Ariel, Chris, and Oren describe the difference between showing elaborate spectacle and simply telling what happens. They discuss how showing can invoke deep emotions and contemplate when telling is warranted. Listen to hear how writers enhance storytelling with showing and telling.
Show Notes
- Should You Show or Tell?
- Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer
- Five Ways to Use Pets in Your Story – Without Killing Them
- Five Disappointing Villains
- Five Unrealistic Character Traits
- Outlander Teaches Us How to Disempower Our Heroine
- The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass by Jim Butcher
- Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor
- New Moon (The Twilight Saga Book 2) by Stephanie Meyer
- Crow Fishers from Mad Max: Fury Road
- Legend of the Five Rings
- Betrayal at House on the Hill
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I recently found your podcast on iTunes and I need to say, it’s eyeopening. I have beta readers reading my first ever finished novel and one of them told me, “You do a lot of telling, not a lot of showing.” This particular podcast is helping me keep the two of these straight.
Congratulations for getting your first novel to beta readers, that’s no small accomplishment! If our podcast has been helpful in showing (I’m terrible) you how to strengthen your work, we’d be grateful for a review on iTunes, or whatever service you listen through.