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Re:‘Show, Don’t Tell’ Almost Ruined Me as a Writer by jfengel on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @12:37PM (#21194117)
As an actor, we'd call that kind of thing "indicating", which is more telling than showing. Rather than actually feeling something, you put on the indicators of that feeling: "There is water leaking out of my eyes, therefore you know I'm sad". Which misses the whole rest of the performance. It's better than saying "I am sad", but not by much.

What you really have to do, in both writing and acting, is more subtle and difficult. It has to become an organic part of the narrative/performance Any example you give is always going to sound like indicating, since it is extracted from that overall flow. If you've crossed out "he was nervous" and wrote instead "his pulse raced", you haven't improved it by much, if anything. But if you're fully visualizing the scene, from whatever POV you've been using so far, you can seek out the next detail and write that as the next sentence.

The essence of "show don't tell" is to be active rather than passive. Talking about feelings, or even indicating feelings, is less active than saying how they act on those feelings. The more specific their actions, the more the reader will internalize the feelings as they live it with the character, even -- or perhaps especially -- when being told from a viewpoint that wouldn't give them access to internals like pulse rate. Movies are exciting without getting any of that information directly.

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