Warning: That "show don't tell" advice a professor gave me wrecked my first draft

My creative writing prof at Portland Community College kept hammering "show don't tell" into our heads. So I wrote a whole 50 page story with zero internal monologue or summary, just pure action and dialogue. Ended up with a confusing mess where nobody knew why characters did anything and beta readers hated it. Has anyone else had to unlearn writing advice that sounded good but didn't work for your style?

2 comments

2 Comments

chen.james3d ago

Oh man, that's rough. I had a similar issue with "write what you know" - ended up with a boring story about my day job nobody wanted to read. Good writing advice is more like guidelines you pick and choose from, not rules you follow blindly. Sounds like you learned the hard way that showing everything just makes things muddy.

cooper.nathan1d ago

Did you ever consider that the professor might have meant showing emotions instead of actions? Like replacing "he was angry" with details that reveal the anger.