This week, I’m continuing my discussion of “show, don’t tell”.

This time, I’m taking a step back and instead of talking about how show, don’t tell works, I’m talking about what makes it so difficult for writers to show in the first place.

Here’s the headline: showing in fiction runs counter to our default storytelling mode, the way that we are taught to share stories from childhood on.

In this episode, I’m sharing three specific ways that “showing” requires us to break free of our storytelling defualt mode and instead craft stories in a different way. They are:

1. Showing runs counter to the natural way we tell stories verbally.
2. Showing requires more words than telling. The opposite of writing for school and business where being concise is put above everything else.
3. Showing is often linked with writing in scenes, but most people write their stories as one long series of things that happen.

Here are the resources and tools mentioned in this episode:

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Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!

For a full transcript of the episode, please visit https://oliviahelpswriters.com/bwp/17.