Can we talk about how everyone says 'show don't tell' is the only rule?

I was at a local writers meetup last Tuesday and someone said if you 'tell' anything at all, you're a bad writer. I think telling can work fine for moving a story along, like when you need to skip boring parts fast. Anyone else find that rule gets thrown around too much without context?

2 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

2 Comments

victor_butler502mo ago

Isn't it funny how people turn writing advice into hard rules when even our favorite books break them all the time? It's like telling someone they can't ever speed up in a car, sometimes you just need to get from point A to point B without describing every pebble on the road lol. I see the same thing with "always show never tell" in cooking forums too, like bread has to be made a certain way or you're doing it wrong, but the best stuff comes from knowing when to break the rules.

10

ray6482mo ago

Yeah someone did a whole blog post about how Stephen King breaks his own rules all the time lol

1