Filling in the blanks

‘Show, not tell’ is probably the best tip you can give anyone who wants to write; and the most difficult thing to achieve.

‘Show, not tell’ is probably the best tip you can give anyone who wants to write; and the most difficult thing to achieve. It’s so tempting to stuff everything in, to give away all the evidence too soon or describe every last detail down to the colour of the gunman’s eyes, just to make sure that your readers have followed the plot. It’s an even more difficult technique to master in a radio play, where you might think that ‘telling’ is what matters. How else can your listeners understand what on earth is going on when they have no visual clues? But as any fan of radio drama knows, it’s what’s left out that counts; the absence of information gives the listener licence to invent, filling in the blank spaces with your own imagined scenarios.