There are three areas in which the writer is particularly vulnerable to telling rather than showing: when he tells what happened before the story began; when he tells what a character looks like; and when he tells what a character senses, that is, what he sees, hears, smells, touches, and tastes. Those are all places where the author’s voice can intrude on the reader’s experience. What happened before the story began, sometimes called “back-story,” should be shown rather than told about either in narrative summary or in a flashback.
