on Jane Friedman site:

Let me just start with: I do not condemn “telling.” There’s a place for it in every story, and that’s mainly in the interstices between scenes.

But there’s a reason we must show things when we are in scene and not tell: readers attach to clear actions and emotions. And that’s key to pulling the reader into your story.

Here’s what I see in stories that “tell” too much: two people are having a conversation, but the dialogue is stilted and expositive. Or a character is reacting in a scene, but we don’t understand why because the emotion is not on the page. Or two people are interacting (a fight, a love scene, a heist, a whatever), but we really can’t tell what they want or need.

In an earlier post, I discussed the use of elision to show emotion and to elicit it in the reader. Today’s post comes from the opposite angle: specific in-scene craft techniques.

There are four ways to show in scene: through dialogue, interiority, gesture, and sensory detail.