At it’s very core, the phrase “show don’t tell” means that when you’re writing, it is best to use language that paints a picture and allows your listener to imagine the story. I think this is really good advice, especially for people who are just getting started with writing or for people who tend to write in a stream-of-consciousness way. Having said that, I don’t think you should “show” all the time. I think there needs to be a balance in order for your listener to both understand and enjoy your lyrics.

The difference between a “show” and a “tell” is pretty straightforward. A tell is just telling your listener something.

It is late winter.

I am happy.

The car is going fast.

His hair is long.

Showing means giving your listener a vivid enough description that they can figure out the tell without actually being told. Consider this sentence:

Piles of brown snow on the side of the road

When you see this sentence, you don't have to be told that it's winter. You can figure out that it’s winter because of the snow. You can even figure out that it’s been winter for a while now because the snow isn’t pretty and white anymore.

The 5 Levels of Showing

I am personally of the opinion that showing and telling fall along a bit of spectrum.

1. I am sad - this one is a pure TELL. You are literally just explaining what you’re thinking. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing and sometimes it’s useful to just say “I’m sad”, but too much of this can cause a listener to get bored.

2. I am crying - in this example, I am still telling you something frankly, but the pretty obvious subtext is that I’m sad. You don’t have to be told that I’m sad because the fact that I’m crying already cleared that up.

3. Tears well up in my eyes - level 3 is usually where you’ll start to find cliches. These are the bare-minimum, very obvious things that would happen when you’re describing your tell. When you hear the phrase “tears well up in my eyes”, it’s safe to assume that it’s because you’re crying. We can then infer that you’re sad. However, there are still way more interesting and unique ways to express that you’re crying.

4. Mascara tracks stain my cheeks - Now we’re getting somewhere! This not only tells us that we’re sad and crying and that tears are falling down our face, but it also gives us more information about our narrator. We know that they are wearing makeup - this tells us that our character is the type of person who wears makeup sometimes. I don’t know about you, but I don’t typically wear mascara unless I am leaving the house or filming one of these videos. So, my guess is that they’re probably crying during a time when they weren’t expecting to cry, like the middle of the day or around another person or people.

5. Black droplets smudge your cursive - This example gives us all of the information in the previous examples: we’re sad, we’re crying, tears are falling, we’re wearing mascara, but now, we have even more context. We know why our character is sad. We learn that our narrator is crying because they’re sad while reading this letter or note. I think this example works, HOWEVER, this is the moment when we might lose some casual listeners. The word “droplet”, for instance, feels like it’s trying too hard. We could just as easily say “tear” and our listener wouldn’t feel too bad about it. Same thing with “cursive”, we could just say “your words” or “your writing” or “your letter”. Any of these options would work. I think level 5 is great for both really vivid, intense, imagery-focused, analyzable lyrics, but it works best when paired with something a little less concentrated. For instance, pushing levels 4 and 5 together to create:

Mascara tracks stain my cheeks

The black droplets smudge your cursive

Though, personally, I’d just stick with:

Mascara tracks stain my cheeks

And smudge your cursive

Striking a Balance

Sometimes, in songwriting, we need a bit of telling. If your whole song is “showing”, the listener might find themselves swimming in imagery and they might not be able to interpret your main idea for at least the first couple of listens. I generally like to use my verses as the place to show and my chorus as the space to tell.

This allows your main idea to come through, but your listener won’t get bored with just tells.

It’s also worth noting that some “shows” are more important than others. For instance, which of these two sentences works better in a song:

I tied my shoes and walked out the door

Or

I bent down and grasped my left shoelace in one hand and my right shoelace in the other and then I crossed one over the other and spun the two ends around each other. I then created a loop with one shoelace end and wrapped the other end around the loop, eventually creating a second loop, which resulted in my shoes staying on my feet. I then stood up, using my hand to push up from the floor, and I put my left hand on the golden doorknob, which I turned while pushing the door with the weight of my arm.

Sometimes going a little too overboard with “showing” can cause your listener to get confused or to get frustrated. If the listener is smart enough to figure out that “hot sand between your toes” means that you’re walking along a beach, they’re also going to be smart enough to know what tying your shoes looks like.

A good way to figure out whether you should be “showing” or “telling” a piece of information is what a friend of mine referred to as “decorating the room”.

If you’re describing a bedroom, you don’t need to explain that there is a bed in the room. It’s implied. Instead, show what makes that bedroom interesting. The colorful pile of clothes balled up in the corner is very different from the neatly folded white blouses in the dresser. Cat hair on the black comforter; posters of teenagers with green and blue mohawks; ten half-full glasses of water; these images tell a very specific story; we assume that there is a dresser and a bed and a door and walls…

How We Perceive Language

The last thing I’m going to touch on is how we use and understand specificity in language. Some words and images are automatically going to make us feel a certain way or think about a specific thing. We have natural associations with words and images.

For instance, if you say that your character is wearing “Chanel Number 5” and holding a rose, we automatically assume high class, female, wearing a fancy outfit, and we assume that she is probably a contestant on The Bachelor. Whether or not these associations are universal, they are still written into the public consciousness, so you’ve got to be paying attention to the way that you are using imagery in your language and the inherent stereotypes that you’re writing around.

You can use these stereotypes to your advantage, for instance, by writing a lonely old woman with a name as old, rigid, and stubborn sounding as “Eleanor Rigby” or you can use these concepts to create a character named Julia - a name with the word Jewel in it and that very feminine “ia” ending - to describe a beautiful woman with seashell eyes and a windy smile. By using the language itself to show us these features (in this case, their names), the artists don’t have to use as many tells.

You can also use stereotypes in order to break expectation. Meet Virginia by Train does a good job of “showing” us a character who is a mix of a bunch of different stereotypes, but it makes her really interesting. “She wears high heels when she exercises” is not only really dangerous and weird, but it gives us a great sense of the character’s duality - she’s feminine, but puts herself in danger; she’s athletic, but she cares more about how she looks than the actual benefits of the exercise.

So, let’s say you’re writing a song about your child’s 5th birthday. You can write about the exact same setting and story, but your use of specific language and imagery is going to change the meaning significantly.

Let’s say they had their party and Chuck E Cheese. They invited the whole class and everyone is eating pizza and playing in the ball pit and for the sake of my sanity in using this example, let’s say Covid does not exist.

If you’re writing a comedy song, there are tons of great images to pull from here:

First of all, definitely talk about the fuzzy animatronic rat. Talk about the mysterious stain in the carpet. Maybe an adult is shouting “Olivia!” and 10 heads emerge from the ball pit. Maybe Aunt Marge decided to take an out-of-key solo during the birthday song.

But if you want to write about the importance of valuing your youth before it’s gone, chances are, the animatronic rat will not be making an appearance. In this case, I probably wouldn’t mention the literal location at all. Use specific imagery to show the story, but focus on the good stuff:

Balloons pushing toward the ceiling, the child’s face as they blow out the flame and they way they laugh when it reappears over and over. Those are the sorts of images that will resonate with people and give your lyrics the necessary tone to carry your story.

♫ Time Stamps:

00:00 - Intro

00:16 - What Does "Show Don't Tell" Mean?

01:56 - The 5 Levels of Showing

04:52 - Striking a Balance

07:21 - How We Perceive Language

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