Fever To Tell
In which James Wood attacks convention and defends the conventional, and Alice Munro offers a way out
Beginning creative writing students are always told to show don’t tell (because we all remember show and tell!). If they veer into things like “he was tall” or “the wine was good,” or, shudder to think, “she was sad,” they’re told, show me this in a scene, or, use a gesture to convey this—“he bends to go through the doorway”; “the wine leaves a licorice taste on her tongue”; “she closed her notebook and held it there a minute, closed.” Better, but after a while don’t we know what to expect? Somewhere, aren’t some neurons going to sleep?
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