Warning: The 'show don't tell' rule was ruining my stories until I tried this

I kept getting feedback that my writing felt flat even though I was following all the usual advice. Last week I tried writing a scene where the character never describes an emotion at all, just lists what they physically do for one page. Has anyone else found a specific trick that actually made that rule click for you?

3 comments

3 Comments

jordan_hill5d agoMost Upvoted

Did that list feel more like a stage direction or did it actually reveal something?

ruby6595d ago

Think about how we ALL do this without noticing. Every time someone asks how your day was and you rattle off a list of boring stuff like "I woke up, ate toast, went to work," that's basically a stage direction version of living. The list in the thing we're talking about just made it OBVIOUS because it was written down and condensed. We're so used to editing our lives into neat little bullet points for other people that we forget the REAL stuff gets left out. It's like the difference between telling someone your schedule versus telling them what you actually FELT during those moments.

kai_burns735d ago

@jordan_hill yeah and that list felt more like a script we rehearse than something actually lived.