: How to «show» an irrelevant detail without expressively «tell»? Here is the environment of my short story: the adaptation of film noir into literature. The characters in the story are David

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In a written text, by definition the only mode of communication is words. Whether you are "showing" or "telling", you are using words. If you want to convey the idea that a character is a rabbit, I don't see any reason to go through some round-about, indirect means of implying this. Just say, "Then a rabbit walked into the room." (Or hopped in, I suppose.)

The idea of "don't tell, show" is that it is often more effective to convey information through action scenes rather than long narrations. To take a simple example, instead of writing, "Bob was very mad at Sally," describe how he turned red and yelled. But the "don't tell, show" advice doesn't mean that you can't directly say that it was Sally that he was yelling at and have to make the reader figure this out through some roundabout clues.

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I was aroused from my alcoholic slumber by a knock at the door. As my vision cleared I looked across my desk at the door to my office. Silhouetted there was one hot bunny. Her ears hung all the way down to her paws. I might be in love. I gave my ear a quick scratch with my hind foot And invited her in, "Yo, Toots, whatcha need found?"

Seriously a cover illustration is handy.

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