Exercise for Lesson 5: Show, Not Tell

Instructions: In this lesson, we learned how to get our point across by showing our audience what we mean as opposed to telling them about it. Below are sentences stated as plain as day. Do your best to write a short paragraph showing these descriptions. An example is provided at the end of the lesson, for your benefit.

1. Jane really enjoys roller coasters.
2. Shauna is jealous of her younger sister, Lea because she has a car and she doesn’t.
3. Norman is extremely shy.
4. Lydia has a fear of heights.
5. James really dislikes Science class.

Below is an example to help you better understand how to go about the exercise:

Jonathan’s really weird.

Whereas most boys his age were obsessing over sports and board games, Jonathan found himself interested in other things—tiny, everyday things that often went unnoticed. One of his favorite things to do was to sneak into the abandoned aquarium at the zoo: the long, glass tank that once held a whale. Part of the ground had caved in the earthquake that killed the whale and the tank was easy to climb into, now a big part of it had lowered into the ground. Still, it was something to behold: you could see it, if you were careful—you could trace where the large body had been and up to where the water came. Jonathan liked sitting there, looking at the rust on the corners of the tank, way above him, imagining water, a great beast or an earthquake, maybe the difficulty of getting out—any kind of adventure at all.