Showing vs. Telling: Writing Vivid Descriptions

“Show, don’t tell” may be a writing cliché—but the real craft question is knowing when to show and when to tell. Telling isn’t bad; exposition, summary, and direct statement can move a story forward, provide context, and help readers understand what matters. However, when a moment needs to unfold in real time—when we want readers to feel present inside a scene, image, emotion, or experience—showing becomes essential.

In this three-week course, we’ll explore the art of vivid description, and learn how to transform writing that’s general or abstract into something specific, concrete, and alive. You’ll translate your sensory encounters—and your characters’—into compelling verbal imagery, learning how to “show” in ways that invite your readers into the moment.

We’ll study when to lean into exposition and when to let scenes unfold through rich detail, sensory experience, and precise language. Drawing on craft sources like Robert Olen Butler’s From Where You Dream, we’ll look closely at how descriptive writing works across genres and how intentional choices around showing and telling deepen the relationship between writer and reader.

Whether you’re working on fiction, nonfiction, or something in between, this course will help you become a more confident and intentional wordsmith—one vivid detail at a time.

Who This Course Is For

This course is for fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid genre writers who want to make their prose more vivid, specific, and alive. It’s especially useful for writers who find themselves relying on summary, abstraction, or general description and want to learn when to tell, when to show, and how to draw readers more fully into the experience of the work.

Learning and Writing Goals

Learning Goals

In this course, you’ll learn to:

• Understand the power of literary description and how it shapes a reader’s experience.
• Recognize the seven modes of verbal imagery and how they can deepen descriptive writing.
• Distinguish between general and specific language in your own work.
• Identify the difference between abstract and concrete language, and use both with greater intention.
• Understand when to rely on exposition or summary, and when to let a moment unfold through scene, image, and sensory detail.

Writing Goals

In this course, you will:

• Identify places in your writing where “telling” may be doing work that could be strengthened through vivid description.
• Practice writing paragraphs that employ all seven modes of verbal imagery.
• Revise general or abstract passages into writing that feels more specific, concrete, and alive.
• Move beyond simply “showing” to more fully involving readers in the sensory and emotional experience of the work.

Zoom Schedule

Our first Zoom meeting will be Wednesday on the first day of class from 7-8 PM Eastern. The next two Zoom meetings will be held each week on Tuesdays, from 7-8 PM Eastern. Activities include all-group in-class writing time with new prompts, all-class discussions, and questions for the instructor to field on all writing-related topics.

Weekly Syllabus

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$295.00 Original price was: $295.00.$255.00Current price is: $255.00.Enroll Now