replied, with an air of surprise.-- "No, my mother is in town."

"I meant," said Elinor, taking up some work from the table, "to inquire for Mrs. Edward Ferrars."

She dared not look up;--but her mother and Marianne both turned their eyes on him. He coloured, seemed perplexed, looked doubtingly, and, after some hesitation, said,--

"Perhaps you mean--my brother--you mean Mrs.--Mrs. Robert Ferrars."

"Mrs. Robert Ferrars!"--was repeated by Marianne and her mother in an accent of the utmost amazement;--and though Elinor could not speak, even her eyes were fixed on him with the same impatient wonder. He rose from his seat, and walked to the window, apparently from not knowing what to do; took up a pair of scissors that lay there, and while spoiling both them and their sheath by cutting the latter to pieces as he spoke, said, in a hurried voice,

"Perhaps you do not know--you may not have heard that my brother is lately married to--to the youngest--to Miss Lucy Steele."

Now this is a somewhat exaggerated example, I think in a scene as important as this you could derive a little humor from an wary, uncomfortable young man and a tense young woman talking about the weather, but see how Austen excises commonplaces of ringing the bell, being admitted and introduced by a servant, greetings, and so on. We know these things happen because we've seen them earlier in the book, there's no need to revisit formalities even in a comedy of manners. She goes right to his entry and how he looks. The greetings and bows and do-sit-downs are dispensed with a single line, and she concentrates on Elinor's regret at not shaking his hand. She gallops over the conversation about weather and roads and gets right to the purpose of the scene, Edward's revelation that it is in fact his brother who was married and not him.

Let's look at another example, in a more lean and modern style. I'm using Richard McKenna's The Sand Pebbles, the story of a China sailor named Jake Holman, lately come to aged gunboat named the San Pablo (her crew call themselves "Sand Pebbles") to work as its engineer. This is the last paragraph of Chapter 4, where Holman and a couple of shipmates got into a drunken brawl that erupted into a riot in a waterfront town. The three have just received a stern lecture from the captain about their behavior:

A few minutes later, drinking coffee in the compartment, Holman knew he was in. They were all calling him "Jake" and wanting to hear the story of the big drunk again and what the captain had said at the mast. A well-composed drunk like that one always became a sea-story, to be told and retold for years, and Jake Holman was already solidly a part of the San Pablo folklore. He was a true Sand Pebble and there would be no more question of the captain swapping him back to the Fleet.

We were shown the big drunk, the riot, and the dressing-down (the previous paragraph ends with the captain saying "Mast dismissed" and going back up the ladder to his cabin). It's sort of telling mixed with showing that sums up how things have changed for Holman. It's not so important that we hear each and every sailor in the compartment start calling him "Jake" instead of "Holman." The author lets us know that it's happening and tells us what it means. Characters sitting around drinking coffee and describing events the reader has witnessed is the stuff of Coleman Francis movies, not blood-and-thunder drama.

Let's move on to the (bowdlerized by either the author or the publisher, not me) opening of Chapter 5:

5

It was their last day in Hankow and the skipper was going to make a talk after quarters.

"He gets right fancy in them talks of his," Burgoyne told Holman at breakfast. "You don't know how to take it sometimes."

"Last Thanksgiving he told us how China is like Indian Country in the old days in the States," Farren said. "The businessmen and the missionaries are the settlers."

"We're the U.S. Cavalry on the plains of Texas," Wilsey said.

"Prong the U.S. Cavalry," Harris said. "I hate dogfaces."

"I knew an old soldier once who was an Indian fighter," Holman said. "We got lots of Indians back where I come from."

"Prong Indians too," Harris said. "Pass that jam."

"It just now strikes me, the treaty ports and concessions are like Indian reservations," Holman said. "Only it's the palefaces that are on them."

"All but the missionaries," Farren said. "The biblebacks are scattered all over hell's half acre. They're the ones that give us all the trouble."

"Prong all the missionaries twice," Harris growled.

Wong brought Holman his dozen friend eggs. He explored the new thought as he ate the eggs. He liked new ways of looking at familiar things. He began looking forward to the captain's talk.

And that's it for that scene. The next scene begins:

After they made colors Bordelles put them at parade rest and Lt. Collins (the gunboat's captain-eek) came to the edge of the grating to talk. As before, Holman was struck by the picture he made in white and gold against the great varnished wheel with the flag rippling red and white above it. Lt. Collins looked down, this thin face unsmiling.

He goes right into the captain's talk, which takes up about two and a half pages and reveals a great deal of what Collins thinks service in the Navy, and as a China sailor, means. Much of the rest of the book shows how Collins puts those sentiments into practice and how it effects the common sailors under him, especially in the murky and violent years of China in the 20s with nationalists and communists both using "white devils" as scapegoats for China's ills. But that's for those of you interested enough to go on and read the whole of this prizewinner.

The "last day in Hankow" lets us know that time has passed. All the author needs for us to know is that it is their last day before going upriver, which isn't too bad a watchword for an author--give the audience what they need to know. We don't get Holman waking up (I get very tired of reading scenes of people waking up), dressing, shaving, sitting down at the table and greeting his fellow sailors, we cut right to the breakfast and some scene-setting for the captain's flag-day speech, which is the centerpiece of Chapter 5.

Farren's words about the missionaries prove to be prophetic later in the book, btw. Oh, and notice how the captain is "the skipper" when the sailors are comfortably talking among themselves at breakfast, but becomes "the captain" when Holman is imagining a formal interaction with him. Nice bit of craft from McKenna.

Now, for those of you who haven't read the whole book, look at how much character is revealed in just these bare lines of dialog. Who's in an evil mood until he's digested his breakfast? Who is the one in the bunch who can think outside the box? Who is the most experienced China sailor? Who is Holman's closest friend? Maybe your guesses will be wrong, but I think McKenna gave you enough here to at least offer a guess.

This scene offers characterization, mostly of the captain (through the prism of his sailors) and a little bit about Holman. All the rest is chucked over the side.

So don't be afraid to tell, when you've got uninteresting business that the reader needs to know. Telling is quicker than showing, and is therefore superior in some circumstances.