Possibly due to the questions that Oleg asked in his interview (https://olegkagan.
One of the most common bits of advice to authors is to "show, don't tell," but what do we mean by that? Interestingly, when I follow that advice quite literally and merely describe my characters' actions, tones of voice, and facial expressions, my beta readers complain that the work lacks emotion and that they don't understand the motivation of my characters. So, the literal "showing with no telling" that works for movies and television and other visual media doesn't particularly work for the written word. What, then, does it mean for us writers?
Wikipedia defines it as "a narrative technique used in various kinds of texts to allow the reader to experience the story through actions, words, subtext, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the author's exposition, summarization, and description. It avoids adjectives describing the author's analysis and instead describes the scene in such a way that readers can draw their own conclusions. The technique applies equally to nonfiction and all forms of fiction, literature including haiku and Imagist poetry in particular, speech, movie making, and playwriting."
OK, so I had it half right. It does mean actions and words, but it also includes "thoughts, senses, and feelings," as well as subtext. Readers do want to be told more explicitly how the character is feeling, why the character is acting in a certain way, what the character's motivations are -- but they want it to come from the character not the author, they want it to come naturally and organically, and they want to be free to draw their own conclusions about what is really happening.
Does this mean that the story must be in the first person? That's sometimes easier, especially in terms of thoughts, senses, and feelings, but it's not a requirement. What is a requirement is that the character be the source of the information. The first, most obvious way, is through dialogue with others, in which the character's words convey necessary information, as well as the character's reactions to the words of others.
A related technique is the internal monologue. These can be presented as actual thoughts -- I use italics to indicate that my character is thinking these exact words -- or they can be narrated, as in "She thought" or "She wondered" or "She reflected," etc.
Along the same lines, the character can be said to "feel" an emotion. It's even more effective if the character reacts physically as well, crying or screaming or jumping for joy. Similes and metaphors are also effective means of conveying emotion without just baldly stating, "He felt happy." "He felt as if ..." "His heart jumped into his throat" or, conversely, "dropped to his stomach."
This "showing" extends beyond thoughts, senses, and feelings to descriptions of the physical setting and objects in it. How many times have you been immersed in a story, identifying with the characters and virtually participating in the action, and suddenly you're presented with several paragraphs of rather pedestrian exposition? You're thrown right out of that world back into ours, feeling as if you're reading a textbook or a manual. Rather than telling the reader about the setting and the objects, allow the character to experience them through dialogue, action, and reaction.
This is a standard feature of fantasy, science fiction, and historical fiction, where worldbuilding is so vital. The best example of this that I can think of is Tolkien (yeah, I'm one of those). He never just describes a setting. The hobbits do it for him. They gaze in wonder and awe. They react with fear or joy. They shiver in terror or ecstasy. They talk to each other about it. And we learn more about the other characters, the settings, the objects through the hobbits' interactions with them, verbal and physical. They struggle up a mountain path. They push their way through a thicket of thorns. They sink back into a soft bed.
Thinking about Lost in Space (my husband's favorite nostalgia program), I could write, "The robot had a round metal torso with two accordion-pleated arms with metal calipers on the end of them. His torso could spin around in a complete circle. His head was a clear flattened bubble with lights inside that rose up and down as he spoke. His accordion-pleated legs were each attached to a continuous track and generally moved in the same direction together."
Or I could write, "The robot extended his accordion-pleated arms and flailed his metal caliper hands, while the flattened clear bubble that served as his head bobbed up and down and the lights inside it flashed off and on. He moved backwards and forwards on the continuous track that served as his feet, his accordion-pleated legs moving in concert. A voice emanating from a speaker in the upper half of his cylindrical torso warned, "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger." The torso rotated first one way, then the other, as the robot searched for Will Robinson."
Same information about the robot, but in one version, it is sheer exposition, while in the other, it is an integral part of the description of the action and gives us insight into the personality, or programming, of the robot. And that insight forms a subtext -- the subtext of the relationship between Will Robinson and the robot. More on subtext in my next musings.
