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🗣 The Trap: Telling the Reader Who Someone Is
🗣 The Trap: Telling the Reader Who Someone Is
A student writes: “Marcus was an impatient man. He did not like waiting. He was also quite rude to people he thought were beneath him.”
The examiner now knows Marcus’s traits. They do not know Marcus. Naming a trait tells the reader what to think; showing a trait makes the reader arrive at the same conclusion themselves. The second version is more persuasive, more memorable, and is what AQA Q5 rewards.
🗣 What a Character Says Reveals Who They Are
Dialogue at GCSE is not realistic conversation. Every line of dialogue in strong Q5 writing does one of three things:
Earn the mark scheme marks
💡 Making Show-Don’t-Tell Work in Q5
✍️ For dialogue
- Remove every adverb from every speech tag; replace it with a small action before or after the dialogue
- Let a gap between what is said and what is meant carry the character’s real feeling
- Silence or deflection is more powerful than direct statement
📌 For action
- Give characters something specific to do with their hands under pressure
- Show what the character looks at — or deliberately does not look at
- Use the body to betray what the voice is controlling
🎯 What AQA rewards
- Character revealed through craft rather than statement
- Dialogue and action working together in the same beat
- The reader arriving at a conclusion without being told what to conclude
Now try it yourself
Quiz · Question 1 of 12
Which line of dialogue most powerfully shows that a character is angry without stating it?
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