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It would take tremendous energy to be the first person not to die, the first person to live forever, simply because no one had ever done this before. If no one thinks it is possible, then no one is going to try to figure out how to put eternity together like an airplane or a submarine or a rocket. Doing it the first time without a plan, without any manual of instructions would be the hardest, but after a while, it would get easier.
—Susan Mitchell
Sunday, January 10, 2016

Show, don't tell

The problem with "show, don't tell" is all of the assumptions you have to make about what you are showing. You have to hope your reader interprets things as you have done, a quite naive point of view in a world of psychological and other complexities, and will too often find yourself at least tempted to try to coerce the reader into sharing not only the reading you intend but the assumptions that underlie them and upon which they depend. Sometimes a greater (and more honest) verisimilitude can be achieved by more directly orienting the reader to the parameters of your particular story, even if this must involve a greater amount of "telling."

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Michael C. Rush (aka M. C. Rush)
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(Site was originally called @ Wit's End, then
The Shattered Mirror, before becoming Webnesia.)

Defender of Truth & Justice since (approx.) 1973!