Free Show, Don't Tell Checker

Find the abstract telling in your manuscript and turn it into immersive, sensory writing.

Every writer knows the golden rule of fiction: show, don’t tell. But when you are thousands of words deep into a draft, it becomes very hard to spot your own narrative shortcuts. The sentence that names an emotion outright reads perfectly fine to the person who wrote it, because they can already see the scene.

Instead of hunting for exposition by hand, run this show-don’t-tell checker over the draft. It works as a developmental editor would: it scans your prose, flags the places where you are summarising an emotion, a character trait, or an atmosphere instead of dramatising it, and proposes sensory, action-driven alternatives that let the reader infer what you were spelling out.

It flags five distinct kinds of telling — named emotions, summary character description, atmospheric shorthand, motivational exposition, and the redundant line that explains a moment you had already shown. Deliberate compression is left alone: transitional summary and ironic narrative distance are craft choices, not mistakes, and the audit is built to tell the difference.

How to use this checker

  1. Paste a scene or chapter from your manuscript into the text field below.
  2. Click Copy full prompt to clipboard — you get the audit instructions and your text together, in one block.
  3. Paste that into your preferred LLM: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or any other.

You will get back each flagged passage, an explanation of why it reads as telling, and a rewrite that keeps your voice, tense, and point of view.

Analyze the following text for instances where emotion, character traits, or atmosphere are stated abstractly rather than conveyed through concrete detail. Focus on these categories: 1. Named emotions — sentences that label a feeling outright ("She was angry," "He felt sad," "A sense of dread filled the room"). Flag any instance where an emotion word does the work that action, sensation, or detail should be doing. 2. Summary character descriptions — passages that announce a trait instead of dramatizing it ("He was a generous man," "She had a sharp wit"). These rob the reader of the chance to infer character from behavior. 3. Atmospheric shorthand — vague scene-setting that tells the reader what to feel rather than building the feeling through specifics ("The place was creepy," "It was a beautiful day," "The tension was palpable"). 4. Motivational exposition — narration that explains why a character does something instead of letting the action and context speak for itself ("Because she wanted to impress him, she wore her best dress"). 5. Redundant telling after showing — cases where the text successfully shows something through detail but then immediately undercuts it by explaining the point ("He slammed the door and stormed down the hall. He was furious."). Flag the redundant line. For each instance found, provide the original passage in bold, a brief explanation of why it reads as telling, and a rewritten alternative in italic that conveys the same meaning through specific sensory details, body language, dialogue, action, or environment. Match the voice, tense, and point of view of the original. Do not flag deliberate stylistic compression — quick transitional summaries that skip across time, or intentional narrative distance used for ironic or comedic effect. If a passage is borderline, flag it but note that it may be a conscious craft choice.

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