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The "show, don't tell" rule nearly ruined my first short story
I remember a workshop leader in Portland back in 2019 saying to never state a character's emotion, only show it through actions. I took that literally for a 3,000 word piece and stripped out all internal thoughts. The result read like a robot's diary and my readers had no clue why anyone did anything. I went back and added two lines of direct feeling, and suddenly the whole scene made sense. So my question is, does that rule get overused in prompts, or is it actually the key for newer writers who lean too much on telling? I am curious if others have hit this same wall.
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