From Telling to Showing: Chekhov’s Precision in Detail
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. — Anton Chekhov
Why Images Beat Assertions
At first glance, Chekhov’s line distills the craft rule: show, don’t tell. Saying the moon is shining merely labels a condition; evoking the glint of light on broken glass conjures a place, a texture, a hint of history and risk. One image quietly implies brokenness, angle, distance, and time. By choosing a sensory fragment with narrative charge, the writer invites readers to infer rather than submit to a claim. Meaning emerges from the play of light and surface, not from explanation. To see why this feels so potent, it helps to consider how the mind responds to vivid details.
How the Brain Reads the Concrete
Research in grounded cognition suggests that concrete language recruits sensory and motor systems, making scenes feel embodied (Barsalou, 1999). When readers meet vivid action words, motor cortex can spark (Hauk, Johnsrude, & Pulvermüller, 2004), and tactile metaphors may engage somatosensory areas (Lacey, Stilla, & Sathian, 2012). In practice, “glint” and “broken glass” awaken sight and touch in the reader’s inner body. Just as crucial, specificity invites inference: a shard implies rupture; a glint implies angle and movement; together they suggest social context without lecturing. Because the brain completes patterns, readers become co-authors of the scene. Naturally, Chekhov applied this long before such studies; his fiction demonstrates how small particulars carry expansive meaning.
Chekhov’s Method in the Short Story
In The Lady with the Dog (1899), Chekhov does not announce “they felt trapped”; he lets small particulars do the work—the Yalta promenade, the little white dog, the hush of provincial rooms, the ash brushed from a sleeve. These fragments let desire and guilt crystallize in ordinary gestures. Elsewhere, in “Vanka” (1886), a child’s letter inventories raw knuckles, a snoring master, and the smell of pickled cucumbers; without moralizing, the sensory ledger convicts the world. The approach is consistent: select one charged object that refracts the whole—just as moonlight refracts on a shard. Consequently, readers assemble feeling from evidence, and emotion arrives earned, not instructed.
Traditions of Implicit Meaning
Chekhov’s insight radiates through modern prose. Hemingway’s iceberg theory—stated in Death in the Afternoon (1932)—argues that omitted meanings strengthen what remains. Hills Like White Elephants (1927) never names the abortion; instead, beaded curtains, warm beer, and two rail lines gleaming in heat convey a choice that may divide or bind. Similarly, Flaubert’s pursuit of le mot juste in letters from the 1850s treats precision as an ethical duty: the exact noun wards off sentimentality and blur. Across these traditions, surface detail implies depth. Having seen how implication works, the practical question becomes how a writer converts abstract telling into concrete showing on the page.
Turning Telling into Showing
Practically, trade abstractions for specifics and static states for observable change. Replace “She was sad” with “She keyed the door code wrong three times, then reread the hallway notices she’d seen all winter.” Anchor each scene in a single sensory through-line—the clack of a ceiling fan, the iron taste of rain—and let verbs carry weight. As Viktor Shklovsky argues in Art as Technique (1917), defamiliarization renews attention: not the generic moon, but moonlight cutting itself on a bottle shard. During revision, highlight any sentence that asserts rather than evokes and ask: What can the reader see, hear, or touch instead? By repeatedly posing that question, you steer naturally toward the glint.
The Necessary Balance with Telling
Because stories also need pace and orientation, selective telling remains vital. Summary compresses uneventful hours; exposition frames stakes; a swift “they drove north” spares us ten dull miles. The craft lies in alternation: tell to move, show to matter. As a working guideline, show at moments of moral choice, emotional turn, or sensory novelty; tell when bridging time, handling routine, or clarifying context. In this rhythm, Chekhov’s injunction is not a ban but a compass. Aim the light at one charged surface, and let readers deduce the rest—until the moon itself seems to shine from the shard.