Allen’s personal comments

Showing and Telling

In this course, we will be using several readings from a classic English composition textbook, Telling Writing, by Ken Macrorie. The first chapter, “The Poison Fish,” has been widely quoted, and shows up on many teachers’ syllabi. In this course, we will be taking a deeper dive.

One of the slogans of this course is “show, don’t just tell.” When I say that, I mean that writers need to progress beyond meaningless generalizations and get specific. Here’s an example:

• Telling: “He has great eyes.”
• Showing: “His eyes are the grey of a storm-tossed sea.”

• Telling: “It’s a great car.”
• Showing: “It’s a dark cherry 1964 Chevrolet Impala SS four-speed, perfectly restored, with a 409 engine and Thrush Glasspack mufflers.”

Macrorie’s plan is to “set loose truths in the classroom,” (which is closer to my definition of “showing” above) and to do that a writer needs to actually say something that matters, something that will speak to the reader (in Macrorie’s words, to tell). That’s the point of the book, and (I hope) of this course.

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The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by Ashland University.

Revised 7/18/24 • Page author: Curtis Allen • e-mail: callen@ashland.edu.