on Live Write Thrive:

One of the key maxims in fiction writing is “Show, don’t tell.” But just telling a writer to “show” is vague. How do you transfer the clearly enacted scene playing in your mind to the page in a way that not only gets the reader to see just what you want her to see but also comes across with the emotional impact you intend?

Is there a “best way” to show scene action? Yes!

And it’s an age-old technique that has been used by filmmakers for decades. You may be familiar with the term “storyboarding” and perhaps it brings to mind drawing boxes with stick figures to show one piece of action following another. Much like many graphic novels these days.

Sol Stein in his book Stein on Writing says, “Twentieth-century readers, transformed by film and TV, are used to seeing stories. The reading experience for a twentieth-century reader is increasingly visual. The story is happening in front of his eyes.” This is even more true in the twenty-first century. As literary agent and author Donald Maass says in Writing 21^st Century Fiction: “Make characters do something that readers can visualize.”

We’ve heard it countless times: show, don’t tell. Sounds simple, right?

Wrong. There are myriad choices a writer has to make in order to “show” and not “tell” a scene. Writers are often told they need to show, which in essence means to create visual scenes the reader can “watch” unfold as they read.