Telling to find what resonates

I’ve mentioned “Show, don’t tell” many times on this blog including yesterday’s post. Despite this, the blog is full of “telling.” Isn’t that hypocritical?

Not really.

I’ve put together a handful of articles where I “show” more than tell. And all the “telling” isn’t a waste. If something resonates in the telling, then it will blow minds in the showing.

Since there is such a huge gap in the effort needed to show vs. tell, telling creates leverage in the lesser effort needed to find the proper topics that people need to understand and resonate with. This is really no different than the physical advantage that comes from a lever to move a heavy object. Less force required to move the object. The object in this case just happens to be someone’s worldview. Using this methodology, once you find the proper topics, you can then put in the proper effort to show people what they need to understand it expanding the range of the audience who can be influenced by it.

If you spent all the time producing high-quality content that really illustrates your points, you will invest a significant amount of time and will become highly demoralized if those topics weren’t popular after that much energy put into them. Telling fills that gap. Not to mention, by doing the writing or speaking, you are building the future outline for what needs to be illustrated. If you can’t clearly write or speak about a topic, your changes of clearly illustrating are near zero.

“Show don’t tell” is still a great axiom, but it works best after figuring out what is really important and needs to be shown. Telling is a path to getting there.