“Show; don’t tell.” Writers take great pride in passing on this standard advice. But what does it mean to “show” instead of “tell”? What does “show don’t tell” look like? And is that a hard-and-fast rule or just a rule of thumb? Are there any situations in which you should “tell,” not “show”?

If you’ve asked writers these questions, they may have left you more confused than when you started. But I don’t think the topic needs to be couched in secret knowledge and disclaimers of “It depends.” Here is my attempt to demystify the topic.

The other day, my Little One and her friend were going over a story they were writing, when my ear caught a dialogue tag: “she shouted angrily.”

Naturally, I butted right in. And unfortunately, my advice was not taken to heart by my Little One’s friend, who, I gather, had originally written the line and who actually loved Twilight. On reflection, I probably should not have butted in, or else my advice might have been more welcome. Too bad a line like that rubs me so raw, so fast.

That was not just a random jab I just took at Twilight. Look at Twilight on Amazon, and search for “angrily” with the Search Inside This Book feature. You’ll see 8 matches, most of which ought to have been edited out, if either Stephanie Meyer or her editor had displayed competence. To compare, Talyn has 0 matches for “angrily,” and Hawkspar has but one, which itself might have been edited but at least is not in a direct-speech tag.

I explained to the girls that you should never say, “she shouted angrily.” Because you should avoid adverbs. Instead, use strong, meaningful verbs that show what you want to convey. Use a relatively strong verb that demonstrates her anger, rather than a relatively weak verb, shout, together with an adverb that attempts to append to what’s missing, almost as an afterthought. Dump as much meaning into the verb as you can. So for example, “she raged” is much better than “she shouted angrily.”

Better yet, make her sound angry and shouting in the words that she says and the way that she acts. Then you don’t need a speech tag at all. (Or you can just use “she said.”) Actions show; adverbs tell.

Then it occurred to me to consider: how exactly does one make a character sound angry? Which is the subject of this post. The process is pretty straightforward, actually.

Can you guess which novel the following beginning comes from?

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.

Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Mrs. Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere.

A fundamental rule of style is that you should avoid the verb “to be,” preferring instead strong, descriptive verbs that show, rather than tell.

As an example, instead of writing, “The light was bright,” you should prefer, “The light blinded her as a hot-white flame,” or some such. So every time you use am, is, are, was, were, be, been, or being, that’s a signal that you need to rephrase…

EXCEPT...

As it turns out, this common rule of thumb oversimplifies the issue, sometimes to the point that confusion can result.

No less a writer than Holly Lisle gives a misleading example, on her web page about one-pass manuscript revision:

Is your scene full of weak words? How many times have you used is, was, or were?… Eliminate forms of the verb “to be” wherever you find them, rewriting the sentence with a stronger verb. “It was raining,” becomes “The rain slashed down, tearing up the gardens and ripping leaves from the trees.”

But the verb in that sentence is not the verb “to be”!