Up: [[Personal Essay and Memoir]] Created: 2024-03-07 Paraphrasing a [[Metaphor]] used by Gail Carson Levine in her book, *Writing Magic*: Writers have a special telescope. When they dial down the magnification and look at something from a distance, picking out only the substantial landmarks, that’s **telling**. When the magnification is increased so we can see all the details, that’s **showing**. Showing comes from our five senses of which [[sight]] is usually the easiest and certainly the most commonly referenced in the Western world. Non-Western writers rely more on [[hearing]]. The most notable writer to avoid telling was Ernest Hemingway. He said, *Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.* But for most of us, the action, dialogue and characters are places where we show, and the context, backstory and ideas are told. In essays, there’s a third category, a subset of telling called **explaining** or **exposition**. It pulls from research, observations of the surrounding culture, and personal experiences. All three work together to create essays that are both concrete and abstract. When someone says you need to show more and tell less, it may be that you need more concrete details. But just showing more usually won’t solve it. In *The Art of the Essay*, Charity Singleton Craig gives the example of showing us the walk she takes, the clothes she is wearing, the mallards on the lake, and the temperature and breeze of the day. But, she says, none of that reveals the storms forecasted to come in on the weekend or how those particular storms contribute to an understanding of climate change. For that you need telling and explaining. There’s another problem with too much showing. Excessive description can drag down the text. A way to avoid getting excessively detailed is to ask ourselves what questions the reader might have and then provide just enough detail to answer those questions. And a way to do that is to get some distance from the place you’re writing about so that the reader’s questions become your questions.