What Words Tell

Worksheet Description

The “Show Don’t Tell” worksheet displayed is a creative writing exercise designed to help students improve their narrative skills by practicing the art of showing rather than directly telling in their writing. The worksheet provides a series of character statements that declare a trait, such as “Jill is proud of her artistic talent,” and students are tasked with rewriting these statements into one or two sentences that illustrate the character’s trait through actions, dialogue, or expressions. This approach pushes students to think more deeply about how they can present a character’s qualities in a story without explicitly stating them.

The goal of this worksheet is to teach students how to effectively use descriptive language to convey a character’s personality or emotions indirectly through storytelling. It encourages students to create vivid, show-don’t-tell scenarios that allow readers to infer traits from context, thus engaging them more deeply in the text. By converting flat descriptions into dynamic scenes, students learn to craft more compelling narratives. Ultimately, the worksheet fosters an understanding of subtlety in writing and enhances the reader’s experience by showing rather than telling character attributes.