“Show, don’t tell.” If the world of fiction has a motto, that’s it.
But of course you already know you can’t show everything.
Remember Ramona the Pest? Beverly Cleary’s masterpiece? As it happens, we used to have a couple of neighbor kids who were just like Ramona and Beezus, right down to the blunt-cut hair on the Ramona girl’s beetly little brow. And every time that child came over to play, I thought of the day Ramona’s teacher read Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel to her class, and Ramona was the only one who asked the obvious question about Mike settling down in the basement at the end: “How did he go to the bathroom?”
Yeah. Lots of your characters’ daily lives you’re going to skip right over without even mentioning. Even Mike Mulligan’s. In spite of Ramona.
But what if something simply has to happen—it’s essential to the plot (remember the time we put a couple of losers in a car from New Jersey to New York City to pull a heist?), it can’t be implied—but it detracts from the focus to take a detour and show it in full?
Sometimes you need exposition. . .
Read the full essay on The Art & Craft of Fiction.