More Reading Habits

I don't mind writers telling me what's happening on a page. That way the bigger parts get highlighted. I keep looking at reviews that bemoan: "This writer didnt show, too much telling!" It left me with a bad taste in my mouth. In this case it was for a review on Revelation Space, Ill pull up an example of the prose:

One, I don't need to viscerally feel what these characters are going through. I know my sci fi tropes enough to picture this scene without much extra input from the writer. The sub header tells me this is a foreign planet, the way he tells me of the environment lets me picture a decrepit half unearthed dig site of ancient alien artifacts/city.

This site says this is the way: Show show show, blah blah blah.

It makes you feel stupid for liking books that rather mostly tell. Imho.

https://jerryjenkins.com/show-dont-tell/

That article above: Maybe I don't want to get published by a editing house. SO why would I have to conform narrative-wise to what they love instead of what I love?

• This article explains things better but it still feels like, "THIS IS HOW YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO THINGS TM!" Here
• This article nails it directly: Here It's BS to tell a writer this is the only way. The approved way or something. There is such a thing as getting buried under unwanted purple ass prose of over showing. Its why I nearly didn't finish Wheel of Time. There was many times I was basically skimming pages to find the plot again.

I find if a book concentrates too much on "Showing." It looses the plot momentum. There's a reason why I like the pulps explaining some sort of battle in a sentence or two. For me, telling is a bridge, I can see the fields of the plot in my minds eye just fine. No reason to go uber showing on me.

Dune is a good balance I think. It's not overly bogged down by endless show/description of people's feelings or motivations. Telling gets us to the heart of the matter quickly then a sprinkle of show when it matters most.

If I already have a frame of reference, IE Sci fi Tropes, I don't have to have an endless refrain of Showing everywhere. For me, Dune was like a duck to water. I could see it in my mind's eye without much thought or prodding.

I imagine some of the earliest stories, since they were orally told, had more telling then showing. That is not a bad quality. Was it woke scold thinking that brought on this idea of SHOWING IS THE ONLY WAY! to good writing? Or that sense of: "Well its more literary!" This reader don't give a damn. Its like having a writer chop their hand off. To me, telling is the foundation. With a smattering of showing to add flavor to the cake.

But this is just my thoughts on it.

Ill leave this from the last article as the closer:

"To focus more specifically on showing, I argue that writers don’t put images in readers’ minds. Instead, they put signifiers on a page, and that’s that. It’s the reader who creates mental images around these signifiers. Granted, these images are informed by the information that writers provide, but the words on the page can only take readers so far. Everyone is different and sees things differently—we’re all individuals. We see this reflected in the fact that people often disagree about what a character looks like"-----Show Dont Tell is Bullshit.

Hot damn, I think that article is on to something!