: Re: How do I write "Show, Don't Tell" as a person with Asperger Syndrome? I have been told by my friends that my writing seems a bit blunt in the sense of I rarely practice "Show, Don't Tell"

@Kaufman555

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My take: (amateur writer, feels like I have the same problem as you do)

Books are not a visual medium, be careful about using visual cues (like body language) to describe emotional states. Books however are excellent at portraying mental states.
Instead of writing descriptively, consider writing narratively (as in you have a narrator explaining the story to the audience). If nothing else then for practice.
Descriptions in books are often about levels of abstractions. The more precise your language the better.
Consider if it's not that you are writing emotions to blunt, but everything to blunt. What information does the reader need?

Consider this excerpt from the man of La Mancha and how it explains the emotional state of the good old Don. Especially the second and third paragraph -
It tells us how Don Quijote feels, but also how he reacts to his emotions and it tells us about the setting and about what kind of a man Quixada or Quesada is.
Now at what point here does it describe in detail his body language?

In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call
to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a
lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound
for coursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most
nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so
extra on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. The
rest of it went in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches and
shoes to match for holidays, while on week-days he made a brave figure
in his best homespun. He had in his house a housekeeper past forty, a
niece under twenty, and a lad for the field and market-place, who used
to saddle the hack as well as handle the bill-hook. The age of this
gentleman of ours was bordering on fifty; he was of a hardy habit,
spare, gaunt-featured, a very early riser and a great sportsman. They
will have it his surname was Quixada or Quesada (for here there is
some difference of opinion among the authors who write on the
subject), although from reasonable conjectures it seems plain that he
was called Quexana. This, however, is of but little importance to our
tale; it will be enough not to stray a hair's breadth from the truth
in the telling of it.

You must know, then, that the above-named
gentleman whenever he was at leisure (which was mostly all the year
round) gave himself up to reading books of chivalry with such ardour
and avidity that he almost entirely neglected the pursuit of his
field-sports, and even the management of his property; and to such a
pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go that he sold many an acre
of tillageland to buy books of chivalry to read, and brought home as
many of them as he could get. But of all there were none he liked so
well as those of the famous Feliciano de Silva's composition, for
their lucidity of style and complicated conceits were as pearls in his
sight, particularly when in his reading he came upon courtships and
cartels, where he often found passages like "the reason of the
unreason with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that
with reason I murmur at your beauty;" or again, "the high heavens,
that of your divinity divinely fortify you with the stars, render you
deserving of the desert your greatness deserves." Over conceits of
this sort the poor gentleman lost his wits, and used to lie awake
striving to understand them and worm the meaning out of them; what
Aristotle himself could not have made out or extracted had he come to
life again for that special purpose. He was not at all easy about the
wounds which Don Belianis gave and took, because it seemed to him
that, great as were the surgeons who had cured him, he must have had
his face and body covered all over with seams and scars. He commended,
however, the author's way of ending his book with the promise of that
interminable adventure, and many a time was he tempted to take up his
pen and finish it properly as is there proposed, which no doubt he
would have done, and made a successful piece of work of it too, had
not greater and more absorbing thoughts prevented him.

Many an argument did he have with the curate of his village (a learned
man, and a graduate of Siguenza) as to which had been the better
knight, Palmerin of England or Amadis of Gaul. Master Nicholas, the
village barber, however, used to say that neither of them came up to
the Knight of Phoebus, and that if there was any that could compare
with him it was Don Galaor, the brother of Amadis of Gaul, because he
had a spirit that was equal to every occasion, and was no finikin
knight, nor lachrymose like his brother, while in the matter of valour
he was not a whit behind him. In short, he became so absorbed in his
books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days
from dawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and
much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits. His fancy
grew full of what he used to read about in his books, enchantments,
quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, agonies, and
all sorts of impossible nonsense; and it so possessed his mind that
the whole fabric of invention and fancy he read of was true, that to
him no history in the world had more reality in it. He used to say the
Cid Ruy Diaz was a very good knight, but that he was not to be
compared with the Knight of the Burning Sword who with one back-stroke
cut in half two fierce and monstrous giants. He thought more of
Bernardo del Carpio because at Roncesvalles he slew Roland in spite of
enchantments, availing himself of the artifice of Hercules when he
strangled Antaeus the son of Terra in his arms. He approved highly of
the giant Morgante, because, although of the giant breed which is
always arrogant and ill-conditioned, he alone was affable and
well-bred. But above all he admired Reinaldos of Montalban, especially
when he saw him sallying forth from his castle and robbing everyone he
met, and when beyond the seas he stole that image of Mahomet which, as
his history says, was entirely of gold. To have a bout of kicking at
that traitor of a Ganelon he would have given his housekeeper, and his
niece into the bargain.

Summary:
Do not just include emotions, include mental states.
Repeat them.
Show how the character acts or fails to act on them.
Use them as a vehicle to provide information about the character and the setting.
Minimize visual descriptions and maximize mental descriptions.

In your example:
1. Character is surprised.
Does he:
a) Recoil in fear?
b) Leap up from his chair in delight?
c) Snap at the surprise in anger?

Him raising his eyebrow doesn't tell me anything interesting about the scene.

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