Read This Show Don’t Tell Example

Writers are often told to “show, don’t tell,” but what does that really mean? When Alina Adams revised a pivotal scene in her upcoming novel Go On Pretending, you can see firsthand how turning exposition into action and dialogue made the emotions more powerful, the stakes higher, and the characters more vivid. Thanks to an insightful editorial suggestion, what was once an internal monologue transformed into a dynamic exchange that pulled readers deeper into the world of her characters. Below, Alina shares a look at that transformation and why “show, don’t tell” is more than just a writing cliché. 

My 15th traditionally published novel, Go On Pretending, comes out on May, 1, 2025. (It is partially set in the Soviet Union. Yes, the choice of date is deliberate.) You would think that, after 15 traditionally published novels (and four books of nonfiction), I would know what I was doing. Granted, I sometimes do know what I am doing. But, then again, I don’t always know what I am doing.

For instance, below is a scene as it originally appeared in the first draft of Go On Pretending. (Obviously, the first draft is not actually the first draft. It is the 112th draft, which I have gone over obsessively, changing a word here, deleting a sentence there, moving around paragraphs, and then deciding none of it works and I should start all over again. But you know what I mean.)

Background: The year is 1957. Rose Janowitz is a radio soap-opera writer romantically involved with her show’s African-American leading man, Jonas Cain. It was one thing to hide his identity on the radio. But now that the program is about to make the big move to television, the pair of them have a problem. A big problem….

Wearing an engagement ring should have made Rose feel safer. She and Jonas were a legitimate couple now. Interracial marriage was legitimately legal in New York state. Instead, it made her feel like more of a target. Whenever they stepped out together, Rose wriggled with an itch between her shoulder-blades which suggested she was being watched. Jonas assured it was her imagination. This was New York City. Nobody cared about anybody else’s business. They were all too busy concentrating on their own lives to hone in on whether Rose wore an engagement ring or wonder if the colored man next to her was the lucky groom-to-be. Yet Rose still felt as if a spotlight targeted her hand wherever she went. Sure, some people smiled at her. Most, like Jonas said, ignored her. But how did Rose know what they were really thinking?

Rose couldn’t claim that her paranoia started with Emmet Till, the fourteen year old Negro boy lynched in Mississippi for flirting or smiling or whistling or saying hello – no one was sure, but did it really matter? –  to a white woman. He was from Chicago, another Northern city like New York where nobody cared about anyone else’s business, so Emmet didn’t expect Mississippi to be different. The men acquitted of his murder beat Emmet, then shot him, then dropped his body off a bridge into the river where he was eventually found. They used cotton- seeds to soak up the blood left behind. He was fourteen. A child. A child like Jonas had once been. A child like she and Jonas might one day have.

The murder of Emmet Till didn’t kick off Rose’s paranoia. But it inflamed it. Rose didn’t want Jonas to reassure her that no one cared. She wanted him to reassure her that things were getting better. What about Brown v. The Board of Education, integrating public schools? What about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus boycott? What about the Reverend Martin Luther King and the meeting in Atlanta to coordinate non-violent protests across the Southern states?

But all Jonas would say was, “Forty acres and a mule. We’ve heard promises before.”

His cynicism infuriated her. But not as much as her own helplessness.

The world was burning, children were dying, and Rose was… writing a play?

Once upon a time, she’d marched off to war in order to right the world’s wrongs. She’d failed. But at least she’d tried.

Now she was sitting at home, writing, worrying about looks she might engender in the streets, telling herself that words, if she could find the right ones, might make a difference. It wasn’t enough. Merely trying wouldn’t be enough this time either.

This time, Rose would need to succeed.

There was no other option. Not if she and Jonas were to remain together.

They would succeed.

Or they would die trying.

***

When History Through Fiction publisher Colin Mustful read the above, his note to me was: Perhaps this should be a scene? Rose could read it in the paper and it could lead to a discussion about these issues and fears??

Here is how the rewrite will appear in the final version:

Wearing an engagement ring should have made Rose feel safer. She and Jonas were a legitimate couple now. Interracial marriage was legitimately legal in New York state. Instead, it made her feel like more of a target. Whenever they stepped out together, Rose wriggled with an itch between her shoulder-blades which suggested she was being watched. Jonas assured her it was her imagination. This was New York City. Nobody cared about anybody else’s business. They were all too busy concentrating on their own lives to hone in on whether Rose wore an engagement ring or wonder if the colored man next to her was the lucky groom-to-be. Yet Rose still felt as if a spotlight targeted her hand wherever she went. Sure, some people smiled at her. Most, like Jonas said, ignored her. But how did Rose know what they were really thinking?

Rose assured Jonas she wasn’t obsessing over the issue. She swore to him she barely so much as thought about the issue. Jonas pretended to believe her. Until Rose handed him a stack of freshly typed pages for Jonas to read out loud so Rose could hear how they sounded, and a folded newspaper clipping describing the murder of Emmet Till fluttered to the ground.

Till was the fourteen-year-old Negro boy lynched in Mississippi for flirting or smiling or whistling or saying hello—no one was sure, but did it really matter?—to a white woman. He was from Chicago, another Northern city like New York where nobody cared about anyone else’s business, so Emmet didn’t expect Mississippi to be different. The men acquitted of his murder beat Emmet, then shot him, then dropped his body off a bridge into the river where he was eventually found. They used cotton seeds to soak up the blood left behind. He was fourteen. A child. A child like Jonas had once been. A child like she and Jonas might one day have.

Rose scrambled to pick up the detritus, crumpling it in her palm and making a move to pitch it towards the garbage pail. “I must have missed this when taking out the trash.”

“It’s over a year old,” Jonas observed levelly.

“So, I missed it a year ago.” She refused to meet his eyes.

“Rose…”

“Don’t. Please. Please don’t tell me again how nobody cares that we’re together.”

“What do you want me to tell you then?”

Oh, Jonas. Forever the pliant actor, waiting for her to feed him his lines. It was a fantasy, no different than the worlds they created over the radio. Rose understood the daydream of it as surely as she embraced her eagerness to take advantage of it.

“I want you to tell me that things are getting better. Brown versus The Board of Education integrating public schools. Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus boycott. Dr. King coordinating those non-violent protests in Atlanta. Tell me all of that means things are getting better.”

“Forty acres and a mule,” he reminded her. “We’ve heard promises before.”

“Why do you have to be so cynical?”

“Because I’m not the champion you are. I didn’t possess the courage to go charging into Spain, prepared to lay down my life if it meant making the world a better place.”

“What are you talking about? You fought in the European theater!”

“Not by choice. I was drafted. You volunteered.”

“That was over fifteen years ago. What have I championed lately? The world is burning.” She smoothed out the wrinkled newspaper story so they could both, once again, look upon the photograph of poor Emmet in his casket, his swollen face with its missing eyes disfigured past recognition, his grieving mother being pulled away as she sobbed. “Children are dying. And what am I doing to make the world a better place? I’m writing a goddamn play! I’m pretending that words—if I could only find the right words—that words might somehow make a difference.”

“You championed me.” Jonas slid the picture out of Rose’s hands. “You championed us.”

“I will never stop doing that,” she swore.

“Which is why,” he leaned in to kiss her, “that is the one promise I will always believe.”

***

It’s better.

It is undeniably, 100% better.

My very first published book, The Fictitious Marquis, came out from Avon in 1995. Since then, I’ve self-published some non-fiction. But I insist on only traditional publishing for my fiction.

When people ask me why, I explain it’s because I need someone to check my stupidity. With non-fiction, I know I have information people want, and they are happy to get it, even if the prose isn’t sparkling.

For fiction, I have to convey subtlety and nuance and a mood. I can’t just state what I want to say and move on. For that, I can try my literary best. But I need other people to read it and to tell me whether or not it not only makes sense, but whether it delivers what I want it to deliver.

For that I need an editor who will tell me when my work isn’t good enough. That is exactly what Colin did with the above, and, thankfully, he offered a suggestion to make it better. (You don’t know how many editors I’ve had who scribbled notes like: This scene doesn’t work. Make it work.)

Colin forced me to turn thought into action, feeling into conviction. The rewrite made the emotion stronger, it brought the characters into clearer focus, and it shone a spotlight on the specific time, something that is absolutely vital in historical fiction.

I think the rewrite is better. My publisher thinks the rewrite is better. But, of course, in the end, none of it matters. Only the readers’ opinion ultimately counts.

So I’m asking you: What do you think? Which version do you prefer?

Let us all know in the comments!

About the book

Three generations of women battle against the tides of history, from segregated 1950s America to the fall of the USSR and the rise of revolutionary Rojava.

Rose Janowitz is a pioneer in the 1950s golden age of television, as she navigates the transition from radio to TV soap operas. But beneath the glitz and glamor lies a web of secrets. Rose’s radical past and her hidden romance with Jonas Cain, the African-American leading man who made Guiding Light a hit on radio. How long will Rose be able to hide Jonas Cain’s identity-and their romantic relationship-from the public, and from Irna Phillips, the formidable doyenne who invented the soap-opera, a woman who makes-and breaks-professional careers on a whim.

In the 1980s, Rose’s daughter Emma Kagan abandons her privileged life in the USSR as the daughter of high-profile American defectors, to return to the country of her parents’ birth just as Mikhail Gorbachev announces the new openness known as glasnost. In the US, Emma navigates the hypocrisy and inherent contradictions of the political left and the right, as the collapse of the Soviet Union sends her scrambling for survival. Emma’s search for a place to fully belong finds her looking for personal freedom in the strangest of places-with unexpected and often life-threatening results.

In 2012, Libby, Emma’s daughter and Rose’s granddaughter, embarks on a bold journey to Rojava, Syria, joining the Women’s Revolution. Her search for utopia pulls Rose and Emma into the fray, where family secrets long buried are unearthed amid the anarchy of war.

New York Times bestselling author Alina Adams brings her unique perspective as a Soviet immigrant to the US who mastered English through soap operas to this multilayered tale. With a background in broadcast communications and a history of writing compelling narratives, Adams captures the essence of each era with authenticity and emotional depth. From the author of the acclaimed historical novel My Mother’s Secret, Go On Pretending offers a powerful exploration of the struggles for personal freedom and the enduring strength of family bonds.

About Alina Adams

Alina Adams is the NYT-bestselling author of soap opera tie-ins, figure skating mysteries, and romance novels. Her historical fiction includes The Nesting Dolls, My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region, and the upcoming Go on Pretending. 

Read Alina’s past articles on the Shortcuts for Writers blog:

Behind the Rewrite: 5 Revising Strategies for My Mother’s Secret Historical Novel

Behind the Rewrite: Back and Forth with Harpercollins