The concept of show don’t tell is huge, so this is a tiny piece of it. A great craft book that includes a section on show don’t tell is Jeff Gerke‘s The Art & Craft of Writing Fiction. The entire book is an awesome craft book, but his section on showing is very helpful. I’ll go over two things that really help me. One is to not name the emotion. The other is to eliminate telling verbs.
Don’t name emotion : Go through your manuscript and search for the name of an emotion (like fear, happiness, scared, etc.). Change the phrase or sentence so that you show the emotion rather than tell it to the reader. This will allow the reader to feel right along with your character. Also, go through your manuscript and search for the word felt. If you can, change it. Change the sentence to show how the character is feeling. If you have the choice between the word felt or naming the emotion, use the word felt.
Eliminate telling verbs : This will push you into a deeper POV. Go through your manuscript and search for wondered, thought, realized, saw – verbs that tell the reader what the character is doing. It keeps the reader a level away from the emotions of the character. Camy Tang goes over this in detail in this blog post.
Finally, if you see telling, did you already show it? I find, in my learning curve, that I will show the reader but then I don’t trust the reader “got it.” So I follow my showing with telling. Bad, bad, bad. We must trust our reader! And a critique group or partner will help you with that. Fresh eyes are always a huge help.