Writing Tool #13: Show and Tell - Poynter
Show & Tell in a Nutshell: Demonstrated Transitions from Telling to Showing (Writing in a Nutshell Series Book 1)
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Such theorizing, however, is too vague to be useful here. It’s time to get down to fundamentals. What makes good writing good and bad writing bad? Here are some notions that are important to me.
William Zinsser • Writing to Learn: How to Write - and Think - Clearly About Any Subject at All
Think of your job as being similar to that of a 4D movie camera. Movies can’t tell us the main character is sad, so instead they show us through body language, dialog, and behavior. A location isn’t simply described as luxurious—rather, we’re shown the glittering neon lights and the buzzing lines of glamorous cars.
Lewis Jorstad • The Ten Day Edit: A Writer's Guide to Editing a Novel in Ten Days (The Ten Day Novelist Book 3)
Eliminate every such fact that is a known attribute: don’t tell us that the sea had waves and the sand was white. Find details that are significant. They may be important to your narrative; they may be unusual, or colorful, or comic, or entertaining. But make sure they do useful work.
William Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
Stick with the action—avoid the abstraction, that is the rule. When you prepare your argument, ask, "Am I abstracting or am I showing and telling as we once learned to do as children?" Remember, the power of the story is in its ability to create action, and to avoid abstraction. When someone abstracts in his argument to me, it requires me
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