: Re: Is straight-up writing someone's opinions telling? When I first learned about the "show don't tell" guideline, I believe it applied to everything. I have now learned there are many grey areas,

@Dunderdale623

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You're taking "show, don't tell" too strictly. There's no rules in writing - they're more what you'd call guidelines.

If you're in doubt about a passage, write it both ways. Then see which one feels more natural, and which one feels weird and convoluted. If you're finding yourself writing in an unnatural and convoluted manner just to follow some rule, don't follow the rule.

In particular, things that your POV character already knows about another character, or about the world, or things that everybody knows - it is very common that those be told. What you're showing then is that your POV character knows something, and acts with regards to that information.

"Show, don't tell" has a rationale. If you show nothing at all, if your whole story is written in drab monotone, there's little for me to connect to. If you're telling me one thing, but showing another, for example you're telling me that a character is courageous, but he's never showing that quality, and in fact bravely runs away away, that can create a disconnect. But this doesn't mean you have to show everything.

The "show, don't tell" idea comes from cinema, where you can indeed show. Literature is a medium of telling a story. You want to tell it vividly, you want it all to appear in your reader's mind, as if they were there, and the rain were falling on their faces, and an eerie scythe-like moon were lighting the path in front. But in the end, you're still telling.

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