In stories it's not. The reader (if they are intelligent) want to use their imagination. It involves them more deeply in the story. Their mind works to give them an image of what it being shown. There is then a greater sense of being in that created world, of coming to know the characters and the events, and of traveling on a journey with them. Telling certainly has its place. if your character(s) are on a journey where nothing untoward happens, there is no need to show all of that. This is where telling comes in. They crossed the mountains with winter on their heels like a white wolf, and arrived in Imladris as the first flakes fell. Journey in winter, done. But for characters, for emotions, showing is incredibly important, as it gives a depth that telling cannot.
I am a competitive person, want to improve and continue writing things that make people think and laugh and cry.
Writing isn't a competition, but it should be about reaching the limits of what you can do, and then knowing that there is much more beyond it. If a writer wants to evoke emotions in the readers, especially tears, (if a story makes me cry, I applaud the author) they must create characters of depth, and put them in situations that they themselves would not want to be in, but have perhaps experienced, such as terror or grief. That takes courage, because to do it well, a writer rips away the barriers they live behind, the face they show the world, and draws on the trauma we all try to bury. To make people laugh requires a talent, but people like laughing. People flinch from hurt. But to write hurt, grief, fear, pain and to write it well, an author has to go into that part of themselves where those emotions live, let them free, and write them. It's not easy, and shouldn't feel easy, but most of us have known those feelings, and so they speak to us.
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In stories it's not. The reader (if they are intelligent) want to use their imagination. It involves them more deeply in the story. Their mind works to give them an image of what it being shown. There is then a greater sense of being in that created world, of coming to know the characters and the events, and of traveling on a journey with them.
Telling certainly has its place. if your character(s) are on a journey where nothing untoward happens, there is no need to show all of that. This is where telling comes in.
They crossed the mountains with winter on their heels like a white wolf, and arrived in Imladris as the first flakes fell. Journey in winter, done. But for characters, for emotions, showing is incredibly important, as it gives a depth that telling cannot.
I am a competitive person, want to improve and continue writing things that make people think and laugh and cry.
Writing isn't a competition, but it should be about reaching the limits of what you can do, and then knowing that there is much more beyond it. If a writer wants to evoke emotions in the readers, especially tears, (if a story makes me cry, I applaud the author) they must create characters of depth, and put them in situations that they themselves would not want to be in, but have perhaps experienced, such as terror or grief.
That takes courage, because to do it well, a writer rips away the barriers they live behind, the face they show the world, and draws on the trauma we all try to bury. To make people laugh requires a talent, but people like laughing. People flinch from hurt. But to write hurt, grief, fear, pain and to write it well, an author has to go into that part of themselves where those emotions live, let them free, and write them. It's not easy, and shouldn't feel easy, but most of us have known those feelings, and so they speak to us.