Show, Don't Tell: What it Is and Isn't

[big soft moose]

King Rat by James Clavell is also an interesting example in the show vs tell... 99% of the first chapter is pure teling exposition giving the reader an overview of the law out of changi... he could have doine it through showing in later chapters instead but it would have slowed the story down, then in the last line of the first chapter he throws in a great bit of showing which sets the scene for the rest of the book. "these men were criminals, and their crime was vast. They had lost a war, and they had lived"

 

[Trish]

as to the purple not purple thing, i'm going to trust that John Sandford with his multibook big five deal, 30+ best selling novels, and the pulitzer prize under his real name John Camp knows how to write...

Where did I say purple was bad? I said it was a stylistic choice, and it is, regardless of awards or Big 5 pub deals. I absolutely did not say either example doesn't "know how to write".

For the record, I thought we were having a discussion - in a discussion thread.

 

[Stuart Dren]

There are layers to implication, which I think is what causes these contrasting opinions, especially about single sentences and lines.