“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” -Anton Chekhov
In my house, every flat (and, if we’re being honest, some not-so-flat) surface owns a pile of books. Maybe two…maybe three…sometimes four or five or six different books (yes, I know I have a problem). What I’ve come to recognize through my voracious appetite for reading, though, is that the books I love most are often those where the world within becomes tangible as I turn the pages.
How does an author do that, create a world you can see in your head just by writing words on a page? Sometimes it’s as simple as changing out “Margot felt scared” for the sentence “Margot’s heart thudded against her ribs and she gasped for air.”
It’s the difference between telling and showing, and it can take a long time for writers to master the art of the latter – whether we’re writing fiction or copy for websites or social media posts. Writing is writing…
