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Iro
@Iro asked:

Certainly the (overly pithy, unnuanced, etc) advice of "show, don't tell" gets bandied around often, but I was thinking about this recently: Do I spend the time/words describing the sensations/results of the emotion the character is feeling, or do I count on the reader to understand what emotion should be felt based on the context of the situation and how the character is acting?

(Obviously there's no "right" answer here, just was on the mind)

When I do the former it always feels like I'm "telling" (even if it's preferable to "that makes me feel angry!", et cetera), and when I do the latter it always feels like I'm being too vague or lacking interiority.

This is why writing advice books are generally bad, I think. They tend to pick one answer and tell you it applies to every situation, but... it depends!

Do you want to have a lot of interiority or does a lack of interiority fits the mood of the piece, the character, the situation?

Do you want to focus on the bodily sensations or do you want to be more in the character's head?

Do you want to spend a lot of time/words on this emotion on this scene because it's important or do you want to move on fast?

Do you want the characters emotion to be ambiguous?

Is the mood obvious because of your word choice or tone in narration?

The actual answer is: write it how you naturally want to write it and see if it works. If you reread it and you don't like the result, write it differently and read it again.

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