Hot take: "Show don't tell" is overused as feedback

I keep seeing people say "show don't tell" for every piece of writing critique. But last week I read a short story that told me the character was sad in one line and it hit harder than any flowery description. When did telling become a crime in storytelling?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_taylor1mo ago

Oh great, so now I'm supposed to put on a whole puppet show every time a character stubs their toe. Next time my cat looks sad I'll have to write a three page scene about her tail drooping and her ears flattening just to get the point across. Sometimes "telling" is just faster and hits harder, like a good punchline. People forget that Hemingway made a whole career out of telling us things straight.

finley_gonzalez491mo ago

Nah, you're missing the point a bit though. Showing isn't about making everything a huge production, it's about giving readers enough to feel it themselves instead of being told how to feel. Hemingway told us things straight but he still chose every word carefully so the reader got the full weight behind it.

milam481mo ago

Funny timing with this topic. My book club read a novel last month where the author "told" us that a character had been hiding a secret for forty years in one straightforward sentence, and everyone in our group got chills. Meanwhile, another book we read spent five pages describing a character staring at a rainy window to show his loneliness, and half of us were checking our phones. There is definitely something to be said for just getting to the point sometimes.