Dramatize important choices; summarize repeated process
Showing lets readers experience discovery, hesitation, and decision. Telling compresses what they can already infer. Dramatize turning points and meaningful relationship changes; summarize routine travel or practice. “She was tired of hearing it” may be clearer than adding a fist, a lip movement, and an averted gaze that all repeat the same emotion.
Routine work and travel can themselves be the attraction. Expand when relationships, atmosphere, or the life readers want to experience warrant attention. Compress when context already supplies what is needed and repetition adds no experience; the routine category alone does not require summary.
Decide paragraph by paragraph
| Item | Record |
|---|---|
| Discover a lie | Approach: Show the object, questions, and response; Check: Can readers notice the mismatch? |
| Continue routine research | Approach: Summarize the result; Check: Is any new discovery worth a scene? |
| End a partnership | Approach: Show the decision and action; Check: Does it work without emotion labels? |
| Establish fatigue between scenes | Approach: Tell briefly; Check: Does detail add feeling, character understanding, or useful information? |
Choose by function, not by treating showing as automatically superior.
Original rewrite: replace explanation with a consequential action
This is an original comparison. Both versions share a premise: the document is an unsigned partnership draft, and Lin Dong refuses joint signing. His partner has spoken for him, but this passage does not establish any completed outside arrangement. The comparison changes expression rather than silently adding facts to a real manuscript.
Before:
Lin Dong was furious. He felt betrayed, clenched his hands, and filled with disappointment.
After:
Lin Dong crossed out “joint signatures” and slid the contract back. “You already agreed for me. Sign your own name.”
The action makes Lin’s refusal to sign jointly clear and identifies the grievance. Crossing out an unsigned draft does not change an established agreement or prove that the partner withdrew an outside promise. If the next scene needs the partnership to have ended, establish the other person’s reply and the process defined by the story. No concluding lesson is needed. To compress time: “Over three days he traced four customers through the receipts. The fifth would not open the door.” Expand that new obstacle.
Complete Expanded Example: What Follows Crossing Out the Draft
Continue Lin’s refusal to sign jointly. This original extension explicitly chooses a partner named Zhao Ling and a joint exhibition proposal awaiting confirmation. The organizer still needs both replies. These are new teaching choices, not facts that polishing may impose on a manuscript with a different outcome.
Lin Dong crossed out “joint signatures” and slid the draft back. “You already agreed for me. Sign your own name.”
“I only submitted an expression of interest.” Zhao opened his phone and showed the organizer’s message: Once both of you confirm, we’ll allocate the joint space.
“Then there’s time to withdraw it.”
“A joint show is stronger than mine alone,” Zhao said. “I thought you wanted that space too.”
Lin was tired of hearing it. “Wanting to exhibit and letting you agree for me are different things. Withdraw the joint proposal. I’ll submit my own work.”
Zhao took back his phone, wrote the withdrawal, showed it to Lin, and sent it. The marked draft remained on the table.
The organizer replied: Received. Joint proposal withdrawn. Please submit individual entries separately.
Lin read it and removed his work list from their shared folder. “I’m taking this. Prepare yours.”
Expand the refusal and response so readers witness the change. The organizer’s actual reply confirms this proposal’s withdrawal; an unsent message would not. Individual entries remain unsubmitted and unselected. Neither all their cooperation nor the relationship automatically ends.
“Lin was tired of hearing it” precisely carries the feeling without four additional gestures. If the next passage merely covers separate list preparation, summarize it. Expand again when a substantive disagreement or exhibition response needs attention.
Do not invent facts while expanding a summary
Give AI the confirmed characters, location, outcome, viewpoint, and available information. Ask it to identify the moment worth expanding before drafting. A more visual passage should not invent witnesses, injuries, or secrets. Compare facts first, then readability. Numbers can show stakes: a debt equal to six months’ rent means more than “a large debt,” provided that baseline belongs to the story.
Counterexample: showing can add repetition
Suppose Lin has already rejected the contract and the other person repeats the explanation. “He was tired of hearing it. He interrupted and asked who would withdraw the arrangement” can stay. Fists, frowns, deep breaths and suppressed anger before the same question may only delay it.
| Item | Record |
|---|---|
| Direct irritation and question | What remains: Modest feeling plus a new demand; Judgment: Accurate and not redundant |
| A chain of bodily signals | What remains: The same question; Judgment: No added information merely from showing |
| Question changes the responsible person’s plan | What remains: A new choice and result; Judgment: Expand reception and response |
Oh Story allows omission when context suffices and direct emotion when precise. Atmospheric detail may change understanding or experience without forcing a new plot event every time.
FAQ
Is showing always better than telling?
No. Showing uses more page time and can make a story feel slow when applied to routine events. Choose the form that gives the reader the right information at the right pace; a chapter often needs both.
Do it with the skill
Use $story-long-write to mark consequential choices, transitions and established emotion. Recommend scene, summary or direct statement with the information each adds. Revise only the chosen passage without mechanical body-language substitutions or new facts.
Read the method: Showing, summary and environmental interaction · Direct emotion and optional reactions · Book voice and preserved facts