I often tell my students to “show, don’t tell”—and for good reason. Showing is how we can make scenes come alive. Telling is talking about something. Showing is putting the reader on scene. Joyce Rachelle says, “It's always easier to tell people that a character is funny rather than attempt to hit the punchline of a joke that character would've said.”
 
Let me give some examples of telling and showing:
 
Telling:
            My dog growled when the man approached the car, so I rolled up my window.
 
Showing:
            My American Eskimo balanced his front paws against the panel below the passenger door window. His back paws danced on my lap.
             I laughed. “Quinn, your feet are hard on my legs.”
            He wagged his tail at my words. His black nose quivered at the scents the breeze carried through the open window. A woman and two kids hurried past our parked car and Quinn wagged again. Same with a couple men going by on the sidewalk.
            I glanced toward the store my husband had gone into.
            Quinn stilled, and growled.
            A man walked up to our window. “Hey, could you spare a couple bucks?”
            Quinn growled again. Shaking my head, I rolled up my window.
 
So, what’s different between the two? The first is a summary. The second has sensory details, dialogue, and action. There are specifics. You know the kind of dog and that he is friendly. You know we were waiting in a parking lot with at least one store. You know I’m married and my husband is inside a store. You know why the man approached me. And look at the active verbs not used in the telling: balanced, danced, wagged, quivered, carried, hurried, glanced, stilled, walked.
 
Here’s another example.
 
Telling:
            We lost the cat in the hotel room, but finally found him.
 
Showing:
            After we showered and dressed, I put our black cat Salem in one carrier, while my husband looked for our white cat. In the previous hotel Toes had hidden under an easy chair.
            “I don’t see him.” Don let the room-darkening drapes fall back against the window.
            I lifted up the blanket and duvet on my side of the bed. “He’s not over here.”
            “And he’s not behind the dresser, the TV, or in the bathroom.”
            I frowned. “How could we have lost a cat in a hotel room?”
            Don’s eyebrows drew together. “I have no idea.”
“Kitty, kitty, kitty,” I called.
Salem in his carrier meowed. But nothing from Toes.
Come on, I thought. We need to get on the road. “Could he be under the bed?” I asked.
            Don shook his head. “No, it’s a solid platform. Maybe he got down behind it.” He pulled the mattress away from the wall. “Nope. No space.” Then he saw the small opening in the fabric of the platform. “Hand me my flashlight.”
            I pulled the flashlight out of the outside pocket of our suitcase and gave it to him.
            After shining light inside the platform box, Don said, “I can see him. Back in the far corner.”
            “How on earth are we going to get him out?!”
 
Note in this example there’s some summary written at the beginning: “we showered and dressed.” Those are everyday things where the details aren’t important or necessary to this story and is “telling.” The cat being lost and how we found him is “shown.” It includes some thoughts. And hopefully it left you wondering, how did we get Toes out? The answer: Don picked up the platform and shook the cat down to the opening where I grabbed him! For fiction, I would raise the stakes by making it urgent we got the cat out.
 
Jerry Jenkins says, “When you tell rather than show, you simply inform your reader of information rather than allowing him to deduce anything.” What can a reader deduce from my second example? That I’m puzzled, and a bit frustrated. I didn’t need to say, “How on earth are we going to get him out?!” I asked with frustration. “With frustration” would be telling on top of showing. A reader can deduce my frustration about the lost cat. What about the first example? How did I feel about the man who approached my window? Wary, distrustful. I showed that by rolling up my window. I didn’t state it, but felt if my little dog didn’t like him, there was something wrong and so I moved to protect myself.
 
R. Michael Burns says, “Provoke emotion through character reactions and vivid writing.” I still remember reading a scene from a book by Mary Stewart when I was a teen. The author’s description of a character’s meal that satisfied the character made me, the reader, hungry for that filet mignon. (Just like the juice from the steak in the above image makes my mouth water!)
 
I like this definition of telling: “it's a little more removed from the immediate experience of the moment.” – Emma Darwin
 
Use telling for summaries. E.g. The set up: Jay is a main character who was in a car accident. The reader experienced the accident with Jay. Now the man is home. He might open the conversation like this: “I’m afraid my pickup is totaled.” Jay told his wife what had happened. “Hearing” the details of the accident again would be boring for the reader. Some new aspects may be revealed in dialogue and reactions, and those are worth sharing. E.g. “I knew you shouldn’t have driven tonight.” LeAnne sighed.
           
Use telling for transitions. E.g. Four hours later, we stopped for lunch. OR He drove all day. A reader doesn’t need a blow by blow of driving on a freeway, hour after hour, where not much happens. Telling often has a time composite. Both of these examples do. It can be longer—days, weeks, months. Use telling in those places everyone wants to skip.
 
I’ll end with this quote about showing: “Create a world in front of your readers where they can taste, smell, touch, hear, see, and move. Or else they are likely going to move on to another book.” ― Pawan Mishra

Comparison can be great when looking to purchase a product, but how does it affect the creative life?
 
I read this on an independent comic creator’s blog: “Comparison can kill your spirit. The success of others does not equal your failure. When you’re making art that makes you happy, only you can declare your success or failure.” It’s the conclusion Michael Terracciano has reached, and oh, do I love that middle sentence.
 
Why is it so easy to compare? I wish I knew. We do it all the time in so many areas of our life—especially those where we’re unhappy or not completely satisfied.
 
But how does comparison help us? There’s always someone “better” or “worse,” so we may feel either depressed or good about ourselves. Neither position changes our work or our worth. Wait. Depression can change our work by us giving up and that’s not good for our sense of self-worth. Christy O'Shoney said, “Comparison is a terrible measuring stick.”
 
Fanny Flagg said, “Being a successful person is not necessarily defined by what you have achieved, but by what you have overcome.” Or the progress you’ve made.
 
Comparison of our previous work with our current work may be encouraging. I know I’ve looked back at older writing and thought, wow, I’ve learned a lot since then. Or, that needs editing, when before I thought it was “perfect.” As long as we don’t harp on “failures” of our past, but use them as touchstones to see how we are progressing, self-comparison can be helpful. David Schlosser agreed, “The only writer to whom you should compare yourself is the writer you were yesterday.”
 
William Blake said, “I will not reason and compare; my business is to create.” Maya Angelou said, “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” I see this so much in my writing life—the more I write, the more I want to write. And the more I compare, the less I want to write, so yes, I’d say comparison is the enemy of creation.

Yesterday I went to a Donald Maass (literary agent) event on “The Emotional Craft of Fiction.” I really enjoyed it and learned some new craft tools to apply to my work. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, I strongly recommend going. (There’s also a book of that same title by Donald.) His website is here and to read specifically about Donald and where he is speaking, go here. Obviously I can’t share the whole session, but wanted to share a small portion.
 
What really struck me is the six elements our openings need to include. Some were familiar, and some were presented in a way new to me. Here they are:

1. Mood?
2. Story question?
3. Life or death?
4. Language/style?
5. Need/urgency?
6. Strength

Notice they all are questions, but the latter. We want strength in some way from a main character. This allows us to trust that the protagonist is going to lead us on an interesting journey.
 
Donald illuminated these ideas with sample passages from several books and one unpublished manuscript. I’m going to briefly show these elements with my own example from a recent book I’ve read, Katherine Reay’s The Austen Escape. Feel free to “look inside” at the first section before reading my analysis.
 
The mood – frustration
Story questions – What is Mary’s project? What is her relationship with Nathan? Is she in love with him and he doesn’t know? Why is he so helpful? Why does Mary not get along with Karen?
Life or death – death. The project is dead.
Language/style - contemporary
Need/urgency – Mary needs to move on.
Strength – Yes, she is determined to get over her “illusions.”
 
All that in just a little over 200 words. Does it make you want to read on? It definitely did so for me. And nothing really is happening. It’s only a conversation. But I was hooked.
 
For me the most difficult question to answer in Donald’s examples was language/style. I could see it when he pointed out that one text had a Biblical style, almost a sermon. Another was ironic. I think I need more practice. ;-)
 
We can analyze the openings of our own manuscripts by using these elements. Or ask our critique group or beta readers to answer these questions for us. If their answers aren’t what we expect, that may be okay. But if the answers are not where we wanted the opening to take them, it’s back to the keyboard.