By Sabyasachi Roy
Say it once: John was sad. Bam. Done. Quick. Clean.
But no, apparently I must paint a whole oil canvas. His eyelids sag. Shoulders wilt. He stares at the rain like a broken blinds catalogue model. His sigh echoes through the century’s blah blah. Congratulations. Turned a sad guy into a slam poem.
Sometimes I wanna just tell you. Adults here, right? You’ll manage. “Margaret is cheap.” There. Finished. You get it. Stingy. Penny-pincher. We can all move on with our lives. Tacos? But nope. Workshop mafia: SHOW IT. Describe her hoarding hot sauce like it’s the Cold War. Waiter crying. Salsa debate. Ziplocs drying on the rack. Me wasting three hours when one sentence would do.
Personal scar. Freshman year. I wrote “my father was angry.” Clean. Short. Professor Clove—yeah, Clove, guy smelled like a spice rack—leans back, fingers steepled, eyes glinting. “Show us.” So I came up with two pages describing dad annihilating a soda can while muttering at traffic. Class gasped like I’d reinvented Tolstoy. Real dad? Seven seconds of road rage, then the Cubs game on. The SHOWING was longer than the actual anger.
Listen. Sometimes I don’t want to describe the toast. Sometimes I don’t want to spend two paragraphs on how the butter fights back, tearing the bread like some dairy gladiator. Sometimes I just want to say: He ate breakfast. Done. Over. Next scene. You know what breakfast is. You’ve been there. You don’t need the color grading of the yolk like I’m auditioning for a food blog.
This rule. This precious, golden calf rule. It makes us all contortionists. You’re writing a story about grief, right? And the workshop chorus sings: “Don’t tell us he’s sad! Show it! Show it!” So suddenly you’re writing about rain on the window, a wilted plant, the way he eats cereal with a spoon that clinks against the bowl in the tone of despair. Congratulations: now your story is a weird Home Depot ad for melancholy architecture.
And here’s the thing—I like telling. I love telling. It’s quick. It’s messy. It gets you across the street without 47 interpretive dance moves. If my character is angry, maybe I just want to say: “She was angry.” Boom. Fastball down the middle. You got it. You’re not confused. I didn’t build a puppet show.
Sometimes “showing” feels like I’m doing unpaid theater direction. Like, “Her lips tightened, her fist trembled, the tea kettle screamed in sympathetic rage.” No. She’s pissed. There. One word. Angry. Go grab lunch.
I once tried to write a story entirely in “showing.” No telling. Like some puritanical experiment. Let me tell you: my main character wanted to quit his job. Easy to tell. But nope, I had to “show.” So I wrote 1,200 words about his coffee cup, his sighs, his slow-motion elevator rides. My workshop loved the detail. But every time I reread it, I thought: this man just needs to quit his damn job. There. Four words. Story over.
But no. Not over. They place it like one of the Commandments.
Tyranny. Dictatorship. Literary HOA with clipboards. Whisper, “She was tired” and here comes Craig. Clipboard Craig. “How tired? dog tired? metaphor tired?” Get OUT.
See The Bible. Almost all telling. “Let there be light.” Imagine workshop rewrite: God’s eyebrow twitched. Nostril flare. Light seeped across cosmic shag carpet. NO. The guy had deadlines.
I’m not against showing. Sometimes tasty. Sugar packet lady? Sure. Watch her. Zoom lens. Fun. But don’t make me do Cirque du Soleil every time someone sneezes.
Gerald was nervous. Period. Why can’t I just SAY IT? Therapy style. “I was nervous,” the therapist scribbles. No one claps.
So yeah. Show, don’t tell? Sometimes. But also: Shut up. Let me tell you.
Otherwise, I’ll show you. Me. Frisbeeing thesaurus out the window. And trust me. Nobody. NOBODY. Wants that scene in slow motion.
Sometimes exposition is merciful. It’s the gift of clarity. You can actually keep the reader from gnawing their own arm off. I don’t want to decode your metaphor about the wilted fern for thirty minutes just to realize: oh, he’s lonely. Thanks for wasting my evening.
Here’s a wild idea: balance. Tell sometimes. Show sometimes. Like… life. Sometimes you narrate. Sometimes you dramatize. Nobody walks around narrating everything like a bad improv actor. “I slam the fridge! I exhale dramatically!” No—you just mutter “damn fridge” and move on.
So, fellow writers, let’s calm down. Let’s demote “show, don’t tell” from holy commandment to suggestion. Like “maybe floss” or “don’t microwave metal.” Good advice, sure, but not a religion.
Because sometimes, I don’t want to show. Sometimes, I want to tell you flat out: I hate this rule. I hate it with the fiery rage of a thousand workshop tote bags.
There. Told you.
Bio: Sabyasachi Roy is an academic writer, poet, artist, and photographer. His poetry has appeared in The Broken Spine, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Dicey Brown, The Potomac, and more. He contributes craft essays to Authors Publish and has a cover image in Sanctuary Asia. His oil paintings have been published in The Hooghly Review. You can follow his writing on Substack here.
