This is a writing or directorial choice that involves the use of demonstrative techniques, rather than blatant or thinly-veiled narration, to establish narrative elements.
For example, say Alice is a badass:
- To show that Alice is a badass, she would spend the entire book doing indisputably badass things. More pertinently, the book would go into detail: for instance, the work could begin with a Batman Cold Open where she takes on six mooks without breaking a sweat. In these circumstances, we don't have to be told she's badass; we can see it for ourselves.
- To tell that she is a badass, the narrator, Alice herself and/or other characters around her would merely state that fact. For instance, they might report on previous incidents that have happened in the past and/or "offscreen" while the other characters were busy. Or maybe there'll be no support for the statement whatsoever, but that's unlikely ("Hey, did you hear about the badass things Alice did the other day?" "No, I didn't." "Well, they sure were badass!" *crickets*).
If you're using a story structure or Point of View that doesn't include a narrator (such as limited third-person, in which you only see into the head of one character), showing is usually a better idea, if only because having a narrator suddenly show up just to tell this stuff would break the reader's Willing Suspension of Disbelief. It's even more important in a visual medium, since people don't tend to say precisely what they're thinking or how they feel about it for a hypothetical audience's benefit; watching two characters discuss the details of something they both already know rather than making economical use of a flashback to when one or both didn't know is extremely poor storytelling.
This also relates to sentence-by-sentence writing decisions that have more to do with an author's language and word choice than anything else. In general, something happens in every sentence written. Is the author merely stating those events, or describing them? "Alice was angry and upset over Bob's death" is the telling version of "As her husband slumped to the floor, with blood gushing from his throat, Alice's heart raced and she choked back tears." One of these two sentences has slightly more dramatic power, and it's for reasons of impact that showing is generally advocated over telling.
Now this is sometimes quoted as an absolute gospel truth, which is not true. We have an entire line of tropes including Anthropic Principle, Hand Wave and Acceptable Breaks from Reality that admits certain things are impossible to avoid when trying to make a coherent story, but it's important to know where. Many writers consider treating it like an iron-clad rule makes the writing stagnate, leading new writers to believe they have writer's block or feel they have filled the page with too much meaningless quirks, when they just need to get the idea out as plainly as possible and then revise later. One of the best scenes from Jaws was a monologue about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis as Quint's haunted recanting of events dominates the scene.
It should also be noted that action is not the same as showing, and dialog is not the same as telling. Conversations between friends, recurring topics of interest and sharing issues that matter to a character aren't the same thing as an Info Dump. Sometimes, a character narrating to themselves does a lot to show the perspective they're coming from. Conversely, action may just be time-wasting filler; nothing may actually be accomplished in an Action Prologue other than setting up a Cliché Storm that follows. In the ultimate defiance of "Show, Don't Tell", what a character says is an action.
An extension of the concept in interactive media like Video Games is "play, don't show." Rather than the player being told that the Dragon Lord killed your ninja clan and dishonored you by defeating you in a duel or being shown a movie sequence, the player is allowed to act out the journey to the Doomed Hometown and fight a Hopeless Boss Fight against the far more powerful foe prior to the game proper. Gameplay and Story Integration and Interface Screw explore more of this idea.
It's important to note that Tropes Are Tools - there are reasons why an author may prefer to tell but not show. See Unreliable Narrator and "Rashomon"-Style in which the viewer may find something different than what the narration is telling them. This technique is usually to highlight the Unreliable Narrator's particular agenda and their character.
Tropes:
General Telling:
- All There in the Manual: When plot-crucial information is never actually shown, much less explained within the work itself and is instead relegated to supplementary materials (e.g., tie-in novellas, creator interviews, etc.)
- As You Know: As you know, this is an example on a trope list. So the only reason we could possibly have to explain that to you is for the benefit of the viewer.
- Info Dump: Infodumping (that is, information + dumping) is a type of Exposition that is particularly sesquipedalian. Although it can be done in a way that is unintrusive or entertaining, most infodumps are obvious, intrusive, patronizing, and sometimes downright boring. Specifically, if the premise of your story is laughably ridiculous, an infodump will call attention to the fact; this infodump, for instance. The word 'infodump' is often used as a pejorative.
- Just a Face and a Caption: Images for tropes should show how the trope is used, rather than just having the caption tell how the trope is used in the image.
- That Makes Me Feel Angry: It makes me sad when writers resort to just having their characters say what they feel in so many words.
- Exposition: Dialog informs other characters, and also the audience, of key information.
- Explaining Your Power to the Enemy: When a character's power is spelled out by that character rather than made clear through visual representation.
- In a World…: Trailers traditionally used an announcer to explain the concept of the film, often using the Stock Phrase "in a world..." to begin describing the setting. Since at least The New '10s, almost all trailers have completely dispensed with the announcer and instead use a montage of scenes and dialogue from the film to show the viewer what the film is about rather than simply explain it.
- Narrator: A character who relates the story to the audience, sometimes functioning as a Framing Device.
Redundant Telling:
- And That's Terrible: When the narrator reminds the audience, in case they missed it, that what the villain did was terrible. Which is a bad device and shouldn't be used.
- Narrating the Obvious: When a story shows and tells.
- Said Bookism: "In which the nature and intention of dialogue is told by the dialogue tags as well as by the dialogue itself," the TV Trope page vocalized speechlessly with passion and vigor.
Telling that contradicts shown behavior or evidence:
- Allegedly Dateless: Character is said to be unable to get a date, yet is shown getting dates left and right.
- Character Shilling: "Wow," said Alice, "Bad Bob is the most amazing guy in the world, isn't he?" "He sounds wonderful; I can't wait to meet him in person," said Carol.
- Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: There isn't much time left because people keep telling you there isn't much time left. You have 35 seconds to finish this page.
- Designated Hero: When we've got nothing but the narrative's word for it that the fellow the book follows is, in fact, the good guy.
- Designated Love Interest: When we've got nothing but the narrative's word for it that the fellow the book follows is, in fact, romantically attached to the heroine.
- Designated Villain: Likewise, the character in question has never done anything especially evil, but the narrative leaves no room for doubt. Often paired with Designated Hero, though you can have one without the other.
- Esoteric Happy Ending: When the author thinks the story ends on a happy note.
- Faux Action Girl: Alice is supposed to be tough, but she gets beaten up an awful lot.
- Hollywood Homely: An average or attractive actor plays an unattractive character.
- Hollywood Pudgy: Alice isn't noticeably slender, so she's treated as unappealingly obese.
- Infallible Narrator: The story is supposedly being related to us by Alice, but includes details which Alice has no way of knowing.
- Informed Attribute: We are told that Alice is smart/funny/ugly/pretty/a vampire, but we never see any evidence for this. Subsets include:
- Informed Ability: We're told that Alice can do something, but she never does.
- Informed Attractiveness: Alice's attractiveness is stated as fact.
- Informed Deformity: We're told that Alice is ugly in spite of no visual evidence of it.
- Informed Flaw: We're told a character has a flaw, but it doesn't seem to affect them in any way.
- Informed Judaism: We're told Alice is Jewish, even though this doesn't affect any of her actions.
- Informed Kindness: We're told Alice is a kind and caring person, yet she's constantly rude and aggressive.
- Informed Loner: We're told Alice is a loner, yet she sure has a lot of friends.
- Informed Poverty: Alice is said to be poor, yet she has lots of expensive stuff.
- Informed Wrongness: We're told that Alice is in the wrong, but there's no clear reason why.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: While you were away, the hero defeated the villain in a truly epic battle; you'll just have to take our word for it because it was awesome.
- Offstage Villainy: The villain is said to have done something malicious, but we do not get to see it happen to understand how evil he/she really is.
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Have a job which would involve distinctly non-heroic behavior for your hero? Don't worry, just don't have them do it. It's not like killing people is an important part of being an assassin anyway.
Showing instead of playing:
- Cutscene Power to the Max: Your character is significantly more able when you're not playing as them.
- Cutscene Incompetence: Your character is significantly less able when you're not playing as them.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: The game mechanics don't work the same way the storyline does, or the story doesn't match the way the player is allowed to behave. This often comes across as the game simply ignoring whatever the player is doing to tell a fixed, immutable storyline.
Playing instead of showing:
- Degraded Boss: A way of playing out Villain Decay by having the boss return as a normal enemy or Mini-Boss.
- Highly Visible Landmark: Landmark is significant without more needing to be said.
- Instructive Level Design: Objects in the levels are assembled such that the designers don't need to say anything to you.
- New Weapon Target Range: Got a new item? This next area is perfect for you to test it out on your own terms!
- Notice This: Look at this object! We don't need to tell you it's important.
- Malevolent Architecture: Environments may be twisted or something in such a way as to make you anxious when moving through them.
Acceptable Telling:
- And Some Other Stuff: We're told that the characters made something dangerous, but the ingredients aren't shown, to prevent idiots from trying this at home.
- Bolivian Army Ending: When it's already obvious that the protagonists have met their match.
- Discretion Shot: Writers imply that something violent or sexual happened without showing it to avoid censorship.
- Great Offscreen War: Not every writer can convincingly depict a war, especially if they have no experience with the subject.
- Informed Conversation: The "would otherwise be repeating what the audience has seen already" and "distill the plot" variants.
- Noodle Implements: Stating items used, but not how, to let imaginations fill in the gaps.
- Noodle Incident: Writers don't even tell the details, to let imaginations fill in the gaps.
- Nothing Is Funnier: When the writers use our imagination to make us laugh.
- Nothing Is Scarier: When the writers use our imagination to make us fear.
- Take Our Word for It: Writers describe something they can't possibly live up to by showing it, so they just tell us what it's like and let our imaginations fill in the gaps.
- Time Skip: No one wants to read or watch through a lengthy sequence of events where nothing particularly interesting, exciting or relevant to the plot happens. Under such circumstances, it's quite acceptable to just jump from one relevant bit to another relevant bit and tell your reader / viewer that it's "ten years later" or "it took him fifteen minutes to get to the shop" and leave it at that without showing what happened during that time in unnecessary detail.
- Unreliable Expositor: A character tells the audience things which aren't true even In-Universe, whether by accident or in an intentional attempt at deception.
- Blatant Lies: The type when an Informed Attribute is Played for Laughs.
- Unreliable Narrator: An Unreliable Expositor who is also the Narrator of the story.
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Otherworldly entities and places are impossible by definition to actually pull off.
- You Do Not Want To Know: Some secrets are best left unrevealed.
Showing that slows the narrative:
- Description Porn: Description that goes into so much detail that the reader will soon shout "Get on with the story already!"
- Continuity Porn: An abundance of references to previous installments, which risks a Continuity Lockout or, at least, takes up room that could be used for new storylines.
- Costume Porn: Costumes that are detailed far beyond what is needed to characterize the wearer can distract readers from what they're actually doing.
- Design Student's Orgasm: Animation that is so detailed that the viewer will forget what the story is about again.
- Scenery Porn: Extreme amount of detail put into designing scenery that the audience will either ignore or get annoyed at the real action blocking.
- Padding: In its worst form, Padding is mainly superfluous fluff that is only shown rather than told in order to lengthen the runtime of the story.
- Purple Prose: Pretentious, extravagant wordplay - or sometimes this is what happens when a work is nothing but show, and the story just becomes so slow and tedious.
- Mills and Boon Prose: Overly elaborate descriptions of sensual encounters that enrapture readers away from the real action.
