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One way to make sure a story is shown rather than told is to get rid of “dead-wood”. These are the long passages writers love to sneak in that don’t serve many purposes to the telling of the story.

Many beginning writers start a story with a long explanation about the main character, where he went to school, the last three places he lived, his feelings about his mother and siblings. These details can be threaded in if necessary and only if they serve a purpose. But the place for along family history is never the first chapter.

Readers don’t need to know every detail of a character’s life. The backstory of a character’s life should be in the biography sheet the writer keeps referring to, not in the actual story. The author needs to know these details so that a few keen observations can be inserted into the story in just the right places to show characterization. The secret is to tell only what needs to be known so the reader can get a full sense of the character. Too much information will only bog the story down and make the reader lose interest.