Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

by Sol Stein

The reader wants an experience that’s more interesting than his daily life. He enjoys and suffers whatever the characters are living through. If that experience is interrupted in order to convey a character’s background, or anything else that the author seems to be supplying, that’s telling, not showing, a major fault because it intrudes upon the reader’s experience. Put simply, the reader experiences what is happening in front of his eyes. He does not experience what is related to him about offstage events. If his experience is interrupted, he gets antsy. “Telling” starts the reader skipping. Elmore Leonard said he avoids writing the parts that readers skip.