That advice about 'show don't tell' actually wrecked my first short story

My creative writing professor in community college kept hammering that rule into us, so I wrote a whole 15-page piece where I described every single facial twitch and weather change. Ended up being so dense that the workshop group couldn't even figure out what the main character wanted. Has anyone else had a writing rule that backfired like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

roberts9528d ago

Spent three pages describing how a character buttered toast once. Still not sure if he was angry or just hungry.

logan_ellis24d ago

Well, at least you know his stance on toast, which is more than I can say about his mood.

elizabeths5128d ago

Disagreeing with @roberts95 here, a three page toast scene sounds like intentional craft. The ambiguity between angry buttering and hungry buttering is the whole point, it makes you actually pay attention to every single scrape of the knife. We used to complain about dense description until everyone started writing in bullet points.