The Rule That’s Sometimes a Suggestion · P2P Author Business Harbor

The Rule That’s Sometimes a Suggestion

Here's something that confuses a lot of writers: "show, don't tell" was never a law. It was a suggestion. Somewhere along the way we forgot about nuance and turned a helpful reminder into a commandment carved in stone, and now writers are terrified of a sentence like "She was exhausted."

That's a fine sentence, man. When you use AI or even grammar correction tools like ProWritingAid or Grammarly, they want to eliminate passive voice and telling entirely. That's not the answer.

Writing is about thinking and feeling, and the whole idea was to stop you from flatly reporting emotion when a moment deserves to be felt. But awhen you treat "always show" as gospel, you get 400 pages where every cup of coffee gets a paragraph of description and nothing actually happens. (Looking at you, epic fantasy) You get vivid description and zero story.

Telling is a tool. It compresses time. It let’s you skip the boring parts. It hands the reader information fast so the showing has room to breathe. "Weeks passed in a blur of training" is a gift to your reader.

The writers I coach who create great stories aren't the ones who show everything. They're the ones who decide, scene by scene, what deserves the readers full attention and what deserves a sentence.

Show what matters. Tell what doesn't. That's the actual rule.

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The Rule That’s Sometimes a Suggestion