This is another toughie, your para is pretty much 100% tell. Lets just take this part...
Tom walked down the deserted coridor, looking for clues that might help him solve the riddle of the dragon. Above his head, laterns lit the way and cast a strange glow on the floor in front of him. He felt like he was not alone, and at any given moment the enemy was going to appear in front of him by some strange magic.
It's not a case of changing walked to something more colourful like sauntered, more a case of vividly putting the reader in the scene rather than telling them about it. So..."Tom walked down the deserted corridor" tells the reader tom walked down a deserted corridor, but..."Each step Tom took echoed loudly in the errie tomblike stilness of the corridor." is a bit more vivid, more evocative and puts the reader in the story more.
The next line..."looking for clues that might help him solve the riddle of the dragon." this line is problematic and hard for me to explain why, because coming in an excerpt like this so out of context I don't know everything I'd need to know to fix (ie what the readers already know about the riddle of the dragon etc) however taken at face value it's very telly exposition ideally you'd show he was looking for clues by writing him moving slowy, caustiously, perhpas stooping to examine something (again hard to describe how he looks for clues when I don't know the riddle or what clues he's looking for). It's in the wrong place too, the bit about the lanterns should come after the walking down the corridor (both scene setting) then the clue searching (an important plot element) then the feeling of being not alone (atmosphere/suspense) would be a more logical order.
Anyway next line..."Above his head, laterns lit the way and cast a strange glow on the floor in front of him." this is the least telly part and could be left as is, but could be more vivid such as something like..."The rusted lanterns cast as much sahdow as light. Their flickering glow crisscrossed the falgstones before him in a paterns so mesmorsing he almost missed the huge gashes on the wall. Claw marks. The dragon had passed this way. "
next line "He felt like he was not alone, and at any given moment the enemy was going to appear in front of him by some strange magic." A coldness came upon him, he felt the his shoulders tighten, a prickling of the skin, a drop of sweat trickled ice cold and galacial down his back, his hand gripped tightly on the hilt of his sword. When he turned, no one was behind him, the corridor was still empty, no terror waited lurking in the dark, no sulpherous wiff of sorcery, no enemy had been summoned, except that one enemy named fear, yet something, some instinct told him, this was no groundless fear."
So, this is very telly...
Tom walked down the deserted coridor, looking for clues that might help him solve the riddle of the dragon. Above his head, laterns lit the way and cast a strange glow on the floor in front of him. He felt like he was not alone, and at any given moment the enemy was going to appear in front of him by some strange magic.
My version...
Each step Tom took echoed loudly in the errie tomblike stilness of the Corridor. The rusted lanterns cast as much shadow as light. Their flickering glow crisscrosed the flaggstones before him in paterns so mesmerising that he almost missed the huge gashes on the wall. Claw marks. The dragon had passed this way.
As he knelt to examine the markings, an unatural coldness came upon him. He felt his shoulders tighten, a prickling of the skin, slowly a drop of sweat trickled ice cold and galatial down his back. His hand went to his sword hilt, but when he turned no one was behind him. The corridor was still empty, no terror waited lurking in the dark, no sulhperous wiff of sorcery hung in the air, no enemy had been summoned, except that one enemy that men named fear.
Although not 100% show (which is pretty much impossible and not what you're aiming for) this version is more evocative and puts the reader into the story more than telling does.
The trick is vivid, evocative and visceral writing, using the five senses helps make it more vivid and rather than telling the reader what a character is feeling or doing, you show them by describing actions, reactions, etc.
As you can see, showing takes longer than telling, this is why you have to choose what to tell and what to show. The important scenes you show, the less important stuff you tell.
Example, a simple story of revenge.
Your hero has spent a lifetime searching for the six fingered villian that murdered his father, then given up in despair and turned to drink
. Oneday he overhears someone talking about "The man with six fingers." He asks some questions, tracks the man down and kills him finally getting revenge, yet feels no sense of redemption and returns to drink.
See there you are, I've told you the story in 61 words, but if I showed you it it would take me 3-4 thousand words, perhpas more.
So you have your story, now it's about deciding what to show and what to tell.
Where to start? With any story a good opening is needed. In this case we can start in
medias res, with our character in the middle of a drunken tavern brawl with three young, fit, and sober men. This opening allows us to show him being an excellent and fearless warrior, if it wasn't for the fact he was a drunk. That's our opening a nice chunk of show that reveals some character and gives us a good high action start.
What next? Well now we've had the high action start we can slow the pace down, and get in some of that exposition, the readers will accept some exposition now and as the character licks his wound and nurses his pint we can get in some backstory, even this can be shown as a scene by having him complain that it's the six fingered man fault he's in the situation he's in, another drinker can ask why, he can tell them it's a bit of cheap technique but it's sellable. This part has more tell the show packed opener.
Perhaps the other drinker asked him about the six fingered man, becasue he had just seen him. At this stage the writing might get more vivid, be a scene that shows the hero's reaction to this news, shows him questioning the the other drinker at length.
What now? He could go straight for the six fingered man, still a drunken wreck or perhaps try and sort himself out. Suppose I decide on the second option? Well in real life that might take days, even weeks and I wouldn't want to show all that, but I could tell it in a paragraph or two. Then again, I might consider this getting straight an important part of the story's redemptive theme and write two little scenes, the first day of training, the shakes, throwing up, hardly able to handle his sword, giving up and drinking, linked by a para or two of tell to a scene showing the hero clean shaven, strong, healthy, determined, steely gaze of the hero, etc. (in a movie this is where the montage music would kick in).
Now the hero seeks his nemesis for the final conflct, I could show the search if I thought it was important, but I don't. He knows where the six fingered man is now, the guy in the tavern told him, the serach isn't important so a para of tell gets my hero from home to wherever the villian is.
Now the final conflcit, this of course is the payoff, the big end all and be all climax and should be a dam good, emotional charged scene, ending when the villian is vanquished and the hero is triumphant.
Now I could end it there, but I'm not that kind of storyteller no happy edning for my heroes, so I would have one more little scene, perhaps linked from the end of the fight with a six-months later kinda tell, and here we show our hero, a brokendown old drunk again, proving my story premise; Taking your lifetimes revenge doesn't lead to redemtion.
See what I mean about choices? Another writer would have made different choices to tell the same story (so might I on another day) perhaps showing some things I told, and telling things I'd shown.
I've rambled again, same disclaimer, I'm not 100% authority on this or any other writing techniques, but hope it helps anyway.
Cheers,
Lee.
