If you've ever talked to me about worshiping, giving notes or critiques on other people's stories, you'll know that I have one specific and very strong pet peeve about notes that are often given in those settings.
It might be controversial to say this, but if you give the comment Show Don't Tell on a story without being able to explain your reasoning I will assume you're not engaging with the act of critique earnestly. Quoting hollow ideas you've at someone is not very helpful or constructive, and is frankly a waste of both our times.
Arguably, Show Don't Tell is one of the most common maxims for writing. It is especially taught in lower level and more basic writing classes, which doesn't mean it's wrong or bad by virtue of being a building block idea. In fact, it's very good advice for people who don't understand where their writing style is.
Often times this idea is shared with activities, and I'd encourage you to do this activity as well:
1a. Write a simple telling statement about a character or object:
Ex) The car had chipped paint.
1b. Now rewrite that statement with enhanced description showing the details:
Ex) The car wore it's years of commuting through the snow and rain in proud scars across its paint.
- Rewrite the following statement as with more showing: "She stepped out of the car."
Ex) She pushed open the door of her car, looking down at the ground before carefully stepping out.
So yeah, Show Don't Tell is good advice. The general idea is to attempt to allow the reader to paint a picture of the events and objects in the story. But often times, people throw this advice around where its not really warranted.
Show Don't Tell is not as much of a golden rule as you might think. SOMETIMES, sometimes (with care and detail) you might just tell the reader who a character is or what happened and that's not "incorrect" in certain moments. The goal should be to be thought of your work. You might be fine with your characters simply sitting on a small stool in the corner, or in a given scene you might prefer to have your characters walk their asses slowly side to side across the old sticky booth of a run down diner. Regardless, you should put a line in with though to could this be better with more detail? Would it be more effective to have your narrator say something happened, or describe it happening. One is often times better, and you might think showing is always the best fit.
Is the following excerpt from Animal Farm telling or showing?
Boxer was an enormous beast, nearly eighteen hands high, and as strong as any two ordinary horses put together.
How about this excerpt from Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett?
The Supreme Grand Master listened to this with a slightly lightheaded feeling.
Both of these excerpts are single sentences from well published and well known authors of great classics, and they are both lines of telling. They might be colorful, but it's not very descriptive text. That doesn't make these works or the authors bad. They are effective lines in well written books.
It's important to recognize that showing and telling are both elements of writing. You should be using the most effective mode for the moment.
A bigger take away here is there is no golden rule for writing. There is no one thing that will make you a good writer. There is no perfect way to do something at all. There's always a better way for you to write something though, and the only way to find that is to improve. You have to understand key elements of writing, get in lots of practice writing, learn how to learn how to improve on your work, and read other works*(especially if you don't know what your writing is to you)*.
I'm not really an expert at any of this, but I've been writing for a long time and trying to make my way as an indie author for a couple years now.
I'll keep sharing my thoughts as they come.
