This is a guest post on Anita Rogers’ “Writer Chick” Blog, using examples from Ghosts of Bliss Bayou.
As fiction writers, we often hear the advice “Show, Don’t Tell.” But what exactly does that mean?
To me, it means to present your story with immediacy. Write it mainly in dramatic scenes, and focus each scene in a single character’s point of view.
But a rich story embodies a lot of information. If you try to convey all of it in scenes, you can easily find yourself writing lots of extraneous scenes, as well as using obviously contrived dialogue (“As we all know, Tom, the Druna are an ancient elvish race who live in Dampwood.”) This is a great way to ruin a story.