“Show, don’t tell” is largely about emphasizing detail vs. summary, but summary is a necessary and valuable kind of writing that can at times be far more effective and exciting than any degree of detail

The advice makes sense if you imagine someone advising novice writers to try painting a picture, building texture and specificity, with their writing rather than simply laying the facts out. But this is working with the sense that new writers don’t tend to overshow

Meanwhile, I’ve always somewhat tended to overshow, to write more detail than is needed, and thus I needed to learn to tell more

Rather than looking at showing vs telling as one being good and the other bad, it’s useful to think of them like melody and harmony in music or shadow and light in drawing. Part of what defines the story is the unique balance of ingredients

I find it easy to spend weeks painstakingly writing up a storm of detail about something that ends up being much better conveyed, with more mood and theme and tone, by a few stylistic sentences.

Summary is really valuable