EVERY SINGLE DAY SOMEONE tells a writer to “show, don’t tell,” and every single day that writer wonders what that means. Many writers go through their entire lives not knowing how to follow this directive. I know, because so many of them come to The Memoir Project and ask me to explain it. So, here is a definitive lesson that should leave you with a good working definition of show, don’t tell.

Imagine that you want to write about a loving relationship. Your first inclination, of course, would be to tell us that the person is, in fact, loving. Very loving, perhaps. Uniquely loving. Loving in a way you’ve never before been loved.

None of those expressions inform us. Nope. Not one, not even the last one, where you claim the singular experience that it is to be loved by this person. Why not? Because they are all acts of telling. Because they are telling us something without context. I do not know about your previous loves. I do not know about your capacity for receiving love, or about your particular need to be loved, and even if you have spent hundreds pages previous to this declaration of unique and profound love explaining the lousy loves that came before this, I cannot understand this new one with a simple declaration.

I need proof.

Show versus tell requires proof

What would provide proof? An act of love. Show me an act of love. I need you to show me an act of love that you provide or that illustrates another person in your life as someone whose love buoys you, delights you, calms you or whatever it is that the prior loves could not – or would not – do.

Acts of love are fascinating places to write into. When we are young, acts of love are the feeding and caring of our infancies that, if we were fortunate enough to get them, we never remember, but that allow us to flourish. As we age, we might get caught up in believing that acts of love are gifts, such as a new bicycle, and while that might be true, emotional maturity demands that we begin to discern between gifts, gestures and those acts by another person – or ourselves – that not only meet needs but enhance lives.

What acts of love can you list that sustained you? When did someone fully understand you enough to do or say something that was a true act of love?

When was the time that you were able to offer more than a mere Hallmark response, and instead perform a genuine act of love? What act of love did you give to yourself? Can you show us that?

Acts of love are a great lesson in show, don’t tell, and not only in terms of what we get in our own lives. Witnessing them being delivered to others in our presence can be a place to reflect on what we recognize is lacking in our own relationships and mark a time when we set out to be loved like that. They are a fine way to show how we feel about others, as we drop off stamps and stationery to someone in new grief who may need to write thank you notes, as we plan a surprise party or as we finally acknowledge what we want for ourselves or what another truly wants from us.

And in that, they are the perfect place in which to learn the difference between show and tell.

How to show us an act of love

I was recently the recipient of a remarkable act of love. It’s pictured above. And while I am not the sole recipient of this fine act, of the two of us it was intended to delight, I was the only one who could laugh out loud when I saw it. And I did. I cackled with delight. And delight is something it took a long, hard time to get to in my own marriage, since my husband comes from a far more practical culture than mine, and did not see the need for such things – until he did.

And now he does. And so, he built steps from the pool I bought for the dog (yes, yes I know: That shows what a nut I am) after I expressed concerns that my husband moved the pool from a rocky spot to a spot of heavy soil, resulting in very muddy paws for our dogs to clean.

The next day, first thing in the morning, I came out and saw the steps. And the cackling ensued.

Of course, there are really two acts of love here: The steps, and then letting me find these on my own. No, he did not rush in the night before and show me what we did. Quite the opposite. Right on brand for him, he quietly did it and said nothing.

What would you need to know prior to the building of these steps? That my husband had never had pets until he met me. That his family considered them expenses that taxed the budget of a preacher and his homemaker wife trying to provide for my husband and his two siblings. That together now, in a long marriage, we’ve had two cats and five dogs, but that it was not until he retired that my husband truly bonded with any of them – this dog – and that he and I found the time and curiosity to truly bond to one another.

How has your definition of “Acts of love” changed over the years? What ones have you witnessed and where? This makes good copy.

All successful pieces of memoir simply move from here to there. What do I mean? To successfully show your way through a story, you must curate from your life those scenes that show us your transcendent change from when you did not know something to when you did, from when you could not do something to when you could, or from when you had to quit something to when you did and, in each case, how life changed as a result.

Here to there, shown one scene at a time. That’s memoir.

Want more?

Join me for Memoirama, my live, online entry level class, in which I devote an entire section to the difference between show and tell.

Here’s the link.