: Re: Is it okay to include world-building facts by "telling" instead of "showing"? I know we need to show and not tell, but is it still okay to sometimes tell instead of having to show it? For

@Ann1701686

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If your narrator knows about it and regularly tells the reader things that no character can possibly know it's fine
If you are using a narrator that doesn't know more about the characters it would be very weird if he suddenly knew something that "very few people know", assuming that your main character or main characters do not belong to this group of rare individuals.
If he on the other hand tells the reader regularly about stuff that the characteres couldn't possibly know then adding a little worldbuilding into the narration is perfectly fine. Maybe your narrator can use this to accentuate something that is currently happening in the story. For example if the characters are talking about something racist or differences between the species your narrator could tell the reader that these differences are not as big as people nowadays believe, as both species have been the same just a few thousand years ago or something similar.
If he could theoretically know more, but never uses this knowledge, except for this one instance, it would be weird again. You probably shouldn't make it the single exception. If you decide that using the narrator is the only option to tell this important fact, and you are sure that this fact is so important that you need to tell it somehow, you should make sure that telling fits the style of your narrator.
If you can't simply use the narrator you should evaluate if you really have thought of all possibilities to show
For example you could have characters from both species talk about old rituals and religions. Both parties could mention creation-myths that sound quite similar, like the dwarves in the mountains talking about 'em old big masons from ye sea and the humans talking about the great seafarer that first settled the lands. This is of course overly simplified.
You could have them slowly build up instances where such legends, myths, religions, documents and fairytales sum up to show the reader that both sides originally were one and the same.

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