Also known as show, don't tell
A craft rule: dramatize meaning through action, image, and behavior instead of labeling emotions or themes in dialogue or description. Telling has a place -- just not as a shortcut past drama.
Showing means the audience infers the state from what people do and what the camera can see: a hand that will not let go of a key, a laugh that dies too fast. Telling names the state outright -- "She is devastated" -- and asks the reader to take your word. Film is inference-friendly; labels steal the discovery that makes a moment land.
The rule is a bias, not a ban. Sometimes a character must state a fact under pressure, or a SUPER must date a jump. The failure mode is using dialogue as a caption track for feelings the scene already staged -- or never staged. If you deleted the label and nothing visual remained, you told without showing.
In rewrites, hunt adjectives in action and on-the-nose feelings in speeches. Replace "he is nervous" with business that proves it. Keep theme off the soapbox; let the midpoint and the plant-and-payoff pattern argue the idea through events. Rooms forgive clarity; they punish lectures that stop the scene's fight.
No. Characters can say true things under pressure. The problem is dialogue that only captions feelings or themes the scene should dramatize.
Pick observable behavior -- pace, stillness, a ruined smile -- instead of naming the emotion. If the camera cannot see it, rethink the line.
Not always. Voice-over tells when it only labels. It can still show attitude, irony, or withheld truth that complicates what we see.
When a clean fact must land fast and dramatizing it would stall the story -- a date SUPER, a verdict, a rule stated as a weapon in an argument.
