Warning: Most 'show don't tell' advice is actually hurting your writing

I've been in three critique groups over the last 5 years and every single one has people who just cross out any sentence that states a feeling directly. Last Tuesday a new member spent 20 minutes telling someone their line 'she felt sad' was bad writing, even though the scene needed that quick emotional beat to move on. Why are we teaching new writers to avoid direct emotion instead of teaching them when it actually works?

2 comments

2 Comments

iris_mason881mo ago

It's weird how people treat writing rules like hard laws instead of tools... like do they really think every single emotion needs to be shown through a metaphor? Does that group actually talk about when breaking the rule works better?

abbyr961mo ago

Yeah that applies to basically everything in life though lol.