Storytelling is a bit of a misnomer. It’s not about recounting events. We tell people about things that have happened, but to be truly engaging on the page, we need to bring the reader into the experience. Most new writers tell a story as though they’re talking to someone at a coffee shop. The goal, though, is to bring the reader into your body, so they feel what you felt, see what you saw, hear what you heard, etc.

The Difference Between Showing and Telling

I read somewhere that I should include an embarrassing story in my bio to humanize me (I don’t think my accomplishments are so grand that I need to prove I have clay feet, but whatever… )

One morning last spring, I woke up to find a spider on my pillow. I scrambled to find a piece of card stock, ushered the spider onto it, and raced out the front door to deposit the spider in the garden. It was when I heard my neighbor’s car start that I realized I was only wearing a t-shirt.

Here are the pieces of information in that story:

• I live in a place where spiders sometimes get in
• I’m not the type of person who kills spiders, but I do get freaked out by them
• I live in a house (“front door”), or at least part of a house, with a garden 
• I live in a slightly suburban neighbourhood (I have neighbours who have cars. The street is quiet enough that a car starting is a noticable event)
• I care more about not harming spiders—and about getting them out of the house—than I do about appearances
• I am, at times, oblivious to my surroundings (not thinking about appropriate clothing), especially first thing in the morning
• The night before this story, I slept in a t-shirt (which conveys a bit about my personality, and personal style, or lack thereof)

If I’d written that list of information, a reader might well wonder why—and would’ve been bored by the second sentence. I could have gone deeper, into the fragrance of the early morning flowers, or the juxtaposition of adrenalin and sleepiness, but this wasn’t a pivotal life moment. Hopefully, the reader experiences the embarrassment I felt in that moment, at the same moment it arose in me—without my having add, “I was so embarrassed!”

Choosing What to Show and What to Tell

You don’t need to show everything—to use a film analogy, think of “showing” as zooming in on a scene and “telling” as a shortcut to the next scene. Or, to use a Buddhist metaphor, think of your story as a mala—each bead is a scene you show, and the moments of telling are the thread that connects them…

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