Show or Tell?

From the beginning of my writing life I was taught at workshops, by colleagues, by learned books about writing, to dramatize events in fiction, rather than telling about them. In other words, it was up to me to abandon my journalism and become a dramatist, or playwright. Don't talk about it; show it happening. A good novel is nothing but a series of dramatized scenes connected by brief links of narrative. And that held true for literary as well as popular fiction.

It was explained that this was the result of exposure to motion pictures, where everything is dramatized, there is no first-person narrative, and live scenes are how modern people absorb stories.

But I'm questioning all that now. Endless dialogue that goes nowhere set me to wondering about it. Many authors think that endless dialogue is drama, but it often seems just dull to me, something that could be handled in a paragraph of narrative, to keep the story rolling along. I've occasionally gone into classic fiction, where very little was dramatized, and have discovered that narrative has the advantage of moving a story swiftly, and also gives the author a chance at perspective. A narrator can observe events, comment on them, which is an advantage over live scenes. There are fine novels by fine novelists, such as Somerset Maugham and Jack London, which are largely told, and not dramatized, the drama being limited strictly to very important moments when things are profitably slowed down for a close look.

The problem with so much dramatized modern fiction is that it is slowed down, and little happens because drama eats up time and space. I'm going to experiment with told stories, narrated stories, and cut back on the dramatization which is paralyzing modern fiction.