in support of "tell, don't show"
A lot of writing advice out there encourages writers to show rather than tell information to their readers. This is really useful in things like characterization where it can be a much more satisfying reading experience to understand a character's personality over time rather than just being given a list of adjectives right up front.
But that doesn't mean that stating things directly is bad. It just means that you should reflect on your story and decide which parts are important enough to be worth showing and which parts are just background and can be handled with a quick sentence or two that tells the reader the relevant information.
If you try to show every piece of information that a reader needs to be aware of, you'll find yourself going off on long tangents away from the point of the story. Or you'll find yourself writing two pages of context that could have just as easily been handled by a character (or the narrator) revealing that information much more succinctly.
What is the point of your story? What are you trying to get across? What is the main idea that you want to spend the most time with? Those are the parts of the story where showing will have a satisfying payoff.
The parts where telling is useful are where you want to give your reader information but you don't want to lose the thread of what you're talking about. In that situation, telling keeps your story more on target. It also respects your reader's time.
The next time you find yourself faced with a section of a story that you really don't want to write but you feel like you have to because context, try just dropping that information in - even just as a placeholder - and see how you feel.
Give writing priority (and reading priority) to the parts of your story that are your story and let the rest settle into the background. It's worth a shot, don't you think?
jbbartram-illu
stormborns
janainaart
gummygunk
discoholicmusic
tangentwithtanner
