Joe Hansdorf brought a guinea pig to school. He held the exotic animal before our class during Show and Tell. As he explained where guinea pigs came from, what they ate and how to take care of them, I was transfixed by the small, bread loaf shape of its body and the face that looked as if it were a cross between a rabbit and a rat. For all I can recollect today, those bizarre rodents may well hail from Philadelphia where they spend their days grazing on cheese steaks and fries. What I do remember is the black, dime-sized eyes and short, almost bird-like legs. I can still recall the quick squealing sound that probably earned them the surname of pig, the faint scent of pine shavings that had been soaked up from bedding, and the white fur that ran beneath my stroking fingers like the bristles of a new paint brush. Joe Hansdorf showed me the difference between showing and telling.

Of that grade school experience, the only memories I've kept for the last sixteen years are the ones gained through sensory stimulation. I remember the sights, sounds, smells, and feel of a guinea pig, but Joe's presentation has long since retired to a graveyard where it keeps company with many other presentations, facts, and lectures that were all delivered in a telling form which did not engage my other senses. Along with those ghosts are many poems, articles, and stories that found themselves in the same graveyard by making a similar, fatal mistake; they engaged my sense of sight as I scanned the lines, but asked for nothing more.

In fiction, sensory stimulation is called concrete detail. It is the information that conveys how items look, smell, sound, feel, and taste. In poetry, this same information is usually delivered in the form of metaphor and simile. Writing that actively makes use of these constructs asks the reader to do more than simply sit in a passive manner and run his eyes over lines of script like rain drops tracing down a window. It asks the reader to actively engage the five senses and, therefore, the writing becomes a more personal experience. Writing that is delivered with the richness of sensory detail causes the reader to recall the memory of sensory experiences. A reader draws a closer connection with the narrator because, if nothing else, he can relate to the facial features of rabbits and rats. He can smell pine shavings. Stroking the bristles of a new paint brush is something that the reader and narrator will likely have in common, and will create a sense of empathy.

The reader will care more about the characters of a story because sensory stimulation is something everyone experiences. It is what every living thing has in common. It is important to show such details because, regardless of which language a person speaks, a guinea pig will always look, smell, sound, and feel like a guinea pig. If the reader is simply told that Joe Hansdorf brought a guinea pig to school, however, and nothing more, he is left feeling that this is just extra information to get out of the way before he reaches the meat of the story. Writing that tells can alienate the reader. Writing that shows can arouse compassion and understanding.

Admittedly, it is easier to read someone else's work and pick out what is showing and what is telling than it is to read one's own work for the same qualities. To distinguish whether one's own work is more show than tell, the best advice is to have an objective person read the work and comment on it. If that's not an option, another approach is to make five columns on a piece of paper and label each column with one of the five senses. Next, read the work in question and mark a tally in the respective column when a sense is stimulated. How does the writing score? Are the columns peppered like a gravel road with marks? Are they as bare as a desert sky? Are some columns more full than others? This is not an exercise to grade one's writing. It is simply an activity to call attention to the use of concrete detail, metaphor, and simile, so the writer might pay more attention to flagging areas. Did the work in question just tell about its guinea pig, or did it bring it to class?