Show don’t tell. This is a common mantra for script writers. It’s not a bad one either. In fact, it’s a rocking good one. “I’m watching this movie/TV show/play, so show me what happens don’t tell me!” We – the audience – want to see the conflict. So Show-don’t-tell is an admonition against blatant exposition and on-the-nose dialogue.
Film is a visual medium after all. And TV series, a lot of them anyway, have become more film-like. One of my favorite examples of show-don’t-tell is from Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious. There’s a scene in it where a character almost drinks from another character’s cup of coffee. And unbeknownst to this character, his mistake in coffee cups leads to a series of visuals that shows us that one of the other characters has just realized what’s going on. It’s wonderful. (If you haven’t seen Notorious, watch it).
Another version of show-don’t-tell is to see a character’s emotional state expressed through their actions instead of just telling us their emotional state. A great example of this is from the series Friday Night Lights Season 1, Episode 4, Who’s Your Daddy. In that episode, we see various indications that one of the characters is feeling a great deal of frustration — but he never says: “I’m feeling a great deal of frustration because …” Instead, we see this frustration build through his actions, culminating in him taking a baseball bat to a Ford Mustang.
Seeing this stuff is great. It’s great storytelling. And most of the time showing us these conflicts is going to be the better story choice over two characters sitting at a table with one of them telling us: “I’m really frustrated because I don’t know who coach is going to start at quarterback.”
BUT here’s the thing, show-don’t tell isn’t about visuals being better than dialogue. It’s about allowing the audience to make inferences, big ones and small ones. Sometimes this will be through a visual — Cut to: Cary Grant’s character monitoring the dwindling number of champagne bottles in Notorious. Or sometimes it will be through dialogue — Cut to: Anytime a character lies, denies or purposely avoids talking about something.
This is why this approach to storytelling applies equally to playwriting, a medium thought to be less visual than film and TV — because it’s not about visuals versus dialogue it’s about allowing the audience to make inferences versus taking that joy away from them.
So much good storytelling is rooted in the flow of cause and effect which grows out of the desires of our characters and the obstacles they must overcome to fulfill those desires. As a reader or viewer, drawing inferences makes us part of that flow of cause and effect — it’s what draws us deeper into the story.
And let me just tell you — as a writer, that’s what I want.
Charlie Lyons Writes 