How can listeners feel your story?

📌 In audio, telling is like reading a summary aloud. Showing is like staging a scene with voice, rhythm, and sound effects. When you replace abstract words with actions, dialogue, and sensory detail, listeners feel the story — they don't just get informed of it.

🔗 Related resource: See the Example Breakdown - Romance for a full annotated chapter that puts these "showing" techniques into practice.

How Do We Do This?

By swapping one set of words for another.

🔴 Telling 🟢 Showing
Emotion labels: happy, sad, angry, nervous, tired Sensory verbs: trembled, flushed, staggered, whispered, slammed
Abstract states: beautiful, ugly, good, bad, nice, terrible Concrete imagery: sweat dripping, knuckles whitening, eyes darting, cracked walls, radiant face, soothing voice
Mental verbs: knew, thought, realized, remembered, believed ("She thought about what happened that day.") Dialogue cues: "Don't you dare!" vs. "She was angry."
— Metaphors/similes: Her patience snapped like a brittle twig.
— Sound cues: rattling keys, creaking doors, slammed drawers

Example: Before & After

🔴 Telling

  1. Maria was angry.
  2. Jaden was nervous.
  3. The room was scary.
  4. The cake was delicious.
  5. Abel was exhausted.

🟢 Showing

  1. Maria's words snapped like brittle glass. "Enough!" she shouted, the chair legs screeching as she shoved it back.
  2. Jaden's breath came shallow, the key rattling against the lock as his fingers slipped again and again.
  3. The floorboards groaned under each step, and a cold draft whispered through the shadowed room.
  4. The frosting melted on his tongue, rich with butter and vanilla.