Hot take: 'show don't tell' gets misused in book clubs all the time

I noticed people in my group keep saying a book fails because it "tells" too much, but they're mistaking internal character thoughts for lazy writing. Last month with "The Vanishing Half," someone complained about a passage where the narrator directly states a character's fear, but that inner voice is actually the whole point of that chapter. Has anyone else seen this confusion kill a good discussion?

2 comments

2 Comments

robinl907d agoTop Commenter

Nah, I'm with the book club on this one. If I wanted to be told exactly what a character is feeling every time, I'd read the Wikipedia summary. The whole point of fiction is to figure stuff out from what they do, not get hit over the head with "she was scared" every other paragraph.

michaelcoleman6d ago

Gotta laugh at myself here because I'm DEFINITELY the guy who would put "she was scared" in my own writing. I once wrote a short story where the character felt "sad" about FIVE TIMES on one page. My friend read it and asked if my character was okay or just really bad at expressing themselves. So yeah, I totally get the book club's point. Show me the trembling hands and the shallow breathing, not the Wikipedia version. Maybe I should go back to reading instead of writing.